I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Film Review

★★★

Directed by: Danny Cannon

Written by:

Starring: Freddie Prinze Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Brandy Norwood, Muse Walton and Mekhi Phifer

Film Review by: Rachel Pullen

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Movie Review

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Movie Poster

It’s 1998, you are using the internet via the landline, taking photographs on a camera with film, making mixtapes for your Walkman off the radio, someone has a Bop-It, and maybe it’s summer and you are reeling from the murder you committed last summer.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer follows Julie, our survivor from the first instalment as she lives a watered-down life in college, dressing like a librarian and being all uppity because she did the murder 365 days ago. But like all good things they come to end and with summer looming, her favourite season, she must return to her home town….or win a holiday to a tropical island with her housemate and run away from her problems…looks like we are going on holiday.

That trauma from the first film has left her once again unable to move on, and even though her surroundings have changed and she seems a little more at ease, we can sense her incompleteness regarding her misdeeds, and because of this her housemate drags her, her boyfriend and their pal Will, to a sunny island to maybe turn that frown…upside down.

So Julie, her housemate and their two boy toys set off for the island but are quick to find out it’s storm season and they are pretty much the only ones there, washed out and bored…why oh why would a competition send them to a resort during the storm season?

Oh because nepotism is a thing in this film, and boy toy number 2 is actually the son of the killer from the first film, not unlike a lot of slasher film sequels of the ’90s, why is that a thing? Why are the families always getting involved? I do not think I would do a bunch of revenge killings if someone went after my family, I’m busy…tanning and going bowling.

So here we are, angry daddy’s boy chasing them through the rain and palm trees in the exact same set up as the first film, in essence, we have been brought to this island just to isolate the kids and have a few new victims to slash out the way as we build up to the final scenes.

It may sound like I hate the slasher formula we have placed upon us here, but in a way no…and if it were not for the first film I would be, for you see I Know What You Did Last Summer set up time and time again the red herring idea, we suspected every single one of the teens the first time around, only for a curveball to be thrown in and it ends up being someone new, and yet here we are ready to not fall for that set up again and boom…they flip the switch.

And it’s not just the son who is out there wearing a hook and killing teens, his daddy is still alive and they have a standoff in the rain with Julie in a graveyard because that’s how you set up a sense of foreboding, I guess…why is there a graveyard so close to a holiday resort? Like within walking distance? Anyway…Julie wins, they go home…the end.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is simply a profitable slasher film of the 90s, and why not? That was the trend at the time, it brings nothing in the way of stunning scenes, mind-blowing acting, but it does provide a young Jack Black playing a stoner with dreads getting cut up… good times. It does what it says on the tin, and while many die-hard horror fans turn their noses up to these kinds of flicks I say: no.

Do not get me wrong, I love an excellent horror, professionally written with perfect suspense and scares, but sometimes I think we all fall in love with the joy of watching stupid sexy teens, do stupid shit and then get killed, and is that not a solid part of the genre’s backbone? Of course, it is, however much certain movie snobs do not want to admit it.

So I found out there was a straight to DVD third instalment that apparently involves ghosts or something…I’m in! Let’s hope someone has a hook otherwise I’m turning it off. I wonder how the ghost hook will work? Won’t it just go through your body and do nothing? Is this going to be like an episode of Scooby-doo?…ah man I’m so excited.

So, kids what did we learn this week?

• Summer is Julie’s favourite time of year.

• Holiday resorts have their own graveyards.

• If Jack Black is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, kill him for his own good.

#RachelPullen

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