My Review of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

 

Written by Kevin Williamson

Directed by Jim Gillespie

Ben: "You in some kind of trouble child?"

Julie: "Yes, yeah I'm in a lot of trouble."

Ben: "That's a shame, being that it's the 4th of July and all. Kids like you should be out having fun. Drinking, partying, running people over, getting away with murder... things like that."

Confession: As a franchise, I've been more lukewarm to this compared to some others. Slapped in between both Scream and Urban Legends, this franchise just didn't grip me as much. This first movie though did offer a decent start.

In the movie, you've got a group of students about to graduate. There's the girl next door in Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her best friend, Southport's Croaker Queen, Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar). They're easily the best characters of the four main ones. There's also aggressive jock Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) and fisherman, Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.). One of thems's awful, the other one a bit boring.

Anyways, they're celebrating the 4th of July and end up running over a man that got most of the movie they assumed was someone who had lost his girlfriend the year before. How do they deal with accidentally killing someone? They dump the body and pretend that nothing ever happened and go their separate ways.

Then a year passed and it was July 4th again. Julie had gone to college in Boston, Helen was working on the family business and being belittled by her jealous sister, Barry was threatening other characters like Max (Johnny Galecki) and Ray was mostly pining for an uninterested Julie. Of course, the four were brought back togethef because someone knew what they did the previous summer.

Not only that but they were determined to kill each of the four members as revenge. Julie and Helen were savvy enough to try and get answers from Missy Egan (Anne Heche) but it would later appear that their victim was both alive and not the young man they thought they killed. In fact, he died by their victim before the disastrous event.

As for the killed/victim, it was Benjamin Willis/the Fisherman (Muse Watson) and it's a fairly unsatisfying reveal. I mean we didn't really know the character until his reveal and his defeat at Julie and Ray's hands just wasn't that satisfying tbh. As for the last scene, talk about blatantly setting up that sequel.

- Kevin Williamson really was on the slasher front in the last 1990s with this, the first two Scream movies and writing parts of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.

- The movie's based on a 1973 novel of the same name though the town is Silver Springs instead of Southport.

- Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr met on this movie and the rest is history with them.

- Chronology: July 4th, both in 1996 and 1997 for the majority of this movie. Southport and Boston.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is fine as a slasher movie playing into aspect of the hook legend with okay enough protagonists. It does often lack the spark of Williamson's other slasher work but the main cast do carry it along.

Rating: 7 out of 10