I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Starring - Jennifer Love Hewitt; Sarah Michelle Gellar; Ryan Phillippe; Freddie Prinze Jr. & Bridgette Wilson Director - Jim Gillespie MPAA - Rated R for strong horror violence and language. I Know What You Did Last Summer comes from the same screenwriter who brought us last year's Scream. Jennifer Love Hewitt; Sarah Michelle Gellar; Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr. play two couples who are out celebrating the Fourth of July, and the beauty pageant win of Helen Shivers (Gellar). After a night of partying, they drive home along a deserted mountain road. On the way down the road, they hit a man. They decide their only way out is to dispose of the body. Although disposing of the body turns out to be more difficult than they had expected. When it is accomplished they swear never to speak of it again. At the end of the summer they all go their separate ways Julie James (Hewitt) is off to university and Helen is off to fame and fortune in New York. Over the course of the next year the two couples break up and the four friends loose touch with one another. That is, until Julie comes home from her first year of university and finds a hand written note waiting for her, stating simply -- I know what you did last summer. None of the four, whom have all returned home, have any idea who wrote the letter. Quite quickly all become convinced that they have a real problem. The note's author goes about terrorizing the four, as well as leaving the usual mounting body count in his/her wake. Like Scream, the writing is sharp, and most of the plot twists work well. As with Scream, screenwriter Kevin Williamson seems to be taking shots at the horror movie genre with blatant scenes like the female victim running up the stairs to get away from the killer when she should be running out the door. This brings me to the last 20 minutes of the movie. The audience that I screened the movie with laughed at many of the so-called scarier scenes at the end of the movie when the lead characters were in dire peril. This isn't a knock against the movie by any means. Nor am I suggesting that the movie is so bad that it is funny. The audience was laughing with the movie, and not at it. One gets the impression that the makers of I Know What You did Last Summer wanted the final 20 minutes of the movie to be a very clever send-up of horror flicks. If that was their intent, then they succeeded. My only complaint with the movie was the killer. When the killer's identity is finally revealed I was left asking -- huh? This could also be said concerning many of my fellow audience members. You actually have to think about it for a minute to figure it out, not normally a plus for a slasher film. Which is not to say that you will leave the theater confused, just having used your brain a little. The four main cast members were excellent, and as for Hewitt and Gellar, if their first major starring film roles are any indication, they should both have bright careers on the big screen ahead of them. This is especially true of Sarah Michelle Gellar, who will appear in Scream 2 at the end of 1997. 9/10 - Great flick. Reviewed October 23, 1997 by Joe Chamberlain