I Know What You Did Last Summer

I haven't seen a whole lot of teen slasher movies. In fact this may be the only one I have seen, and it is a fitting tribute of the genre for our birthday girl, Sarah Michelle Geller.

Writer Kevin Williamson follows up Scream with a serious example of just how effective these movies can be if they're well-written, directed and acted.

Sarah Michelle Geller (Buffy, TMNT) and Jenniver Love Hewitt (Ghost Whisperer) fit perfectly together and are supported by Ryan Phillippe (Crash, Breach, Flags of Our Fathers) and Freddie Prinze Jr. Why does that sentence sound naughty? If I had to watch one film of this type, I'm glad this was it.

This film is great! The ACTING IS BETTER THAN IN MOST HORROR FILMS ALSO. Freddie Prinze Jr i the only one that fails to capture emotion. Jennifer Love Hewitt gives great acting in the actual scene where they hit the man, but other than that she is okay. Ryan Phillipe is also great, but its easy to play an air head that curses and is mad at everyone. The best performance has to be given by Sarah Michelle Gellar. She is great going from a natural beauty, to a scared off helpless girl. She conveys emotions well and her chase scene in this film is a classic. I would recommend this film for that reason only. Its fun, but kinda forgettable after a while. Anne Heche also gives a very good performance, even if its small. See it. You will be entertained.

I like Kevin Williamson. Scream was a brilliant parody of horror films while being scary in its own right and Dawson's Creek is a great television show. But this film is just not that good. It's not scary. It's not well written or well thought out. There really was no reason for guy from Rosanne to get killed. He had nothing to do with it. And it is the same thing in the sequel, most of the cast has nothing to do with it either. I didn't find this flick scary in the least although the story at the beginning was interesting. It is blessed with a cast of incredibly good looking people but that does not make it a good film to watch. If you really enjoy seeing Love Hewitt running around with her breasts half exposed, Gellar looking particularly sexy, Phillipe trying to box, Prinze Jr. looking silly, stupid characters that do stupid things, unconvincing deaths, a trunk full of fish that conveniently disappears (smell and all) when it is required to, someone get a hair cut in their sleep without knowing it and a plethora of other really bad scenarios, then this is your movie. However, if you want to see a good horror flick with teenagers getting killed, rent the early Fridays, the first Halloween, the first Nightmare, the first Texas, the first Evil Dead and even Scream. But for God sake, stay away from this one. It is quite bad.

Exactly, everyone should - but why? Because it is an excellent film, containing a good storyline (though not one of the best) and some promising new actors and actresses. In regards to the storyline, not many viewers realise that the film was actually based on a novel written before Kevin Williamson even thought up the idea to create another horror flick - therefore the general outline is not his, and so some people's comparisons between this and Scream can be considered as wrong. However, they are right in the sense that the typical horror elements are all there, and some are similar to Scream. I feel that the statement on the video cover "scarier than Scream" is to some extent true, especially the climatic ending (I won't spoil it for any of you left to see the film)!

I enjoyed the acting performances, though sometimes the screams did get slightly out of hand - near the end, one popped up every other minute or so! Despite this, the characters were portrayed very well, and you could really notice the distinctions between them, and which characters you were likely to prefer. However one drawback to the characters was how obvious it was to spot who was going to bite it - all my sister had to do was look at the characters in a group and guess straight away.

On the whole though, I found it to be a good horror film, done proud by the talents of writer Kevin Williamson and of the cast. If you are looking for a good scare, or simply taste other films after experiencing the wonder that is "Scream", then "IKWYDLS" should be your first choice - with its many 'jumps' making you enjoy the ride all the way!

ENJOY, and most importantly, SCREAM ON!!!

"I Know What You Did Last Summer" joins "The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" as being yet another film that doesn't even come close to living up to its inspired title. All are bad enough to make me angry at the thought of a good title being squandered.

Kevin Williamson's script suggests nothing so much as a man trying, and failing, to capture the charm of the first couple of seasons of "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" - this is more obviously a good description of "Scream", but "Scream", and this may surprise some people who've seen it, is better. -Or maybe he wasn't even trying. I'm not sure which is worse. I think Williamson WAS trying for a quality we might term "cred", by having his central characters bitch and squabble all the time. Friends in "Buffy", on the other hand, genuinely support one another. That's a large part of the show's charm. It's a charm that could only have helped Williamson's script, if only by making it more realistic: however much his central characters might have fought amongst themselves in the ordinary course of events, faced with a powerful EXTERNAL threat, they would surely have closed ranks.

Neither this nor "Scream" is particularly bad. The main trouble is that "I Know What You Did Last Summer", as well as wasting a good title, also wastes a good premise. Some teenagers feel guilty after their car accidentally knocks someone down; they hide the body and then they THINK they can just safely sneak back to their old lives ... the story could have gone in many good directions from here, and it's a pity all that occurred to Williamson was to head for regions slasher-horror so well travelled I'm surprised they don't sell souvenirs.