Bored on the fourth of July
A sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer begs the question of what the first film even is. My answer: a story better suited to an earlier era of filmmaking, the dread-powered 1970s, that got made as a 1990s teen slasher instead. Much of its imagery traffics in curdled small-town Americana and lost innocence, and yet the overriding effect is a bunch of attractive young stars getting chased around by a man in a rain slicker: Scream’s moody little cousin, hampered by a confusing and unsatisfying whodunit.
A follow-up could have chased either half of that split personality: the introspective guilt trip or the slick slasher. Greenlit on box office returns in the thick of the post-Scream teen horror wave, this one is, unsurprisingly, a frothy slasher first and foremost. Neither screenwriter Kevin Williamson (busy with Dawson’s Creek and The Faculty) nor director Jim Gillespie (who has since said he didn’t like the premise) came back, and the producers chose Trey Callaway’s script over a rival draft, reportedly set in New Orleans, from a pre-Traffic Stephen Gaghan. The result is dumber than its predecessor and, frankly, most of its 1998 classmates, from Disturbing Behavior to Halloween H20, the latter of which Williamson was reportedly off punching up instead of writing this. With half of the original’s leads already killed off and the setting moved to a tropical resort, it barely even feels like a sequel.
A year after the Fisherman (Muse Watson) came for her, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is in Boston for summer classes but suffering from recurring nightmares. Her roommate, Karla Wilson (Brandy), wins a Bahamas trip from a radio contest by naming Rio the capital of Brazil. (The fact that it’s actually Brasília ends up being a plot point.) Julie’s boyfriend, Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), begs off, citing one fishing obligation or another, so Julie, Karla, Karla’s beau Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer), and tagalong Will Benson (Matthew Settle), who happens to have a major thing for Julie, hit a Tower Bay resort for the Fourth of July weekend, just as storm season kicks off. Pedantry alert: what Julie did was technically two summers ago, so the title is wrong.
From there, a murderer emerges, bodies begin piling up, and it’s one stalking set piece stacked on another. The chaos rolls in with the weather: the radio gets smashed, the boats vanish, and so does the staff. The film turns into a haunted house movie as they brood around an empty hotel infested with a vengeful spirit (The Fisherman). In a couple of moments that are either hallucinated or elaborate setups, the haunting seems literal: a corpse in Julie’s closet vanishes before anyone else can see it, and when she sings “I Will Survive” at karaoke, the lyrics screen spells out the title of the movie instead. The karaoke bit is about as elegant as a hook to the face. I also kind of love it: it’s the closest the movie comes to being in on its own joke. (That, and Jack Black with dreadlocks.)
Otherwise, the frights are all jump scares heavily dependent upon loud stings (John Frizzell’s score is basically a sting-delivery system), false alarms, and POV fake-outs, cycled until the island runs out of cast members. The best mini-heart attack comes right after Tyrell announces he’s tired, hungry, horny, and hasn’t seen any psycho killer, cueing a hook down the kitchen chimney. The whodunit is even flimsier than the original’s (spoiler alert!): Estes (Bill Cobbs), a voodoo-practicing bellhop, is a red herring with flashing lights, but it turns out Will is the Fisherman’s son. The Fisherman’s name is Ben Willis. Will Benson. Ben’s son. C’mon, man! Scream 2 pulled the same trick in reverse a year earlier (the first killer’s mom instead of his kid), but at least tied it to its satire of media sensationalism ruining lives. This one’s just a name scramble.
Director Danny Cannon (Judge Dredd, the TV show CSI) leads the film with a dully competent (hook) hand. He keeps the story brisk, at least. Vernon Layton’s widescreen photography has the same glossy sheen as every other late-’90s slasher. So it looks alright, but it has even less soul than the first film: the gloom of a small fishing town gives way to a Bahamian resort with no texture of its own (it was shot in Mexico and California). In proper slasher form, the camera is also awfully preoccupied with Love Hewitt’s tank tops. She is at least spared the Final Destination 3 fate when the Fisherman locks her in a tanning bed in her skimpy bikini.
All that leering is a disservice to Love Hewitt, who’s better here than she was the first time around, finding fear and interiority in Julie’s trauma that the script barely sketches. Brandy, then riding high on “The Boy Is Mine,” is bouncy and likable but not much of an actress yet. Prinze Jr. is mostly off on a solo side quest. Nobody else in the cast is doing much to write home about, good or bad.
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer ultimately has a few fun moments and ideas that make watching it feel like eating a piece of Halloween candy: a quick slasher sugar rush, if that’s your thing. But it’s also the deterioration of all the melancholy and personality that made the original interesting in the first place. I still know what the first movie could have been. This one doesn’t seem to remember.
Is It Good?
Not Very Good (3/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.