I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
USA/Germany 1998
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Although she survived an encounter with psycho-killer Ben Willis (now missing, believed dead) student Julie James is still haunted by dreams in which Willis pursues her. At college, she is drifting away from Ray, her boyfriend from back home who also survived Willis. Her room-mate Karla is trying to fix her up with genial Will Benson. When Karla wins a radio contest she invites Julie to come with her and her boyfriend Tyrell on a Fourth of July weekend break on a Caribbean island. Julie asks Ray to make a fourth but he turns her down so Karla invites Will instead.
Changing his mind, Ray drives to Boston but is attacked by a slicker-clad killer who looks like Willis. Ray escapes from hospital, and to buy a gun he pawns an engagement ring he bought for Julie. When they arrive in the Caribbean, the party discover that it's the last day of the season and a hurricane is expected soon. Julie is tormented by messages like the ones Willis used to send, and the hotel's few staff are murdered one by one. Estes, the voodoo-practising caretaker, explains that Willis used to work at the hotel, but left after he murdered his wife. Tyrell is also killed by the murderer, and Will helps Julie to escape only to reveal himself as Willis' son, working with his father to complete the family's revenge. Ray arrives with the gun, and he and Julie are able to overcome and kill the murderers. A year later, Ray and Julie are married, but Willis still seems to haunt them...
Review
Picking up from I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which the heroine seemed to be killed by the mad Ben Willis, this sequel opens and closes with scenes of Julie meekly going about her business when Willis attacks her. Evidently, these shocks are all supposed to be dreams. But they are no more contrived or hokey than the supposedly real scenes they bookend, and have the effect of turning the whole film into little more than a feeble series of jolts. If Julie's death can be revoked at any moment by having her wake up screaming, then there's no point getting too concerned about her.
The original film, itself no masterpiece, at least had a strong premise, from Lois Duncan's novel, and complicated its characterisations by an unusual class awareness. This follow-up briefly evokes the pressures making Julie and Ray break up. The strain stems more from their earlier ordeal than from the fact that she's an A student destined to make it in the big city and he's a fisherman stuck in a small town. And in place of the first film's credible fishing-town setting, this one plays out in an unlikely Caribbean resort which shuts up over the Fourth of July weekend but still rents out suites during the storm season. Director Danny Cannon claimed he wanted to evoke the deserted Overlook mansion of The Shining. But this is a cramped hotel and all the settings are anonymous (except in a silly scene in which Julie is trapped on a sunbed as her friends struggle to free her without thinking to turn it off). The hurricane's meteorological threat, meanwhile, proves no more than a stiff downpour.
Having gone from being promising to washed-up without passing through a phase of success, Cannon - who turned down the original film and has pretended not to be humiliated in interviews - here does a job calibrated solely to score enough at the box office in order to make him bankable again after his Judge Dredd fiasco. However, this kind of picture is unlikely to impress anyone after the opening-weekend grosses are in. For a moment it seems some satiric point about the dumbness of slasher-movie characters is being made when three college students don't know what the capital of Brazil is. Yet that thread is never picked up and instead we get a sustained exercise in irritating black stereotyping from Brandy and Mekhi Phifer and thin-faced quivering from Jennifer Love Hewitt.
The self-awareness and 90s attitude Kevin Williamson brought to the Scream films and I Know What You Did Last Summer have by now completely washed away. Along with Urban Legend, this does its best to seem like an exact copy of such middling slasher films of the 80s as He Knows You're Alone, The Burning, Madman, and Hell Night. When Tyrell mocks the panicky Julie by asking her if she saw Jason or Freddy in the shadows, the film overreaches itself. With its father-and-son villain team, it is at once a whodunit and a franchise wannabe that hopes to elevate Willis, with his fisherman's slicker and Captain Hook hand, to the psycho pantheon. In 20 years time, characters in slasher movies won't be invoking Ben Willis the way this one invokes Jason and Freddy. Moreover, given that this sequel is set two years after the supposed crime of the original, and the finale of the first film revealed that Julie and her friends hadn't actually done anything they should feel bad about, even the title of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer doesn't bear thinking about.
Credits
- Producers
- Neal H. Moritz
- Erik Feig
- Stokely Chaffin
- William S. Beasley
- Screenplay
- Trey Callaway
- Based on characters created by
- Kevin Williamson
- based on the novel by
- Lois Duncan
- Director of Photography
- Vernon Layton
- Editor
- Peck Prior
- Production Designer
- Douglas Kraner
- Music
- John Frizzell
- ©Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Co. Medien KG
- Production Companies
- Columbia Pictures presents in association with Mandalay Entertainment a Neal H. Moritz production
- Line Producer
- Mexico Unit:
- José Ludlow
- Production Supervisors
- Sharyn Shimada-Higgins
- Mexico Unit:
- Nancy J. King
- Production Co-ordinators
- Jamie Arsenault Green
- Mexico Unit:
- Mariano Carranco
- Production Manager
- William S. Beasley
- Unit Production Manager
- Mexico Unit:
- Ricardo del Río Galnares
- Location Manager
- Curtis L. Collins
- Assistant Directors
- Louis D'Esposito
- Michael Viglietta
- Shari Hanger
- Randol Perelman-Taylor
- Mexico Unit:
- Arturo del Rio
- Script Supervisor
- Pamela Alch
- Casting
- Jackie Burch
- Voice:
- Reel Team
- Camera Operators
- George Richmond
- Mark E. Moore
- Donald E. Thorin Jr
- Steadicam Operators
- Mark E. Moore
- Donald E. Thorin Jr
- Digital Effects
- Threshold Digital Research Labs
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Alison Savitch
- Visual Effects:
- Kim Lavery
- Matte Effects Supervisor:
- Charles Darby
- Special Effects
- Co-ordinator:
- John D. Milinac
- Foreman:
- Scott Blackwell
- Mexico Unit Co-ordinator:
- Laurencio Cordero
- Art Directors
- Charles Butcher
- Scott Ritenour
- Set Designers
- Louisa Bonnie
- John D. Jefferies
- Joseph Lucky
- Ann Harris
- Set Decorator
- Jan Bergstrom
- Illustrator
- Tom Lay
- Costume Designer
- Dan Lester
- Costume Supervisor
- Winnie Brown-Willis
- Key Make-up Artist
- Bonita DeHaven
- Make-up
- Artists:
- LaLette Littlejohn
- Tammy Ashmore
- Mexico Unit:
- Carmen de la Torre
- Special Prosthetics
- Matthew W. Mungle
- Clinton Wayne
- Key Hairstylist
- Lisa Marie Rosenberg
- Hairstylists
- Kimberly Kimble
- Susan Zietlow-Maust
- Mexico Unit:
- Carl Bailey
- Esther Lomeli
- Titles
- Nina Saxon
- Opticals
- Cinema Research Corporation
- Vocal Soloist
- Joan La Barbara
- Music Supervisors
- Sharon Boyle
- John Houlihan
- Supervising Music Editor
- Abby Treloggen
- Music Editor
- Lisa Jaime
- Soundtrack
- "Getting Scared" by Imogen Heap, Guy Sigsworth, performed by Imogen Heap; "Eden" by Alex Callier, performed by Hooverphonic; "Blue Monday" by Stephen Morris, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert, performed by Orgy; "Sugar Is Sweeter" by C.J. Bolland, Kris Vanderheyden, Cornelia Van Lierop, performed by C.J. Bolland; "How Do I Deal" by Dillon O'Brian, Phil Roy, Bob Thiele Jr, performed by Jennifer Love Hewitt; "Here I Go Again" by David Coverdale, Bernie Marsden, performed by Whitesnake; "Hey Now Now" by Shelly Peiken, John Shanks, Denny Scott, Kenny Scott, performed by Swirl 360; "That Girl" by Esthero, Martin McKinney, performed by Esthero; "Relax" by Mark Knopfler, Anders Bagge, Claudia Ogalde, performed by Deetah; contains "Why Worry" performed by Dire Straits; "I Will Survive" by Frederick J. Perren, Dino Fekaris; "(Do You) Wanna Ride" by Corey Tatum, Daniel Johnson, Bobby Torrence, Robert Rice, Reginald Long, performed by Reel Tight; "Venus Got It Goin' On" by Norman Howell, Horace Payne, Benwoit Tshiwala, performed by Born Jamericans; "Testimony" by Grant Lee Phillips, performed by Grant Lee Buffalo; "Polite" by Greg Wells, Bijou Phillips, performed by Bijou Phillips; "Gorecki" by Andrew Barlow, Louise Rhodes, performed by Lamb
- Sound Mixer
- David Ronne
- Re-recording Mixers
- Leslie Shatz
- Bill W. Benton
- Greg Orloff
- Supervising Sound Editor
- John Morris
- Sound Editors
- Richard Burton
- Michael Magill
- John Arrufat
- Thom Brennan
- ADR
- Editor:
- David B. Cohn
- Foley
- Artists:
- Gary Hecker
- Alicia Stevenson
- Mixer:
- Nerses Gezalyan
- Editor:
- Mark Pappas
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Freddie Hice
- Animal Trainers
- Alvin Mears
- Mark Echevarria
- Cast
- Jennifer Love Hewitt
- Julie James
- Freddie Prinze Jr
- Ray Bronson
- Brandy
- Karla Wilson
- Mekhi Phifer
- Tyrell
- Muse Watson
- Ben Willis/fisherman
- Bill Cobbs
- Estes
- Matthew Settle
- Will Benson
- Jeffrey Combs
- Mr Brooks
- Jennifer Esposito
- Nancy
- John Hawkes
- Dave
- Ellerine!
- Olga
- Benjamin Brown
- Darick the dockhand
- Red West
- Paulsen
- Michael P. Byrne
- Thurston
- Michael Bryan French
- doctor
- Dee Ann Helsel
- nurse
- John Harrington
- Todd
- Mark Boone Jr
- pawn shop owner
- Dan Priest
- professor
- Sylvia Short
- old woman
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 9,040 feet
- 100 minutes 26 seconds
- Dolby/SDDS
- Colour by
- CFI
- Anamorphic [Panavision]