I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Directed by: Jim Gillespie | 100 minutes | horror, thriller, fantasy | Actors: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr., Bridgette Wilson, Anne Heche, Johnny Galecki, Muse Watson, Stuart Greer, J. Don Ferguson, Deborah Hobart, Mary McMillan, Rasoo J’Han, Dan Albright, Lynda Clark, Shea Broom, John Bennes, Jennifer Bland, William Neely, Jonathan Quint, Richard Dale Miller, Mary Neva Huff, David Lee Hartman

‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ is a decent horror film with a mostly young cast. The film has a decent start, but keeps the level for an hour. Slasher aficionados will love the last part, in which the village idiot frequently uses his fishing hook. Over-stylized settings and cast don’t do the quality any good.

It is striking that the first hour of the film is significantly slower than the last half hour. Director Gillespie takes his time and a, albeit thin, story develops. Not that the story is so important in quite a few horror productions, but Gillespie in any case cleverly portrays how people suffer when a fatal accident is obscured. The perpetrators, four young people, gradually turn into mental wrecks. In addition, the scary moments of the film are suggestive and exciting in the beginning. After an hour it is suddenly over and the protagonists run and fly in all directions and the killer makes up for his previous inactivity.

The murderous madman this time is a scary fisherman with resentment feelings. The makers of the film have looked closely at previous slasher films, such as ‘Friday the 13th’. The Jason Voorhees back then is now Ben Willis and Ben uses his experiences from the fish market on any teenager he doesn’t like. Since ‘I Know’ is full of young people, Willis is definitely not sitting at home idly! It is a pity that the face of the villain is unmasked, so that a part of the tension is lost through suggestion. Too often mediocrity dominates. For example, none of the protagonists impresses with a striking role unless it is Anne Heche as the unworldly sister of a deceased boy. The two boys and two girls wearing the film are all clean-cut, fashionable teenagers, but it’s the perfect, the over-styled, that doesn’t do a horror movie any good.

The film is exemplary of 1990s teen horror, where style trumps substance and you never feel like you really need to be terrified. Bland jokes and references to other films are disastrous for the tension. Teen horror like “I Know” also means a lot, a lot of rock music, thirteen of which is a dime.

‘I Know’ is nothing more than a nice movie. For a long time, suspense and a reasonable story go hand in hand. When later the nuance disappears and gives way to blunt violence, the lovers of senseless violence are satisfied. But as with the many adolescent victims, life has long since disappeared from the film. Fairly successful teen horror.