In my early teens I was a huge horror nut, up to the point where I basically would only watch horror films and nothing else. As a result of this love of horror I watched a lot of crap, but in my young, naive eyes they were not that bad and sometimes I even thought that these shit films were good. However, I never watched I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) during that period of my life and I am ever so pleased that I didn't because means I come into this review under no illusions that this film is utter, utter shit. But as I was watching it I wasn't angry or disappointed at the lack of quality entertainment that I was beaming into my eyeballs. I was instead very excited of the prospect of writing this very review and now that I am I can hardly contain my glee at the prospect of shitting all over this film. I was very tempted to make a video review of this film immediately after me watching it, so you could get my immediate reaction, but I will try to do myself justice with this review. The film follows the story of four teenage friends, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.). who are having one last night together before they all move to separate colleges. Whilst driving home they hit a fisherman and believing him dead decide to get rid of the body instead of facing the repercussions of a possible manslaughter charge. They dispose of the body in the sea and swear they'll never speak of the incident again. A year later they all return home and start to be terrorized by a mysterious fisherman who knows wat they did. The film the follows the four as they attempt to find out who the fisherman is whilst also trying to survive. I will now give a basic review of the film. The story is boring. The visual style is boring. The clichés it relies on are boring. The acting is amateur at best. The scares are laughable. The gore is no more exciting than a heavy nose bleed. The soundtrack gave me a hernia. Okay, with that out the way, let’s have some fun.
As soon as this film started I knew I was in for a treat of 90s crap when the shit rock soundtrack came on. What couldn't have been even twenty minutes later my worst fears were realized when The Offspring appeared on the soundtrack. It was this moment that I realised that this film was a pile of shit. And this shit rock never lets up either, leaving you with no option but to rant about it in a film review the day after (which is what I guess everyone did after seeing this film.) As for the quality of the filmmaking there is little I can say. Its shot fine but is boring and isn't bad enough to make fun of. But what is bad enough to make fun is several of the scenes in this film. Most scenes see are heroes speaking very openly and loudly about the murder they committed in very public places. Literally you have them basically screaming specific details about at each other while people just walk around casually without a care in the world. Does no one over hear them? Does anyone in this fishing town care about murders? So many questions, so little answers. Oh, except that the film does kind of give us answer later on in the film’s best scene for reasons that I don't think the filmmakers were hoping for. The scene shows Helen, as last year’s beauty queen, watching the contestants for this year’s beauty pageant, which is a huge deal in this town despite clearly not being able to fill the tiny venue that they are in. Barry watches from the empty balcony area, again at this 'hugely popular' and traditional beauty pageant that all of 12 people show up to and is attacked by the fisherman. Helen sees this and cries out for help whilst attempting to reach Barry and stop the murderer. It is at this moment that we get the answer to our previous questions, as this crowd instead of turning around to see what’s happening or rushing to help surround Helen in a confused state and grab her to stop her from getting to Barry. Even she is like what the fuck are you idiots doing, did you fail all of your GCSEs? It’s ridiculous. I love it.
But to just shit on these townsfolk would be harsh, so I will now proceed to shit even harder on the main characters because oh boy they pained me. First of all, how on god's green earth are these people friends at all? They have almost nothing in common and are all just cliched messes. They all have kind of likeable personalities I guess, except Barry. Barry is a dick. I hate Barry. And yet when the killer gets his first chance to kill him he spares the bastard. This boring killer had one chance to do something good and he left it an extra half an hour because apparently, we hadn't spent enough time with the biggest dick in the film. However, the killer sparing Barry is the scariest part of the film because, well you know, he doesn't kill him. And actually, I take it back, Barry is not the biggest dick in this film, that reward goes to Helen's sister, Elsa (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras). She is the absolute scum of the earth with absolutely no redeemable qualities. Every time she is on screen she is just abusing Helen, and not in a sibling kind of a way but in a way that makes her a fucking sociopath. The killer thankfully kills her too, but not before she almost lets her frantic and clearly terrified sister nearly get killed by being lethargic and non-concerned about opening a fucking door for her. Fuck you Elsa, I hate you. As for the two love birds of the film, Julie and Ray, all I can say is I have seen better acing from my 1-year old niece when she pretends to eat her vegetable to get a biscuit. It is embarrassingly bad, but in a way where I just love it, especially in Freddie Prinze Jr.’s case who is heavy breathing his way through this film like it’s no one’s fucking business. As for Jennifer Love-Hewitt I don't know what to say. She is shockingly bad. Fortunately, her character basically loses all emotion after she commits the initial crime, and this really helps Love-Hewitt who doesn’t seem to know how to convey even the simplest of emotions with any believability. I urge you all to watch the 'what are you waiting for?' scene to get a real sense of her quality, or lack of.
This is the first horror film I chose to review to kick off October and, in some ways, I hate myself for doing so, but in other ways I don't think I could have picked anything better because I have had an absolute blast writing about this pile of shit. From a technical point of view, I can't really slate it too much, but the acting and characters are laughable, often in an entertaining way. Is it a film that is so bad it is good? It’s hard to say. Long stretches are very dull, but the funny bits are funny. What I would say is if you have nothing to do (and by nothing to do I mean literally nothing) on these cold and wet October nights and you have an hour and forty minutes to waste you could put it on and maybe get a giggle or two out of it, mainly because you feel like you're watching a shit school play or something. I cannot recommend it as a quality piece of entertainment, but I can recommend it as a sometimes-entertaining pile of crap, and if that’s what you're into then knock yourself out. As for me, I will be making sure to avoid this one in the future, although I am curious to see how bad the sequels are if this one is this terrible.