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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 14.01%
Worth A Look: 7.64%
Average: 11.46%
Pretty Bad: 19.75%
Total Crap: 47.13%
3 reviews, 139 user ratings
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| I Know What You Did Last Summer |
by Ryan Arthur
"It's like an episode of Scooby-Doo where people die."

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Dumb, dumb, dumb.A movie whose villain is based on the urban legend/ghost story of the man with the hook for a hand who terrorizes children that everyone knows, with a script penned by Kevin Williamson, the guy who brought the clever, hip and scary Scream to life. Bound to work, right?
Nope.
That's not to say this flick doesn't have what's becoming the prerequisites for modern horror films: young, hip cast (preferrably from young, hip television shows); alt-rock soundtrack; scary music that bulds up to bass speaker-rumbling crescendos; violent teenage death; and, surprisingly, Anne Heche. Weird.
But the movie stumbles coming out of the gate and never picks itself up again. The killer strikes out at a group of teenagers who did a bad thing, but the killer also slashes three people who have no ties to the bad thing. It's death and violence for the sake of...what, exactly?
Like with Scream, I Know... keeps you guessing about the kiler's identity until the final reel, but despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, it's not who we think it is, nor who it should be. The true identity is revealed, in 30 seconds of backstory, and you could actually hear everyone in the theater turn to their friends and go, "What the hell? Who's that?" The revelation comes quite literally out of nowhere.
What could've been witty and self-aware is instead lifeless, brutal and cold. The actors don't seem to be in on the joke, and it plays like a lost chapter in the Friday the 13th franchise. The cast is decent: Jennifer Love Hewitt won me over, Sarah Michelle Gellar screams with the best of 'em, and even Freddie Prinze, Jr. isn't bad. The script, like Scream, is also full of pop culture references (Gellar to Hewitt as they approach a suspicious house: "Shouldn't we have a plan? Angela Lansbury always had a plan.")
But Angela Lansbury got cancelled, Buffy.
I Know What You Did Last Summer, try as it might, is D.O.A.This was the first movie to introduce me to Jennifer Love Hewitt's cleavage. For that, if nothing else, I am thankful.
del.icio.us
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=347&reviewer=7 originally posted: 08/27/98 01:00:54
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USA 17-Oct-1997 (R)
UK N/A
Australia N/A
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