I Know What You Did Last Summer *** (1997, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr, Anne Heche) – Classic Movie Review 617

Kevin Williamson, the writer of the reasonably witty Scream, comes up with an incredibly popular if humourless and mechanical teen slasher movie, grimly directed for all its shock value in 1997 by Jim Gillespie. It is based on the novel by Lois Duncan, who said she hates the movie because the film-makers have turned her book into a slasher film, especially detesting it in the wake of her 18-year-old daughter’s murder.

In the story, four extremely cute-looking American teenagers (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr) accidentally kill a pedestrian after a July 4 beach party and dump the body in the sea. But now, one year on, they get a strange letter that says ‘I know what you did last summer’ and someone dressed as a fisherman, with a murderous fish hook in hand, sets out to take revenge on them.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is obviously way too influenced by classic slasher flicks Halloween (1978), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996), though these people here probably think that’s a good thing.

The young cast may look attractive, and be the movie’s major appeal, but on this form they’re still pretty well starters in the acting learning department. Still as a midnight treat, it’s a fun scary movie. It proved a huge hit, taking $125million at the box office worldwide, and it was a big profit-maker as it cost only about $17million to make.

Prinze Jr first met Gellar on the set of this movie. They married on 1 September 2002 and have two children.

Sequel: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1999).

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