On the night of the small fishing town’s 4th of July festivities, a small group of graduates go out to party and celebrate their future aspirations – all of which are put in jeopardy when they accidentally hit a man with their car. Greedily, three of the four teens decide to preserve their reputations by dumping the body and swearing never to speak of it again, much to the glaring disapproval of their friend Julie (Trojan War’s Jennifer Love Hewitt) whose insistence to go to the police is outvoted. A year later, upon returning to the seaside town, a killer in a fisherman’s slicker knows their secret and is bumping them off with a massive fishing hook.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
⭐️⭐️⭐️
From the doom chords of Type O Negative’s cover of Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” that plays over choppy waters during the film’s opening credits, I Know What You Did Last Summer confidently and insidiously steps into the ring as the spearhead in a torrent of teen slashers to follow the unexpected (and wholly deserved) success of Wes Craven’s Scream.
While producers saw an easy payday in luring in Scream’s newly frothed slasher fanbase, it was also a double-edged sword. I Know What You Did Last Summer was going to be the first to be scrutinized and examined as either the natural evolution of the “smarter” slasher, or the first in a front line to be shot dead for falling into the cliché traps that have been called to the carpet by Kevin Williamson’s whip-smart, whodunnit script.
It succeeded in courting both: It made a killing on its opening weekend, all but holding the door open for all the Urban Legends, Faculties, Valentines, and Disturbing Behaviors you could ask for (and their subsequent sequels, in some cases), but also drew the ire of critics and audiences who predictably zeroed in on the film’s…well, predictability, and felt a sense of betrayal seeing that this was written from the writer of Scream – someone who should have known better! But let’s set aside the unfair (and incorrect) assertation that Williamson presented the slasher genre with a new set of rules, only to fall into them. The truth is, I Know What You Did Last Summer, a very loose adaptation of the 1973 mystery novel by Lois Duncan, was written prior to Scream’s success, and was simply greenlit by studios when Craven’s film blew the doors off.
That’s not to say Williamson didn’t inject modern intellect into an old story. Bearing nearly no relation to Duncan’s novel outside of an inciting incident that kicks off the quartet’s conspiracy of silence, Williamson puts the Scream treatment (sexy, movie-savvy teen cast and all) to the classic “escaped lunatic with a hook” urban legend. Embroil the four of them in a mystery, start killing the people in their periphery, task the threats to some inept, ho-dunk police officers who offer nothing of help, sprinkle in a few Red Herrings, set it during a holiday, and give us the old-fashioned “walking killer” who somehow manages to teleport directly into the kill zone of their sprinting victims, and you do indeed have a recipe for a classic 80s slasher.
And truth be told, despite its predictability and some implausibility (the disappearing body in the trunk covered in crabs is an unforgivable eye-roller) I Know What You Did Last Summer is a lot of fun and harkens back to similar, holiday-themed slashers of the 80s like My Bloody Valentineand April Fool’s Day.
It’s cold and atmospheric nautical setting, a palpable sense of dread; suspenseful chases and a fun, action-packed finale aboard a fishing boat keep the tension and mood at a decent simmer. It’s also fitting that our mystery villain’s accoutrement is a long, black fisherman’s slicker, giving our killer a creepy, imposing look, and a hell of a big fucking hook to back up the threats. Though The Fisherman doesn’t exhibit the same agility or tenacity of Ghostface, his wordless persistence, not unlike Camp Crystal Lake’s hockey-masked hacker, or Haddonfield’s seasonal stalker, should appeal to those who need a little more “chill” in their villains, versus the aggressive, “charge-through-your-house-and-gut-you” intensity of Craven’s killer. It also posits threats everywhere, because it’s literally the uniform of Southport’s fishing residents. When they try to narrow down who might be tormenting them and their only clue is that he was wearing a slicker, one of the film’s funniest lines is the retort of, “Well, that really narrows it down. What with us living in a quaint little fishing village and all.”
There is also an overlooked air of pathos to these four characters that most slasher movies hint at but was unperceived in I Know What You Did Last Summer. In Scream, only Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott had a sad backstory involving the murder of her mother, and everyone else in her orbit was simply pulled into the grim horror of secrets kept that fight for exposure. The characters of I Know What You Did Last Summer wear masks of privilege, while dealing with the personal hells of home lives that forced them to grow up too early. Hewitt’s Julie James lost her father. Freddy Prinze Jr.’s Ray never knew his father and feels ostracized in his blue-collar job amidst three affluent friends. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s “Kroger Queen” Helen is all sex and smiles until the lights of the pageant go out, and she returns home to a neglectful dad and vindictive sister.
Only Ryan Phillippe’s Barry comes across as the true rotten apple of the bunch, who comes from old money, drinks like fish, looks like an NSYNC reject, and whose temper likely got him labeled “Most Likely to Beat His Wife” in their 1997 yearbook. But he serves a purpose – his incessant aggressive outbursts, irresponsible drinking habits, and bullying of his pals is precisely why the other three are in their situation. Never mind The Fisherman – these were all kids with big dreams, massive goals, and the grades and attitude to achieve it all and escape this small town. The accident and decision to cover it up not only sealed their fates as college and career hopefuls but put a vengeful psychotic on their asses to cut short what little life they might have carved out for themselves, had they gotten away with it.
Killer or no, the shine in Helen’s eyes dimmed and thwarted her aspirations for New York. Julie’s guilt caused her grades to slide and risk losing a scholarship. Ray put the books down and accepted his fate as a fisherman. And Barry, well…he just sits at his coastal home, knocking back drinks and hitting the gym. Arguably the guiltiest (and most arrogant) among them is blissfully unaware that his forceful decision to toss a man they killed into the bay has ruined the lives of his so-called friends, while life goes on for this privileged prick (a story we see all-too-often play out on the news out here in the real world too). Who’s the real villain here? The Fisherman wound up to exact vengeance, or the Silver Spoon asshole who looked out for himself, and walked away while his only friends withered on the vine? A sidebar discussion for you and your friends, free of charge. But I digress.
Director Jim Gillespie makes an impressive feature debut here playing within these themes, which are what tie the film the most to its literary namesake. He orchestrates the action and suspense like a well-versed horror director but allows for those quiet moments between the mayhem to remind the viewers that these aren’t the kids from Scream. These are damaged individuals before the horror strikes, and the accident on the cliffside road was simply the last cog in their breaking machines to fall off the spindle.
The attractive cast are all good (even if Phillippe’s drunken, rich-prick character is often hilariously over-the-top), but this is definitely a spring-board feature for the cute and bubbly Jennifer Love Hewitt, following in her Party of Five co-star Neve Campbell’s footsteps and carving out a memorable role in a hip teen slasher film. Having mostly been featured in comedies and dramas, her solemn and haunted performance is against her usual type, and is largely effective, selling her character’s guilt and depression. Gellar does a wonderful job of playing someone who gussies up and tries to smile through her pain like so many do, and it’s a departure from her no-nonsense role as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and far more vulnerable. It’s actually incredibly sad that her and Hewitt’s performances were reduced by audiences and critics to being little more than cleavage candy.
The real Wild Card of this cast, however, is Prinze Jr., who knowingly bears the brunt of being the group’s biggest Red Herring. It’s a sly high wire act to not show all your cards, but look like the most suspicious of the group, and still find a way to be a scared, sympathetic friend who might be harboring a dark secret of his own.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is undeniably flawed, and will likely always be the Scream Jr. of 90s post-Scream slashers, but as the first out of the floodgates, it’s still a fun, visually arresting, moody, and well-crafted thriller that feels like home in its own nautical, sleepy town way. If nothing else, it proved that even if the bar was raised by Craven and Williamson only the year prior, there was still a dedicated audience for good, old-fashioned, “comfort food” horror with no gimmick, no wink, and no judgment – lest we forget where we came from.
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Despite its initial critical drubbing, I Know What You Did Last Summer was still a financial success, and with that, has had several releases on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. It’s neither a rare, nor particularly “hard-to-find” film in any respect.
However, there are many decent releases out there, including snazzy 4K UHD SteelBooks, but for sheer “bells and whistles”, I must go with Sony Pictures’ 4K UHD 25th Anniversary Edition released in the fall of 2022. With bonus features spread over both the UHD disc and the accompanying Blu-Ray copies, you get a lot, which includes:
- Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 UHD Widescreen
- Audio: Dolby TrueHD English Surround 5.1, Dolby TrueHD French Surround 5.1, Dolby TrueHD Portuguese Surround 5.1
- Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Korean, French (Commentary), Dutch (Commentary)
- Start-Up Trailers
- (Archival) Commentary with Director Jim Gillespie and Editor Steve Mirkovich
- (UHD Disc Exclusive) Deleted Scenes
- (Archival – UHD Disc Exclusive) My Own Summer: Interview with Director Jim Gillespie
- (Archival – UHD Disc Exclusive) He Knows What You Did: Interview with Muse Watson
- (Archival) Short Film: “Joyride”
- (Archival) Now I Know What You Did Last Summer
- (Archival) Music Video: “Hush” by Kula Shaker
- (Archival) Theatrical Trailer Ported over from the original Columbia/TriStar 1998 DVD
- Sony Home Entertainment Previews
- Limited Edition Slipcover in First Pressing
It’s a nice array of features to celebrate the film’s anniversary that year. But if you’re more of a keepsake kind of collector (and you have a Region Free Blu-Ray player), 88 Films had released I Know What You Did Last Summer in a pretty snazzy Limited Edition Trilogy Boxed Set in 2020 that came with most of the bonus features presented on this Anniversary release (with the exception of the Deleted Scenes, but substituted by a Commentary by The Hysteria Continues podcast).
This Limited Edition set came with a rigid HardBox slipcase containing I Know What You Did Last Summer, the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and the 2006, Direct-to-Video, “What-the-fuck-even-is-this” third film, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, 6 Artcards, a Double-sided Fold-Out Poster of the box’s newly commissioned artwork by Joel Robinson, and a 44-page collectable booklet to round it off. If you’re willing to forgo the deleted scenes for the commentaries and some physical goodies, it’s worth the hunt – but just know that the Limited Edition boxed set is long Out-of-Print, as is the subsequent Standard Edition boxed set that came with just the films, and no other physical fanfare.
If you want ‘em, you gotta hunt ‘em down! Go fish!
Bits ‘N’ Pieces
Traum-A-Meter:
2 out of 4
I Know What You Did Last Summer was more about the mystery than the violence, so it’s not a particularly gory film. That said, we do get a guy hit by a car, various corpses hidden in various areas, a few slashes that erupt in a bit of blood spray, a couple people “hooked” through their sternums, a severed hand, and – likely the most vicious of the murders – a hook swung right up through a dude’s chin before he’s dragged off.
Today’s Jam: The weekend of the film’s release, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba was telling us how Danny Boy would get knocked down…but he always got up again, much like our persistent Fisherman.