"Crime Haunts Youths"
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What You Need To Know:
Though not as clever or as funny as SCREAM, this movie contains enough scares and intrigue to hold less discerning youths who only seek an excuse for a date. Though this movie doesn’t have occult or supernatural elements, it does have lots of murder, gore and even foul language. The intriguing premise of what a group of young people would do if they had to deal with a dead body is quickly traded for rote horror images and devices. This movie is nothing more than a lowest common denominator scare fest attempting to attract the same teenage audience who attended SCREAM.
Content:
(Pa, LLL, VVV, S, N, A, D, M) Pagan worldview of teenagers who fail to make the right decision & are punished for it; 42 obscenities & 12 profanities; excessive violence including numerous attacks by man with large, metal hook causing death & bloodshed, images of corpse, 2 scenes where car hits man, beating, & attempted intentional drowning; implied fornication & some sexual situations; no nudity but female leads show ample cleavage; alcohol use & abuse; smoking; and, miscellaneous immorality including lying, deception, stalking & revenge themes
More Detail:
From the screenwriter of SCREAM comes another teenage horror flick meant to cause teenage girls to cling to their teenage boyfriends. It contains stock-in-trade horror cinematic devices such as the villain in a costume who kills creatively, scream queens (literally a female protagonist is crowned a local beauty queen) and naysayers who get what is coming to them. This movie is violent, scary and bloody, but fails to maintain both interest and creativity when it turns into a gore-fest after a cleverly laid premise.
In a sleepy North Carolina coastal village, a group of high school graduates celebrate. Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar from TV’s BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) wins a local beauty pagent while her obnoxious, rich boyfriend, Barry (Ryan Phillippe), and brainy best friend, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), with her boyfriend, Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), watch and cheer. After her victory, all four take Barry’s BMW out on a trip to the beach for a bonfire, scary stories, heavy drinking, and a little romance. Barry gets drunk and lets Ray drive, but, when Ray turns around a curve, he accidentally hits a man.
Believing that the man is dead, all four teens imagine that their futures are ruined. They believe that if they report the incident to the police, they will be charged with manslaughter, which will spoil their plans for college. Reluctantly, they decide to take the body and dump him into the ocean. Just as they are about to dump him, the body wakes and reaches out. Scared, Barry and Ray beat the man senseless and threw him in the water. They vow to not tell anyone about the murder.
College comes, but all four students are so conscience-stricken that they cannot perform well. They return to their town, emotionally broken. One day, Julie gets an anonymous letter which simply reads, “I know what you did last summer.” Scared, she shows it to her friends. Before long, a man dressed in a black fisherman’s type slicker terrorizes the group with a sharp hook. Two of the four, as well as some innocent bystanders, end up dead, and Julie realizes that she must find a way to stop the killer before he kills her. In usual horror movie fashion, with hopes for a franchise, the killer escapes certain death to kill again.
Teenage boys will want to see this movie because it stars some favorite TV actresses, all of them attractive and showing off their physical attributes with low-cut shirts. Teenage girls will tag along with their teenage boyfriends. Though not as clever or as funny as SCREAM, this movie contains enough scares and intrigue to hold less discerning youths who only seek an excuse for a date. Though this movie doesn’t have occult or supernatural elements, it does have lots of murder, gore and even foul language. (A little gore goes a long way.)
The intriguing premise of what a group of young people would do if they suddenly had to deal with a dead body, is quickly traded in for rote horror staples and disturbing images. Furthermore, the dialogue is low-brow and simple. It is nothing more than a lowest common denominator scare fest in an attempt to attract the same teenage audience that attended SCREAM. Every October comes a crop of mediocre horror films hoping to capitalize on the season. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER may do well based on its stars and writer’s names, but it will not be remembered for anything other than the first in perhaps a long series of sequels of mayhem, gore and grotesqueries.
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