In light of the recent ‘torture-porn’ craze including the ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ franchises, this now eleven-year old film that capitalized on the postmodern success of ‘Scream’ the year before, is an almost quaint experience – a nostalgic trip down mid-‘90s lane.
‘Scream’ revitalized a tired slasher genre with a lot of admittedly clever ideas and word of mouth drove the film to 100 million in the winter of ’96 breathing new life into Wes Craven’s career and making screenwriter Kevin Williamson a marquee name of sorts.
Of course, Hollywood never met a horse it didn’t like to beat senseless, so a sudden influx of slasher pics started flooding the cineplexes, with the best of these arguably being ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and ‘Urban Legend’ (Blu-Ray review coming soon!).
Both generated mediocre theatrical sequels but the original pics were competent enough in an unassuming sort of way. This flick had the added bonus of a screenplay by the then hot Kevin Williamson based on the Lois Duncan novel of the same name. It also featured a now intriguing cast that includes Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Philippe and Freddie Prinze, Jr.
It is funny that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, Jr. went on to star in two ‘Scooby Doo’ films as that’s pretty much how this film plays out. But instead of the rascally kid’s line, we get a severed hand.
The plot is a feature-length variation of the ‘ol killer with a hook fright around a fire story. Hewitt is the central character Julie James, a bright high school senior enjoying a last summer with her friends (Gellar and bf Ryan Philippe) and monosyllabic boyfriend (Prinze, Jr.).
On the 4th of July, after the small-town celebration, they head to a quiet spot on the beach for some loving and liquor. On the drive back, they accidentally hit somebody in the road and make a pact to get rid of the body and never discuss it again. A year later, the friendships have dried up but their forced to reconcile when a note shows up….’I know what you did last summer!’
Williamson went onto ‘Dawson’s Creek’ a year later and this pic even contains a foreshadowing nod with a ‘Dawson’s Beach’. Unlike ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘Scream’, though, Williamson didn’t inject a lot of knowing dialogue for his teen protagonists this time out – it’s a mostly straight-forward script but written well enough to give the four leads some personality, at least enough to generate some attachment to these buffoons.
And the performances from Philippe, Hewitt and Gellar are all above-average for this type of fare each playing to their particular strengths.
The villain is rather silly to be sure with a completely inane conclusion to the mystery and those goofy jump scares don’t really age well but it’s an otherwise acceptable genre pic with enough positives to recommend to horror fans.
We get a 1080p AVC encode at 2.35:1 and it’s a solid if not spectacular catalog release. Made for 10 million, the low-budget movie looks pretty polished considering the low cost and the on-location sequences definitely fare the best. A lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track is provided and does a good job of creeping up behind you.
Special Features start off with an audio commentary from director Jim Gillespie and editor Steve Mirkovich and the track is surprisingly enjoyable with Gillespie being a more than accommodating host. Next is a half-hour featurette with interviews with various cast and crew, Gillespie’s short film ‘Joyride’, a music video for ‘Hush’ and a handful of theatrical trailers.
Also becoming standard for all Sony Blu-Ray titles is BD-Live, an on-line feature (note that your Blu-Ray player must be Profile 2.0 compliant) that gives the user links to various studio websites and a page with a host of trailers for Blu-Ray and Theatrical titles.
The film still holds up as a light-weight, fun popcorn picture with a decent cast and nice pacing. This high-def catalog release has nice video and audio and a few special features to keep fans happy - worth a look for the right price.
I Know What You Did Last Summer [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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