I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Year 13, Day 287 - 10/14/21 - Movie #3,955

BEFORE: I'm halfway through my Shocktober programming after today, but I have to take a 2-day break before proceeding further, I've got some shifts to work at my new job, after about a 2-week hiatus. (Can you even call it a job if you never go there?). It's cool, I've been sort of easing into it, you don't really just want to dive in to this sort of thing.  Plus I had to work at NY Comic-Con and qualify a short film for the Oscars, those were both important and time-consuming things to do. 

Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. carry over from "I Know What You Did Last Summer". 

THE PLOT: The murderous fisherman with a hook is back to stalk the two surviving teens who had left him for dead, as well as cause even more murder and mayhem at a posh island resort.

AFTER: Wow, they didn't waste any time at all coming out with a sequel to the first film, this sequel was released just one year later, in 1998.  That first flick must have done gangbusters business, and even though the plot only allowed for two of the main characters to return, it feels like the filmmakers really knew what elements to bring back and put the focus on - namely, Jennifer Love Hewitt's boobs.  Seriously, though, the first film got some kind of "Best Breasts" award, so they probably went ahead with a sequel and decided to double down on the cleavage factor, assuming that was what was putting asses in the theater seats.

So it's no wonder that in the sequel we get to see her in a bikini, just before getting stuck in a tanning machine - I don't really think the killer locked her in there, I think her character was just so dumb that she locked herself in, prove me wrong - and then later we get to see her in the rain wearing a very soaked white shirt.  The last film ended with a shower scene, which might have been one of her recurring nightmares, and there's at least one scene here with her in a towel that still somehow covers everything.  

Clearly if you're looking for subtlety, you've come to the wrong movie. I had no trouble figuring out that there was something hinky about the free trip to the Bahamas that Julie James' roommate won by answering a radio station trivia question. I've played my share of pub trivia, and world capitals is ALWAYS coming up as a subject, and so I knew her answer was wrong, but scored as correct anyway. The capital of Brazil may have changed over time, but it's FOR SURE not Rio de Janeiro.  It used to be Rio, then it moved to Brasilia. Right?  The only country more complicated is South Africa, which I think had three capitals at last count. (look it up.)

In the context of the film, though, it maybe makes sense that the giveaway hotel rooms in the Bahamas would be available at the start of the "bad weather season" - or does it?  Doesn't it make more sense that the hotel would close down during hurricane season - have I stumbled into another giant NITPICK POINT here?  Or is a tropical hotel more likely to just stay open all during late summer and just let all the guests take their chances?  I'd look this up, but I have a strong feeling that I've already thought about this much more than any screenwriter ever did.  A screenwriter would never let the facts stop him from writing such a "fact" into a movie, as long as that "fact" served his purposes and gave his characters the motivation they needed.  (This is the second movie this week that features a red herring of a character performing voodoo rituals, and I guarantee that in neither case did any screenwriter do any research into voodoo AT ALL.)

From there, it wasn't too hard for me to figure out the identity of the mystery killer here, they practically served it up on a plate, unlike in the first film that made you sort through three different boring stories to get there. (And I get to play this game all over again, but sort of for the first time, with the "Scream" movies next week.). But Kevin Williamson didn't write the screenplay for this sequel, he was too busy working on "Dawson's Creek" and the movies "The Faculty" and "Halloween H20", so the job fell to other writers. Maybe that's why the secrets were so much easier to figure out in this one. 

But what I don't quite understand is why, if the killer has such a beef against Julie, and also Ray, why they go about killing all of those characters' friends and acquaintances, without ever getting around to killing Julie and Ray themselves. It feels so inefficient somehow - I can almost get behind the theory of hating somebody, then killing them. But why drag a bunch of complete strangers into the mix? I guess you can't ask a psychopathic character to act logically, but then why assume that he's going to continue to strike illogically?  Is there some researchable basis for this, like are there serial killers out there who say, "Wow, I really want to kill Brad Johnson who lives down the street from me, but I'm thinking I should start small, work my way up to it, and just savor the journey of getting there?" 

I know the first film did better at the box office, and I'm guessing it's more highly regarded than its sequel, but I think I like the second film just a little better.  They're both non-nutritious films, sort of like the candy corn or circus peanuts of horror movies, but I'll eat just a little of those snacks if available. But you just can't live on a steady diet of non-nutritious foodstuffs, so in a similar fashion, I really can't wait to get back to regular dramas.  As Sesame Street ended up telling Cookie Monster, cookies are a "sometime" food, not an all-the-time food - so just imagine what October does to my brain every year, it fills it with a bunch of nonsense.  Thankfully there's just 10 more to go, plus one documentary. 

Well, at least I now know what film the Broken Lizard comedy team was parodying when they made "Club Dread". There is a third film in the franchise, and it's called "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer", which is a bit of a weird title, because at some point "last summer" becomes "two summers ago" and then three, and so on, and you can't keep calling it that. No actors from this film carry over to that one, so I'm not including that one in the chain.  There's also a new TV series with the original film's title that's starting up on Amazon, but I'll take a pass on that, too. I've got more than enough horror movies that DO connect to get me through both this year and next year. 

Also starring Brandy Norwood, Mekhi Phifer (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Matthew Settle (last seen in "U-571"), Jennifer Esposito (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Muse Watson (also carrying over from "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Bill Cobbs (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb"), Jeffrey Combs, Benjamin Brown, Ellerine Harding, John Hawkes (last seen in "The Peanut Butter Falcon"), Jack Black (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Red West (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Michael P. Byrne, Michael Bryan French, Dee Anne Helsel, Johnny Harrington, Mark Boone Junior (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Dan Priest, Sylvia Short.

RATING: 5 out of 10 bullets fired from a gun that probably only holds 6.