Director: Jim Gillespie
Writer: Kevin Williamson
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze Jr, Anne Heche
Synopsis: Four young friends bound by a tragic accident are reunited when they find themselves being stalked by a hook-wielding maniac in their small seaside town.
1997 was an exciting year to be a horror movie fan. By the end of January, Scream had set records to become one of the highest grossing films of the genre ever made, the film written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven offering a fresh new vision of how to make a scary movie. You could sense something was changing in the air. After a major lull in the genre the previous few years, the overwhelming success of Scream guaranteed a large slate of new horror titles were coming, including the first Scream sequel, and a new Halloween film starring Jamie Lee Curtis.
But before those films hit theaters, along came the entertaining slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer in October 1997 that provided strong performances and effective scares. It’s not in the same league as Scream despite this one also being written by Williamson, based on the Lois Duncan novel, but part of that has to do with the story being more of a standard mystery narrative that doesn’t have the humor and meta aspects of Craven’s genre-defining saga.
What makes the film stand out to this day is its outstanding ensemble cast, from its four talented leads to its stand-out supporting character performances. Jennifer Love Hewitt leads the group as Julie James, who along with three of her friends hit a man in the middle of the road and try to dispose of the body. A year later, no one’s been able to put the past behind them, Julie almost flunking out of school, her former best friend Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) now mostly estranged from her and staying put in the town she was so ready to leave behind. Their former boyfriends Barry (Ryan Phillippe) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) are also still around and trying to figure out how to move on in their lives—but then they receive notes that say, “I know what you did last summer,” and it appears as if the creepy fisherman they mowed down survived the accident and is out for revenge.
I Know What You Did Last Summer came out at the perfect time in the days before Halloween 1997, and anyone looking for a genuine thrill ride got their money’s worth, the movie a blast to watch with a large audience in a theater. Director Jim Gillespie keeps the pacing fast and efficient while also not sacrificing important character moments, like a terrific scene early on when a clearly distraught Julie sits at the dinner table, her mother asking her if she’s on drugs. The relationships between the four main characters evolves throughout the movie, keeping the plot developments consistently engaging, and Gillespie includes a fantastic group of supporting actors that enhance the story, like Johnny Galecki as Max and Bridgette Wilson-Sampras as Elsa, Helen’s older sister.
The best performance in the movie, which I at the time wanted to be in the Oscar conversation, is the late Anne Heche as Melissa, who finds just the right balance of creepiness and sympathy in her eerie scenes. Julie and Helen go to her house in search of David Egan, the man they believed they struck on the winding road last year, but in talking to Melissa, they begin to suspect she might be involved in the recent killings taking place. Heche’s drab outfit, the way she carries herself, that hateful look in her eyes—everything works beautifully about this character, which could have been a throwaway performance by another actress. And the big jump scare of Heche banging her fist against their car window is an all-timer.
Is the film still scary twenty-five years later? The film is still highly entertaining, but scenes that might have frightened viewers in 1997, like Helen seeing the killer at the beauty pageant has grown sillier, along with any of the fright factor there once was in its slightly absurdist ending on the boat. I also loved the big jump scare in the last scene, but finding out in the disappointing 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer that the moment was ultimately just one of Julie’s nightmares takes away its power.
However, the scene featuring Helen in her sister’s department store is still a work of great suspense, the lights out, the killer hiding among the mannequins as she tries to find her way to safety. Sarah Michelle Gellar is an amazing actress, and she puts up enough of a fight that you think she might survive the night—this is Buffy, after all, the beloved television series having premiered a few months earlier—but, like in Scream 2, this battle doesn’t end well for her character. It’s still ridiculous how fast Gellar runs while the killer slowly walks and yet somehow always remains directly behind her every time they cut to a new shot, but that’s a trope of many horror movies, not just this one.
The disappointment that remains in I Know What You Did Last Summer is its standard horror movie dialogue by Kevin Williamson, who wrote so much fresher and cleverer dialogue in the Scream films. Williamson penned this script years before he sold Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer was rushed into production after Scream’s box office kept rising throughout the early months of 1997. This slasher film was shot, edited, and released in all of six months, and the lack of time Williamson and Gillespie had to craft a truly great entry into the genre certainly shows years later. But for many viewers like myself, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a welcome hit of nostalgia that still works better than it should, the amazing cast particularly elevating the material enough to still make it a worthwhile rewatch, especially in the weeks of October.
