I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

I Know What You Did Last Summer is right up there for great titles that deserve endless sequels. Sure, we got I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, but I need more. Who do we talk to about rebooting I Know What You Did Last Summer? Do it right this time, make nine sequels. I want to weigh up which was better, I Will 4Eva Know What You Did Last Summer (the fourth one) or I Know You Know That I Know What You Did Last Summer (the one where Jennifer Love Hewitt returns to the franchise for the first time since 1998)?

The big problem with I Know as a movie is that it’s not as good as you want it to be and it never has been and there’s nothing that can be done about. It often gets mentioned in the same breath as Scream because it was a part of that little late 90s run of slasher revivals, and it shares so much DNA. Neve Campbell starred in Scream, her Party of Five co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt stars in I Know. Both were written by Kevin Williamson. Sarah Michelle Gellar was in this and Scream 2 in 1997. But it is important to remember that Screamis a classic of the genre and the best thing I Know What You Did Last Summerhas going for it is that great dumb title.

The movie follows Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr, Ryan Phillipe and Sarah Michelle Gellar who all play characters with insane names like Julie James and Ray Bronson and Barry Cox and Helen Shivers. One night while out partying they hit a man with their car, and decide to deal with this problem by throwing that man into the ocean. But, was the man really dead? It’s hard to say because a year later the teens are taunted by a note that says “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER!”. And that’s kind of it.

Who is hunting these teens and their family and friends? Why it’s the always forgettable, The Fisherman. Yes, The Fisherman, a man who is a fisherman and who is always dressed like a fisherman and who uses a hook to do his dirty work. The Fisherman is a bad villain. Not as bad as The Fisherman’s Son in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer but still pretty bad.

Anne Heche and Johnny Galecki are also in this movie and if you’d asked anybody in 1997 to guess which cast member of I Know What You Did Last Summer would have the most money in just over two decades time I doubt anybody was putting their money on Big Bang Galecki. Galecki spends this movie playing Max, an oddball who first sees the gang on the night of the accident, but who later meets an untimely death of his own.

Where would I fit into the I Know What You Did Last Summer? Well, there’s no reason to think that a young Peter Jones couldn’t have lived in the town of Southport, North Carolina, and if this movie teenager was anything like real life teenager Peter Jones, I suspect he too would have had a crush on Jennifer Love Hewitt.