Hey, remember Kevin WIlliamson? Sure you do! He was the highly paid screenwriter who was going to revolutionize the horror cinema for a new generation with his 'smart' thrillers, starting with Scream in 1996. Unfortunately, it turned out that by 'smart' he meant 'marginally rewarding for those who had spent as much time watching crappy horror movies as I did'. His moment quickly passed, and in the 2000s, torture porn and J-horror have become the new touchstones of Fangoria fans, while Williamson went on to a whole 'nother kind of showbiz glory as the creator of the slasher-deficient Dawson's Creek. Still, he meant well, and about ten years ago, his movies were about the only evidence that could be found that the genre had any life left in it at all. So why not give the guy a break and make one of his most famous films the subject of an entry in Summerfest '08, the weekly Screengrab feature where we review movies with the word 'summer' in the title to give you something to do for a couple of hours while you're waiting for the potato salad to cool? If nothing else, we can guarantee you that this week's installment is going to be a bit more fun than the gloomy 1950s psychodramas we've featured for the last couple of weeks.
So strap on your fisherman's slicker, polish up your favorite boat hook, and join us for a look at 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer!
THE ACTION: Julie, Helen, Barry and Ray are a quartet of remarkably photogenic North Carolina teenagers who happily correspond to some of our very favorite big-screen stereotypes (respectively, the good girl, the wannabe starlet, the party boy, and the jock). On the Fourth of July weekend just after their graduation, they're cruising around one nigher after a fun trip to the beach, and wouldn't you know it, their car just happens to plow into a shambolic wino whom they are forced to leave for dead. Hey, it's happened to all of us, right? Let those who have not accidentally run over a wino cast the first stone, that's all I'm saying. A year later, they find themselves wracked with guilt and unable to fulfill any of their teenage dreams, except the dreams that involve staying drunk all the time. That's when they get a mysterious missive reading "I know what you did last summer", and a number of their friends start to turn up dead, the victims of sharpened implements wielded by a dead ringer for the Gorton's fisherman. Which one of them has turned on his or her friends? Or is it some phantom stranger who has it in for them? And which horror movie cliches will Kevin Williamson take pokes at while pretending he's above them in his own screenplay? Only time will tell, or looking at any number of movie spoiler websites.
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