I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cleavage returns in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, a sequel that literally takes the best parts of its original and makes the most of them. This 1998 teen slasher film is, of course, the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer. While the 1997 flick “benefitted” from the Kevin Williamson screenplay, the 1998 sequel featured a Trey Callaway screenplay and Danny Cannon’s direction.

Love Hewitt is Julie James, of course, and she’s in full recovery mode after the events of the first film. Jumpy and frequently nervous, James has trouble getting on with her life at college in Boston and wants to leave every sign of her old life behind. Her grades are slipping and her relationship with Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is suffering, too. Luckily, her roommate Karla (Brandy Norwood) wins a trip via a radio contest and the pair head out on an all-expenses-paid trip for four to the Bahamas. Karla brings her boyfriend Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) and a friend Will Benson (Matthew Settle) to help cheer Julie up.

Unfortunately, the trip to the Bahamas isn’t what it seems and it doesn’t take long for the four to realize that there’s some serious trouble afoot. Not only was the trip planned at the beginning of hurricane season, but all of the hotel guests are leaving because of upcoming storms. That leaves the four alone with a few staff members at the resort, but they try to make the best of it until Julie’s past comes around once again. The Fisherman returns and it’s up to Ray to make his way to the resort before it’s too late.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is more convoluted and perplexing than the original, but it features a great deal more eye candy. Director Cannon knows how to capture his young starlets better than his predecessor and ably slips Love Hewitt in more than one compromising position to show off her ample assets, including the infamous tanning bed sequence. Brandy gets in on the act, too, spending the last third of the movie with her shirt ripped open to reveal her bra.

Beyond the eye candy, however, there’s nothing here. The whole setup of the radio contest and the inexorable finale is so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. Not only does the notion of such a trip and its components completely discredit the intelligence of the lead characters, but it simply startles in its stupidity. Without getting into spoilers, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of geography ought to know why the trip is a stinker.

The “big reveal” is astounding in its idiocy, too. When the Fisherman makes his way to the island resort, he has an “in” that is so abundantly transparent as to need no explanation. Red herrings are easily tossed aside, as in the first flick, but this time the plot twist is so abundant in its obviousness that rasping laughs are the only appropriate response.

The performances are simply not good, with Love Hewitt and Brandy doing well enough but the males of the cast simply floundering around. Prinze Jr. has always been absolutely awful, but he sinks even lower in this tripe with a horrific cliché-ridden performance that could be among the worst in the genre. Settle is bad too, mining the depths of B-movie bullshit to deliver his lines. Of course, Callaway’s toned-down screenplay has a lot to do with the garbage here.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer exceeds the original in the cleavage and bouncy-boobies department, but flounders everywhere else. It remains a sorry excuse of a film, a lukewarm cash-grab aimed at draining more out of the already nauseating teen slasher pool.

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