I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (DVD)

As I was about to slip the DVD of I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer into my disc player, I noticed that My Dinner With Andre was on TV. You know, the 1981 flick directed by Louis Malle that's famous for consisting of no action other than two guys sitting at a dinner table, talking. Sounds deadly dull, huh?

It's not. I saw the movie years ago and remembered liking it, but it hooked me again and I wound up watching to whole thing before finally hitting 'play' for the I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer DVD.

Just a few minutes into the abysmally boring I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, I was pining for Andre and Wallace to come back to the table.

The stock horror story follows the same formula as the other two movies (I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the creatively titled I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, 1997 and '98). Basically, a group of empty-headed but well-endowed teens accidentally kill somebody through a mistake, and cover it up. But somebody knows! And he's not going to let them get away with it. The killer in these things is always somebody or other dressed up in a long, black slicker and wielding a sharp fisherman's hook.

I have never found the "Gorton's Fisherman gone-goth" antagonist of this series to be particularly compelling, but at least the first two flicks in the series (starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt) had reasonably interesting actors and some good unintentional laughs (the scene of JLH yelling in the rainstorm). Not so with the dead-serious third entry, which, despite the fisherman's weapon, will not hook anyone but the most desperate horror fan. Add to that the fact that the victims could probably smell the guy from a mile away — something fishy here? — and it just doesn't work.

But you have to work with what you've got, and I do give the director, Sylvain White, a kudo for understanding that (in his commentary, he points out the clichés and ever called the movie "bubblegum horror"). Still, he might have overdone it with the flashy, jumpy visual style. You can't create excitement by adding a few jump cuts and lens flares.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson