A year after being terrorized by a revenge-driven hook handed killer, Julie James and a group of friends are hunted by someone--maybe the same person--on a nearly deserted Bahaman island.
Also known as: I Still Know (working title), I Know What You Did Last Summer 2 (working title), I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Sequel (working title), I Know What You Did Last Summer . . . The Story Continues (working title), I Know What You Did Two Summers Ago (working title), The Man with a Hook (fake working title), Last Summer 2 (Japanese translation)
Subgenres: slasher, college
Director: Danny Cannon
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr.
 2 reviews | ||||||||||
In the 1980s, there developed a "safe" sort of slasher filmmaking, instigated by the artful Halloween's success. Get a mystery killer, look at the world through his/her eyes every once in a while, and kill plenty of people nobody cares about. (I suppose it didn't occur to any of these hacks that part of Halloween's horror was that we knew who the killer was--and that he was unstoppable and almost impossible to locate.) Scream started a similar trend, though the mechanics were different--get a bunch of atractive almost- or soon-to-be-stars and make them try to figure out who is killing them in various disgusting ways. I Know What You Did Last Summer was just another permutation of that same formula--it, like the similar Urban Legend, took itself way too seriously. Shame, 'cause neither film was that good. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer isn't much different. Plenty of the same cliches are brought out--the mystery killer (still in the Gorton's Fisherman suit, I might add), the definitively peripheral characters who are slaughtered for no other reason than to look good as bloodied corpes (Jeffrey Combs, great as always, is nearly wasted), the oh-so-hip self-reflective dialogue. But the big difference is that I Still Know knows that it's just trashy fun--and at least it keeps moving. There are actually a few twists in the plot, and the characters are more interesting than the ones in the first movie. But it's still safe filmmaking; there is nothing going on here that isn't familiar and predictable to its Gen-Y audience. So I'm not exactly foaming at the mouth for a third Summer film, should they decide to make one, but . . . it was a decent way to kill an hour and a half. (Dec 21, 1999) philjohn.com - approaching the unexplained 
Not having seen the preceeding part, it nevertheless seemed I knew enough to being able to watch the movie. I would consider this a positive element, but then you could also attribute this judgement to the not-so intellectually demanding character of this movie. But this is somehow a matter of expectation, and I expected not too much. I was proven wrong, this movie was better than I thought. Not only didn't it pretend to be anything but a little slasher movie, but it could also create some feelings of horror. And to be precise: Slasher flick usually doesn't mean horror film. This one's sort of a mixture of both. During the first part of the movie, the horror is mostly in watching Julie reliving the past with everybody around her doubting her mental sanity. But then it turns out to be a very graphic movie, with little or none niceties around. The acting is much better than some critics have meant, and there is a real sense of suspense in the air. And then it is always fun to have such a great actor as Jeffrey Combs on the screen (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Weyoun and Brunt). This movie might not go into great depths, but neither did I suspect that nor is that necessary all the time. Sometimes you just wanna lean back, laugh a little bit, and be a bit scared. These functions are very well being performed by this movie, and it doesn't try to soften the horror--and it is not a teenie flick. The atmosphere is great, so are the pictures. Relax, until you've seen the end. Let's wait for part three . . . (Dec 21, 1999)
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Follows I Know What You Did Last Summer. Followed perhaps an upcoming third (and reportedly final) film.
DVD and VHS editions available in a two-pack with IKWYDLS.
