I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1998)

 

(1998; director: Danny Cannon. Screenwriter: Trey Callaway.)

 

Review

A year after the events of the first KNOW film, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt, from the first film) is traumatized by her friends’ murders. She and her ex-boyfriend, Ray Bronson, now have intimacy issues. The body of Ben Willis, a.k.a. the Fisherman, who tried to kill her and Ray, were never recovered─and there was that ham-fisted ending of the first film.

Julie and her friend, Karla Wilson (Brandy Norwood), win a radio contest for a vacation in the Bahamas, on Tower Bay Island. Karla brings her horny boyfriend, Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer), and Julie invites Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr., also from the first film). Unfortunately for Ray and his co-worker/friend, Dave (John Hawkes), they encounter the Fisherman─who may not be Ben Willis. . . Taking Ray’s place on the vacation is Will Benson (Matthew Settle), who wants Julie to ditch her long-distance flirtation with Ray.

When the four college students show up on Tower Bay Island, they’re told that their arrival falls on the last day of tourist season, an odd booking, made stranger by an impending tropical storm. The bearer of this alarming news is Mr. Brooks, their hotel manager, given fun, snarky life by the always-entertaining Jeffrey Combs (THE FRIGHTENERS, 1996). Also stuck on the largely deserted island with the Fisherman: Nancy the bartender (a smart, tough Jennifer Esposito); Estes (another hotel employee, played with gravitas by the inestimable Bill Cobbs, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, 1991); Titus Telesco, a white, dreadlocked drug dealer (an uncredited Jack Black, MARS ATTACKS!, 1996), and a few others.

This by-the-numbers, film-only sequel with its mostly dumb characters (especially Julie) is a silly and tired melodramatic mess with a few okay kill scenes and notable supporting actors (including Mark Boone Junior, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, 2007, as a pawnbroker, and Red West, as Paulsen, a fisherman).

Some viewers may be put off by three of the characters (who were racially inappropriate even in 1998): Titus (a white guy sporting bad dreads and a supposed-to-be-funny pseudo-Jamaican attitude); Karla, whose practical-for-a-player advice to dump Ray indicates deeper character flaws; and whinging, c**k-blocked Tyrell, a probable cheater who flirts with every attractive female within range. The first two KNOW films were obviously rooted in the 1990s, but these characters embody that point to the nth degree. 

Unless you’re a die-hard fan of any of its players, avoid STILL. Followed by I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2006).