I Know What You Did Last Summer is a 1997 horror/slasher film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The screenplay was written by Kevin Williamson, writer of Scream, and very loosely based on a popular novel of the same title by Lois Duncan. The film was followed by the sequels, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and the straight-to-DVD I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. The film received mixed reviews from critics. However, the film was a highly successful, grossing $125,500,000 at the box office, and it won and was nominated for multiple awards. As a result, the film has been heavily parodied and referenced in popular culture.
Plot
After teenager Helen Rivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wins the annual Croaker County Beauty Pageant, she and her boyfriend Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) party on the beach with their friends: Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.). As they swerve home along a shoreline road, they accidentally hit a fisherman when a drunk Barry drops his liquor bottle and distracts Ray's driving. They don't turn to the police, fearing their post-high school dreams will be shattered: no college football for Barry; no law school for Julie; no heading to New York for Helen or Ray. Barry convinces his reluctant friends to help him dispose of their victim's body. They take the body to the pier and dump it in the water. Moments before his water burial, the victim wakes up and grabs Helen's crown, which Barry promptly jumps in to retrieve. The four swear each other to secrecy.
A year later, after her first year at college, Julie returns home. She has been performing poorly in school due to the guilt she feels from the past incident. At her mother's home, she receives a mysterious letter which reads, "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER!" Julie reports the letter to Helen, who never made it to New York, and works at a department store, under the supervision of her elder sister Elsa (Bridgette Wilson). Ignoring Elsa's objections, Helen and Julie head off to find Barry, who is the only one of the four who has felt little or no guilt from the incident. He immediately suspects a friend named Max, who had seen them the night of the accident, of sending the letter. Julie remarks that the man was still alive when they dumped him in the water. The police found a body caught in a shrimp net near the area three weeks after the incident last year, and he was identified as David Egan.
Later, Max is murdered by a man wielding a hook, who also runs over Barry with his own car. Julie and Ray visit Barry in the hospital, where he and Helen await them. Doing some quick research, Helen and Julie discover that two years ago, David Egan accidentally killed his girlfriend, Susie, in the same location that they ran him over. They find the location of David’s sister, Missy Egan, and they decide to visit her to gather information. During the course of their conversation, Missy mentions Billy Blue, a young handsome man, who visited her, saying he was best friends with David Egan. Julie and Helen now suspect that David’s friend Billy Blue is trying to avenge his friend’s death.
Julie drives Helen home. The fisherman enters the house and hides in Helen's closet. Helen's sister Elsa comes in and says that she needs Helen to work at the store tomorrow. Helen replies that she has the parade tomorrow, while brushing her long hair. Elsa says that she and her hair are pathetic. The next morning, Helen awakens to find herself wearing her old "Croaker Queen" crown. To her horror, her hair has been cut off to the shoulder and left on her pillow; the word "SOON" is written in lipstick on her mirror. Helen promptly calls Barry and Julie, both of whom she tells about the incident. While rushing over in her car, Julie hears a scratching noise in her trunk. She stops the car to investigate, and finds the murdered Max wearing Barry's stolen jacket with crabs crawling all over the corpse. Julie screams, shuts her trunk and flees for Helen's. Barry and Helen come to see but the trunk is now empty. Julie speculates that the fisherman must have taken the body, perhaps to demonstrate that he can set them up with it if they try to go to the police. He's just "out there watching and waiting."
The next day, Helen is due to participate in the Croaker Queen Pageant, but is frightened that the fisherman will attack her. Before the pageant, Barry holds Helen tightly and promises he will protect her. During the pageant, the Fisherman attacks Barry from behind on the secluded balcony. Helen sees the killer dragging Barry out of sight. She begins to shout and cry for someone to help him, but the crowd restrains her, thinking she is insane, and Barry is murdered during the commotion.
The policeman taking her home via car is forced to take the back alley with Helen in the back. The fisherman sets up a car block and impales the policeman with his hook. Helen escapes and manages to run to the safety of her sister Elsa's sprawling store.
Elsa enters the back storage room as the back door closes. Helen calls the police. The fisherman then comes in and slashes Elsa in the neck, then hooks her through the stomach and dumps her body in the bathroom. Finding Elsa has gone, Helen looks for her near a group of plastic-covered mannequins, but one of the mannequins is actually the fisherman. He jumps on her, but she escapes. She tries to open a door, but sees Elsa's body. She then rushes upstairs, leaps out a window onto debris and flees through back alleys. She comes close to emerging on the street, where a parade is passing by, when she hears a sound and turns to look. The killer appears in front of her and drags her behind a stack of tires. Under the noise and fireworks, no one hears Helen's screams while he slashes her repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Julie at last figures out David Egan's true identity. They didn't run over David Egan one year ago, but someone else. Because the face was disfigured and bloody, they were unable to truly identify who the person was; Julie believes that Ben Willis, Susie's father, tried to avenge his daughter's death by killing her boyfriend/murderer, David Egan. Missy believed that David committed suicide due to guilt and depression. David was actually murdered by Ben Willis and was set up to look like a suicide. His body was the one found by the police in the docks. Ben Willis was the man that Julie and her friends ran over, he lived and returned to kill them. The fisherman is Ben Willis; this is revealed to Julie when he pulls out the large fishing-hook from his jacket. The older man is also wearing dirty Wellington boots, the same boots Julie found at the incident a year ago. At a beach party, Julie climbs on board the Fisherman's boat accidentally. She tries to jump out, but she is too far from the docks. Ray who has been watching her, gets a boat and chases after her. Julie, stuck in peril, looks for rooms across the boat. She flees down to the fish-storage room, she tries to dig inside the ice, but then discover Helen and Barry's frozen corpses. The only thing she could do for them is to scream in horror. Ray comes aboard and fights with the Fisherman. Julie goes through a hole, and sees Ben fighting with Ray. Ben sees her and is about to kill her, but however, his hand gets caught in the ropes of the pulley, Ray pulls it and Ben gets his hand chopped off by the metal pulley. He is then thrown overboard. Hours later, nobody can find his body, only his hand gripping the fish hook. The sheriff says not to worry; the body usually turns up somewhere.
A year later, Julie is back at college. (Ben Willis’ body remains missing.) Julie's friend Deb passes by and tells Julie that she has mail: a letter which looks exactly like the one Julie received last year, the letter which started her entire nightmarish ordeal. To Julie's relief, it is only an invitation to a pool party. Returning to her foggy shower room, she finds the words "I STILL KNOW" written on the glass shower door; then, in an ultimate jump scene, a shadow of Ben Willis jumps through the glass and grabs her.
Alternate ending
The film originally had a different ending where Julie is chatting online with Ray. Her roommate hands her a white envelope with Julie James written in black marker on it. She opens it up and finds an invitation to a pool party. Then, an unknown person begins to chat with Julie then types 'I Still Know' to her and the fisherman jumps through the window and attacks Julie. This ending was used as a teaser trailer for the sequel.
Cast
Production
Kevin Williamson's screenplay was purchased before his screenplay for the movie Scream. It was only after Scream's success that producers rushed Williamson's screenplay for I Know What You Did Last Summer into production. Scottish director Jim Gillespie was hired by producer Neal H. Moritz to make his debut feature film on the strength of his 10-minute short film "Joyride". The film was shot in Southport, North Carolina, which also served as the film's setting.
In pop culture
- In Will & Grace Season One, Episode 6 "William, Tell", Grace says to Will upon entering the apartment "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (referring to the knowledge of a affair he had which she just learned of), and then says "the movie, I rented it (holds up the video)."
- In the Pokémon episode "Lights, Camera, Quacktion!" Brock says that his favorite movie is "I Saw What You Ate Last Tuesday".
- The film inspired The Simpsons Halloween episode Treehouse of Horror X sequence called "I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did".
- Spanish television show Sé lo que hicisteis... (weekly "sé lo que hicisteis la última semana" and monthly "sé lo que hicisteis el último mes" and specials "sé lo que hicisteis el último año") is a spoof of the Spanish title of the film "Sé lo que hicisteis el último verano"
- The movie was mentioned in Aquamarine. When Hailey, one of the characters, said to Claire "he knows what you did last summer", about an employee at the beach hut of Claire's grandparents.
- The movie is referenced in "Horror Show", an episode of Ghost Whisperer. In the episode, Melinda Gordon and Professor Rick Payne are examining a list of horror films. Payne reads them out, reaches I Know What You Did Last Summer, and pauses, turning to Melinda (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt), and raises an eyebrow before continuing.
- The first Scary Movie is a parody of this film and Scream.
- Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth is also a parody of this and other horror films.
- In the episode Stuck Together Torn Apart of the show Family Guy, Peter dates Jennifer Love Hewitt and he claims that he never saw it.
- This film has been parodied by the Garfield book Lights, Camera, Hairballs!, giving it the name "I Know What You Ate Last Summer" due to Garfield's large appetite.
- In the Disney sitcom, That's So Raven, there is an episode called Cake Fear which is similar to this movie.
- In the beginning Dawson's Creek episode, "The Scare" from season 1 shows the characters Dawson and Joey watching the movie during one of their film nights the night before Friday the 13th.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode, "The Graveyard Shift", the hash slinging slasher loosely parodies Ben Willis.
- The CW TV series Supernatural has an episode in season 4 called "I Know What You Did Last Summer".
- In the now cancelled CW TV series Veronica Mars has an episode called "I Know What You'll Do Next Summer" in the third and final season.
- The book "I Know What You Did Last Wednesday" written by Anthony Horowitz
- In the 2009 TV show, Total Drama Action, in the episode "Ocean's Eight – Or Nine", they parody the scene when the fisherman is run over.
- In the episode "Friday the 13th" from the children TV series Arthur, Arthur and his friends watch a horror film titled "I Know What You Did Last Wednesday", a sequel to "I Know What You Did Last Tuesday".
- In the TV Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the second season episode entitled: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, the title character Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar is sent flowers by her evil boyfriend Angel, with a message written – "Soon", similar to when Heather Shivers in the movie (also played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is given the message "Soon" written on her mirror in her bedroom.
Awards and nominations
Reception
The film opened to $15.8 million in 2,524 theatres on October 17, 1997. The movie stayed in the top position for three consecutive weeks. The end result was a total of $72.5 million in the US and a worldwide theatrical gross in excess of $125 million. It was declared the most parodied film ever by one publication in Timor Leste and achieved seventeen awards out of nineteen nominations at one event held in the country and losing two awards to Leonardo DiCaprio for his steamy roles in Titanic.
The film received generally mixed reviews from critics. In the review of Rotten Tomatoes reported that the review that 36% of comments were positive.[1] In another review, Metacritic reported 52% of the positive reviews. Critic Roger Ebert wrote in his review, "The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign."[2]
Jennifer Love Hewitt was praised for her performance of Julie James with an Entertainment Weekly columnist stating that Hewitt knows how to scream with soul[3]
DVD & Blu-ray Disc release
The film has been released on DVD multiple times. The only special feature was a commentary, but on newer releases it features commentary, a featurette, music video and a trailer. It was released on high definition Blu-ray Disc on July 22, 2008. It includes the same features as the newer DVDs and also BD-Live.
See also
References
External links
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I Know What You Did Last Summer trilogy |
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| I Know... cast |
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| I Still Know... cast |
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| I'll Always Know... cast |
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