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During the mid-nineties the teen slasher movement would be led by Wes Craven’s Scream. You had a recipe that involved a group of teens being terrorized by some unknown killer seeking revenge or doing just for no good reason. With the success of Scream followed many copy cats and even the Halloween franchise rode the resurgence a little with Halloween: H20 in 1998, but none of the films would really come as close as I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is loosely based on a novel that was written in 1973 by Lois Duncan. It was so loosely based that Duncan was actually barred from the movies premier because of how drastic the changes were from the novel to the film. Type O Negative’s cover of Summer Breeze provides the opening music for the film as a bird’s eye view camera shot of an ocean boarding plenty of rocky cliffs until the shot comes to a halt on a man who would appear to be contemplating suicide perhaps? He sits on a cliff doing what appears to be a heads or tails type of game with his life on the line. Watching this scene you should pay close attention to it, as you will be given you a major clue that could either reveal or mislead a big part of the movie. After this introduction to the suicidal stranger we meet our four soon to be terrorized teens. As the annual Croaker County Beauty Pageant takes place and Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wins the pageant, you get a small taste of how they will play out character wise. Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) has a quiet and almost innocent demeanor to her, Barry Cox (Ryan Philippe) who looks like an over emotional N'sync reject will almost seem to over-react in any stress inducing situation, and lastly Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) seems to be the cool, collected, and laid back one of the group. The four end up taking a trip to the beach and engage in the usual teenage debauchery. They make a fire and gather around to scare each other with a tale of a huge, hook-handed man who kills and at times guts his victims. After the beach they venture home and still in party mode drive recklessly, only to of course hit a pedestrian crossing the road, they pull over and investigate and come to the conclusion that they are screwed. Tension brews as they try to choose between reporting the incident and suffering the consequences or covering the accident up and getting away scotch free. Getting away scotch free is the choice that prevails; they dispose of the body and make a pact to tell no one about the incident and to take this deadly secret to their graves. A year later we find Julie now in her first year of collage getting ready to go home for break, once she gets home she finds an unmarked letter that reads boldly in sharpie "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER." all the guilt she has been suffering from the incident is washed away by pure panic and quickly she seeks out her friends to figure out who is behind the notes. When the friends get together frustration and paranoia ensue with some one stalking the four, and terrorizing them with mind games that turn almost fatal at times. With options running out they must try and uncover who is behind this before the secret they swore to their graves puts them in their graves. One thing I do want to highlight about this movie is that the character Max Neurick (Johnny Galecki) just gets the crap end of the stick the whole movie; you can't help but feel sorry for the guy. First he tries to make a move on Julie and that goes sour and awkward fast, then he gets a rude shove from the movies hardass jock Barry and later in the film gets brutally threatened at work by Barry because they think he might be the one terrorizing them and ultimately Max suffers the first and probably most painful looking death in the film as he gets hooked like a fish by the killer. This guy’s short time in the film was just brutal! When people think about this movie most people talk about Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar, for both of them this movie really shot them out of the sitcom TV mold and give them a chance at real movies. The extras really go in great depth about this and in the featurette "Now I Know What You Did Last Summer" you hear Jennifer praise the film and talk about how Jim Gillespie is her favorite director to work with. Along with other cast members and crew who go over making the film, talking about the many different characters of the film, but still not a lot said about the films villain. This was produced for the special edition re-issue DVD version which has found its way on the BluRay version. As an added bonus you get a sample of Gillespie earlier work in the form of a short film he created called “Joyride”. Its quiet enjoyable and it’s very short and sweet. Imagine a man being abducted and locked in the trunk of his car and utilizing what resources he has in his trunk for his survival with a few unexpected surprises the director throws in.The only thing that really separates the regular DVD version from the BluRay as far as special features go is BD Live which gives you links to studio websites and some theatrical trailers for other BluRay titles. All around this is a pretty solid product Sony puts out. As I said before this release is almost eleven years old and the transfer comes out flawless, crisp and sharp. There are a lot of lowlight and night time scenes but still they are able to really bring out some great coloring and crisp picture quality that gives you more detail than you’d ever need. Not the greatest film ever created but one that I enjoyed watching and who knows maybe in eleven years I’ll be watching it on the next format wondering how it turns out this time around. -derek-
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