Trailer Park: I Know What You Did Last Summer
Movie
I Know What You Did Last Summer, released October 17 1997
Trailer Synopsis
Four friends (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe) spin a scary story and then accidentally hit a dude with their car. Rather than go to the authorities, they decide to dump the body and pretend like it didn’t happen. A year later, they are reunited when they realize somebody knows their secret and has decided to hunt them because of it. Glances are exchanged, nerves are frayed, and somebody lets Anne Heche wield a carving knife.
Does It Honestly Represent the Movie?
More or less, although it does rely a bit too much on amped-up mayhem and doesn’t allow for any breathing room for Kevin Williamson’s script. Based on a 1973 Lois Duncan novel, I Know What You Did Last Summer was written by Williamson in the early ‘90s but was rushed into production after his Scream became a proper phenomenon that single-handedly resurrected the idea of the studio horror picture. The genre had hit a terrible fallow period in the ‘90s, largely due to the diminishing returns generated by the tentpole ‘80s slasher franchises A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween. Even though Scream was a meta-commentary about the nature of fright flicks, it also functioned as an extremely well-constructed version of what it was sending up. The films that came in the wake of Scream were never as smart or as savvy as Williamson’s breakout script, but I Know What You Did Last Summer is probably the best of the copycats that followed in Scream’s wake.
Hewitt stars as Julie James, a recent high school graduate who is on her way to college but having one last blast with her friends before they all go their separate ways. She’s joined at the beach by Ray Bronson (Prinze), Helen Shivers (Gellar) and Barry Cox (Phillippe), and their half-drunk joyride ends with them hitting a pedestrian in a rain slicker. After a lot of shouting and panicking, they agree to dispose of the body and not tell anyone, hoping they won’t get in trouble. Smash cut to a year later when everybody is back home and Julie gets a note in the mail that simply says “I know what you did last summer!” Paranoia and murder follow.
Does It Make You Want to See the Movie?
Sure, why not? I Know What You Did Last Summer has two things working for it: the connection to Williamson (and thus the direct follow-through from Scream) and a winning cast. Thanks to a lawsuit from Miramax, Columbia couldn’t say “From the creator of Scream” as they had been doing, so it was left to the cast to carry that weight. Hewitt was still primarily known for Party of Five, which was just entering its highest-rated season when Summer landed in theaters (it had won a bunch of Golden Globes the year prior and profoundly elevated its profile, turning it from a show that was often talked about as a cancelation possibility to one of Fox’s bigger hits), and she’s a great scream queen here, able to express both vulnerability and toughness. Gellar’s star was not quite as bright as Hewitt’s, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer was entering its second season after a much-buzzed-about debut earlier that year. Phillippe was an unknown (he was two years away from his big breakout performance in Cruel Intentions, also alongside Gellar), so this might as well be his debut. And Prinze was a legacy who to this point had mostly done quality work in quieter indies (including 1996’s To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday and ‘97’s House of Yes). Within a few years they’d all be proper movie stars, so Summer is an interesting trailer to look at retroactively because it can’t rely on the names while still trying to sell you on their charisma (which is ample).
What’s Weird About It?
Not much, actually. It’s a pretty straightforward pitch for a horror movie, though with a few sly nods toward the cult of Scream. For example, the first few seconds are devoted to the foursome trying to work out the details of a spooky legend, which is something the characters in Williamson’s previous film definitely would have done.
This is the second film in this series to use the hectic, burbling bassline from Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats” to set the tone. The back half of the trailer uses Kula Shaker’s cover of “Hush,” originally recorded by Billy Joe Royal and made famous by Deep Purple. The soundtrack album features a bunch of those types of covers (Type O Negative doing Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze,” L7 doing Blue Oyster Cult) as well as originals from then-hitmakers the Offspring, Soul Asylum, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Korn. It’s not a bad little soundtrack.
I also kind of love the sorta 3D-effect red-on-red font used to drive home the text at the end of the trailer. It’s just superbly over-the-top and really calls to mind some of the loopier approaches to selling ‘80s horror, which makes a lot of sense.
Looking back, it’s a little unusual that there isn’t more time and imagery given over to the killer himself. Not that Fish Hook Guy is on the same level as Freddy or Jason, but he has a spooky silhouette that features prominently on the poster (though maybe it was only the hook that became iconic—it takes up like 30 percent of the poster for the sequel).
Not weird at all, but that’s trailer legend Don LaFontaine doing the voiceover. I believe that’s his first appearance in this series.
Does It Spoil the Movie?
A little bit! It spends its opening moments essentially giving away the entire preamble, and then gives away the fact that the group frays once they start to be tormented by the killer. I’m not entirely sure that knowing either of those things would ruin the movie for you, but it does set up quite a few expectations for the viewer who wouldn’t have them if they were otherwise going in cold.
Final Analysis
As I said above, I Know What You Did Last Summer was the best case scenario for the deluge of post-Scream slasher flicks that flooded the zone in the late ‘90s. I love a lot of those movies because of nostalgia, but I Know What You Did Last Summer hangs together much better than, say, Urban Legend. Audiences certainly responded: It debuted at number one and stayed there for three weeks, essentially dominating the Halloween movie season in ‘97. It made a grand total of $126 million worldwide (on a budget of $17 million), and much like the classic slashers it attempted to ape, I Know What You Did Last Summer got a handful of sequels with diminishing returns: 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is fine enough and provides a nice second run for Hewitt, but 2006’s I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer is just a direct-to-video cash grab with none of the original cast or creators on board. Amazon will be unveiling a TV series based on the Duncan book this October; I remain curious but skeptical. As for this trailer, it’s got enough thrill-ride energy to sell me on the idea of both a teenage version of a psychological moral drama and a whizz-bang murder chase through a fishing village. That’s all the hook I need. 7/10