I Know What You Did Last Summer/I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Once Wes Craven "redefined" the slasher flick with 1996's Scream, it opened the floodgates for a rash of copycats more frightening than most of the actual films. The quickest of these to hit on a major scale, oddly enough, was written by Kevin Williamson, the same man who created Scream and a horror of another kind, Dawson's Creek. Gillespie certainly knew that casting, like in Scream, would be key, and he found some top fresh faces to carry what is simply a weak film loosely based on an urban legend. After a foursome — Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe and Freddie Prinze Jr. — hit and run down a fisherman and leave him for dead, their immoral act comes back to haunt them when they receive random messages threatening their lives. Rocket science is not required to figure everything out and the film works in a paint-by-numbers routine of character reduction. Only Phillipe is worthy of mention as the malicious Barry, with a handful of expletives and a cutthroat attitude towards keeping a secret. Hewitt, as the agonisingly named Julie James, is nauseating to watch in a lead role, sporting a feeble delivery that couldn't even make her parents proud. Matching her up with an airhead like Prinze Jr. only makes I Know What You Did Last Summer even more difficult to endure. And this one's miles better than the sequel. Again, written by Williamson (a man who obviously got lucky with Scream), I Still Know features Brandy and Mekhi Phifer joining Hewitt and Prinze Jr. for a rollercoaster ride in the Bahamas, where the invincible fisherman follows them on another murderous rampage. Aside from the cameo by a dreadlocked and pot-headed Jack Black (who wisely asked to be uncredited), this has weak thrills that are only made worse by the constant shrills and unbearable paranoia of Julie. A commentary is featured with the monotone Gillespie for the first film, but unless you're looking to dull the experience even more, avoid it at all costs. A "making of" featurette for Still is tacked on to the extras, but plays out more like a trailer with "the voice of all trailers" narrating. Perhaps the scariest thing of all on these two DVDs is the inclusion of the music video for Hewitt's "How Do I Deal," which brings a new element to the horror, I mean, horrible genre. (Mandalay/Sony)