Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on The New Portable.
In the world of slasher movies, I Know What You Did Last Summer ranks as one of the dumbest. Seriously, if you didn’t know that this was a slasher movie going in, it could be an entry in just about any genre. A wacky rom-com where the couple dated the year before but broke up? Well, they know what each other did last summer! Hijinks abound! But no, this is what Siskel and Ebert used to call a “dead teenager” movie, where the cast starts with a group of teens and slowly whittles them down.
So, we start in a little costal town in North Carolina where most of the men are fishermen and most of the kids seem to want to get away. The movie takes place on the Fourth of July, which naturally coincides with this town’s little town festival. I guess there are some of those that happen in the summer. As a nearly life-long Midwesterner, all of the local town celebrations that I remember take place in the fall, around harvest. Anyway, a part of this local celebration is electing the new beauty pageant queen. Because we evidently want to think that our main characters have some sort of value, one of them, Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wins and gets to wear a fancy tiara.
