I Know What You Did Last Summer MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 1/2 Content: -3

Beauty queen Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has just earned the coveted Croaker Queen beauty contest. Her boyfriend, Barry (Ryan Phillippe), is a wealthy, cocky, handsome jock. Her best friend, Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), is smart and ambitious. And Julie's boyfriend, Ray (Freddie Prinze, Jr.), is an ambitious working class young man. With high school behind them and knowing that the fall will separate them, the four friends celebrate Helen's victory on an isolated, romantic beach. On the way home, on the notorious Reaper's Curve, they hit a man with the car. Scared they will be convicted of drunk driving and murder, they dump the body in the ocean and keep the secret to themselves. A year passes, and the four are back home for the summer. Julie's mom hands her a letter that has just arrived. Inside is a single sentence - "I know what you did last summer." Someone outside their circle knows their secret, and sets out to eliminate them all. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER will draw healthy crowds of teens at the box-office, especially since it's release is so close to Halloween.

Reviving the spirit of the gory thrillers of past decades, I KNOW. . . makes full use of the genre's cliches. The audience is subjected to many chase scenes, some ending in near misses and others in bloody death. When the kids hit the man with the car, one of the boys uses a large icehook to drag the body to the cliff and toss it over the side. The killer in turn use a similar hook, or perhaps the same hook -- yikes!!, to gut his victims and chase others. Gore and violence alone make this film objectionable, but language also abounds. Many crude words and obscenities mar the script, and the Lord's name is taken in vain twenty times. In addition to their foul mouths, the teens lack sexual morality. They all appear to be sexually active, and one couple kisses passionately on the beach with sex implied. When it comes to I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, everybody would have been better off not knowing anything at all.

Preview Reviewer: Jason Shepherd
Distributor: Columbia Pictures, 10202 W. Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232