Shout-out to all the Buffistas, especially the ones who cross-pollinate MBTV.
Helicopter shot over the Atlantic coast. Credits. We're flying to Southport, Maribel County, North Carolina. Also known as, like, Capeside. Kevin Williamson is obviously one of the great regionalists of our time. Anyway, the expensive helicopter was hired to show you some guy sitting on cliffs above the water. He's wearing overalls, nursing a beer, and flicking this gold coin necklace thing, with a now faded "I Love You" etched on it.
Cue emoting: melancholy and the infinite sadness. Cue noises in the bushes. Cue noises in the sky -- ooh, fireworks! Never mind about the little noises. Never mind about the gold coin necklace thing. Obviously unimportant. Just for atmosphere. Pay no attention to the man on the cliff, and focus on the fireworks so we can make the transition to town.
As the camera swoops into town, we're all welcomed to the 47th Annual Croaker Festival. Based on the gigantic fish parading down the street, I'm gonna guess that a croaker is a fish. A quick check of Google reveals that yes, in fact, it is. Family Sciaenidae, scientific name: Micropogonias undulates. "Croaker are opportunistic bottom-feeders that consume a variety of invertebrates and occasionally fish." Opportunistic bottom-feeders, huh? You know, the only writer/director who can get away with appearing in his own films is Hitchcock. Williamson ought to stay away from it.
We enter what's probably the local VFW hall, and come upon SMG's character, Helen Shivers, parading around in a bathing suit, aspiring to be the Croaker Queen. She's all ringleted and cute, but the bathing suit is gawd-awful. Helen's friends cheer her on from the balcony, and Freddie Prinze, Jr. says, "I never knew her breasts were so ample." Yuh-huh, Freddie. You just keep on saying that and maybe it'll be true. Announcer guy on stage says, "Now in the spirit of Mother Teresa, what will be your contribution to your community and the world at large?" Mother Teresa obviously has nothing to do with anything. Williamson thought he'd just throw her in there for compare-and-contrast. While SMG is glittering onstage and blathering on a decidedly un-Teresan way, Freddie asks poor plain Jennifer Love Hewitt if she's the one who feeds her this shit. From which we learn that Helen is an empty-headed bimbo who gets all the undeserved glory and prizes, while makeup-free JLH works hard for her money. Ryan Phillippe hollers, "Work it babe!" and checks out Helen glamming it up onstage. Woo hoo! SMG wins, and she gets a tin crown. From above, Ryan Phillippe does some combination acting/exposition, shouting, "Woo hoo! That's my girlfriend!"
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Cut to a party with lots of guests in stupid fish hats. JLH and SMG mingle, and SMG asks how her hair looks. JLH says it's hurricane-proof. "Hey," says SMG, "it's all about the hair. Don't you forget that. Especially when you become some big hotshot lawyer. Those professional women types think it's all about brains and ability, and completely forget about the 'do."
Okay, look, Williamson -- we get it. Helen uses hairspray. She deserves to die in this horror movie you are writing, because she is blonde, ambitious, and not so smart. We freaking get it. The dark-haired, smart girls will inherit the earth and the blonde bimbos will be slaughtered. You're the avenging angel of high-school pain.
Enter Mrs. Pete Sampras, also known as Bridgette Wilson. She's blonde, too, and bitchy, and makes some kind of fish joke. Does this chick's name creep anybody else out? For me it too easily retrieves repressed memories of Sylvester Stallone's mid-eighties wife, the Amazon Brigitte Nielsen. Anybody else remember her? Okay, hm. Just me then. Anyway, what you need to know from this scene is that Helen has a sister, she's mean, her name is Elsa, and since she's showcased here in the Parade of Future Victims, she's gonna die die die.
A nice waiter boy comes up to JLH, and he offers her a free drink. Oh look it's Johnny Galecki, playing "Max." He was David on Roseanne for nearly ever, and as such, he's practically part of the Buffy family, seeing as how Glenn Quinn was another important boinker of the Conners sisters. And any friend of a Buffy cast member is a friend of ours -- Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt excepted, of course.
Ryan Phillippe swoops in to ruin Max's hit on Julie. I loves me some Ryan Phillippe, another friend of the family. In addition to co-starring with SMG in their non-magnum un-opus, Cruel Intentions, Ryan is best friends with our beloved Seth Green and is married to the spectacular Reese Witherspoon. In fact, I dub thee WitherSpouse, because I'm not going to spend this whole recap trying to figure out how many Ps and Ls there are in Phillippe. Blah blah, WitherSpouse's Barry is a spoiled brat. He's drunk and not nice, and he's gonna die die die. WitherSpouse grabs the drink that Max was just offering Julie and toasts "immature adolescent decadence," and I wonder if Williamson wouldn't rather be a communist, seeing as how he's got such a thing against the grasping petit bourgeois brat kids in America. Max and WitherSpouse scuffle over nothing until Freddie Prinze, Jr. arrives to break up the fight and ruin my fun. To distract WitherSpouse, who is drunk and out of control, SMG gropes him and says, "Hey, let's beam down to Dawson's Beach." Wow, that Dawson Leary kid has quite the property development biz going. He's got a creek and a beach, and he's what, only 14? Anyway, the Croaker Queen in her tin crown takes off with WitherSpouse, and stupid JLH grabs stupid FPJ and they depart. On her way out, JLH gives Max an "I'm sorry we're such awful people" look.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
So, the teen team take off, and we see them driving recklessly down a curvy mountain road. The captions inform us that the accompanying song is Offspring's song, "D.U.I." Wow, that was subtlety flying by on its way to dinner.
The kids hit Dawson's Beach, and Kevin Williamson goes back to his first script for Scream. Using the cut-and-paste function, he borrows an unused scene where the characters talk about American folktales and bad men with hooks. The highlight of this scene is the recognition that horror movies are modern-day morality tales where the youthful characters are punished for their sexuality. So, Williamson, this movie is pretty much the sell-out of all time, huh? Man, this guy knows exactly what he's tripe he's writing and he goes ahead and writes it anyway. This movie sucks. Why? Because this movie is derivative, underplotted, and predicated on thrilling the audience with the death of amoral characters who need be punished for their sins. Big FUCKING yawn. Anyway, from here on out I'm gonna call the seven deadly sins as I see 'em. When we get to seven, you'll know that Williamson is about to unleash his plagues and furies upon the earth.
On screen, SMG ignores my rant and crawls all over WitherSpouse. She's gonna be an actress and he's gonna be a football player, and they'll live richly and happily ever after. So it's established for the umpteenth time that the blond pair are vapid and, oh, covetous! And Williamson shall smite them!
Everybody takes to their respective corners for what Spike would call a good snog and -- ooh, lust! We're already up to two! After a long musical make-out interlude, the Croaker Queen takes the keys away from drunken WitherSpouse and throws them to Freddie's stupid responsible Ray. I think stupid Ray just lost his virginity to stupid Julie, so they smile stupidly at each other. WitherSpouse declares the Happy Music of We're Driving Merrily Along to be "crap" and switches the station to the Angry Music of Plot Twist Ahead. He's leaning out the sunroof, he's screaming, he's shouting "waaaatch owwwwt." Freddie doesn't watch out, and they hit a guy.
"Maybe it was a dog," says Freddie, stupidly. "Jesus Christ, my fuckin' car!" says WitherSpouse. Okay, so they find the not-very-dead guy, and then they have the obligatory scene where they decide what to do, and decide to do the wrong thing. I hate this scene in movies and soaps. I'm always screaming at the screen, "Just call the cops! Just 'fess up and you'll be fine." But they never do, and this is because the stupid writer is trying to build tension. Wouldn't it be a lot more dramatic if they actually did the right thing, got their juvenile asses convicted, did the time for making a youthful mistake, and then got stalked by the psycho killer? Now that would suck.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
In the midst of this argument, JLH is feeling deep guilty feelings, WitherSpouse is picking some of the scenery out of his teeth, and SMG is doing the best acting job of the bunch. She's got a nice, shocked, overwhelmed vibe going. A car approaches and the girls whirl about, frightened. Ooh! It's Max in the car. Hi, Max. Max slows down to leer at Julie. She covers for the gang, saying that they are stopped because drunk WitherSpouse is barfing all over the place. "We're trying to keep it out of the new car." Max notices that said new car is already wrecked and Julie says, "Yeah, don't drink and drive." Because if you do, you horrible wicked children, you will face serious consequences. Like being hooked to death by a serial killer. Max drives away, and the bad immoral children have decided not to call the cops, so they stick the not-very-dead guy in the trunk of WitherSpouse's BMW. They head down to the docks, to protect their dreams of Guiding Light and law school and quarterbacking the Dallas Cowboys, and haul the not-very-dead guy to the water's edge.
Julie still wants to put the brakes on this little death fiesta, because she's the good girl. Helen just wants this to be over, while WitherSpouse is hoping a shark will eat up the body and eradicate the evidence. Freddie is attempting to look perturbed and failing. "It's not too late," shrieks Julie. "You, shut up, just shut up!" hollers WitherSpouse. Okay, that's totally anger, so we're up to three deadly sins.
"Oh, Christ, I'll do it," interjects Helen, quite enthusiastic in her cover-up of vehicular manslaughter. As she and WitherSpouse lean down to shove the body in the water, the not-very-dead guy opens his eyes and grabs for the Croaker Queen. The teen team bop him on the head with a flashlight or two and dump him in the drink. "He's got my crown!" Helen shrieks, afraid of losing her the token of her achievement. I'm gonna mark that down as pride to push us toward our goal. (Still, Helen probably gets props for recognizing that a guy washing ashore with her crown in his cold dead hands will do no good for their cause.) WitherSpouse dives into the murky green water to retrieve his girlfriend's precious prize. He finds the not-very-dead guy hanging in a kelp bed and pries the crown from the not-very-dead guy's not very cold dead hand. Predictably -- which is not to say I don't scream my ass off -- the not-very-dead guy's eyes pop open and scare the heck out of Witherspouse and me.
I'm going to interrupt this thrilling recap to say PAN N' FUCKING SCAN FUCKING SUCKS. Okay, back to thrilling recap.
WitherSpouse is all traumatized, so he makes everybody swear to take this secret to their graves, which is not at all foreshadowy, no, not a bit. "We will never ever, under any circumstances known to God, speak about this again. Is that clear?!" And here is my favorite line in this movie: "This is now merely a future therapy bill! Agreed?" He screams some more, and then the four tear off in the BMW. As we hear screeching tires offscreen, the camera pushes forward to a gold coin necklace thing nestled in a fish net on the dock. Hmm.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Okay, so we're now informed it's A Year Later. We're at Julie's school. Julie is depressed. How do I know? Because her roommate says she is pale and pasty and looks like death. "Move your tired, ugly ass, girl.Get your white-as-death, chalky corpse in the car, now.You're going home for the summer and you're going to get a tan on that pasty pale tail of yours..." Could you mention death a few more times?
Julie goes home. Julie's mom: "What is wrong? I mean you look like death." Thanks, Williamson.
Okay, more melancholy and the infinite sadness. Mom brings mail. No stamp, no postmark. It is obviously a missive of evil. Yeah, yeah, he knows what she did last summer.
Night falls, Julie looks mournful, the sun rises on a brand new day, and yay, there's my old car, the nasty piece of crap. Julie drives a mid-eighties Dodge Aries LE, just like the first car I ever had, handed down to me by my kindly parents. One of many such hand-me-down cars totaled by my brother. I'm pretty sure he secretly believes that if he repeatedly wrecks the sensible, ugly American cars my parents lend him, Mom and Dad will eventually break down and buy him a Jaguar. Anyway, Julie is in town, visiting what may be the sorriest-looking department store ever. Capeside sucks. Julie approaches Helen's bitchy sister Elsa, looking for Helen's New York number. "Fact-check, Julie. Helen doesn't have a New York number. If you are looking for Helen, I suggest you try women's fragrances, ten feet to your left." Helen's working in Capeside, at the department store, because New York didn't work out. Good lord, whoever costumed this movie must be the Fashion Nazi's uglier twin sister. SMG is wearing a horrific headband, mid-nineties Madonna wear, ugly-ass ash blonde extensions, and too much make-up. Julie shows her the IKWYDLS note, and Helen whispers, "But we were so careful." Again, it's all about sex: go ahead and do it, and be as careful as you can, but someday you're gonna hafta pay. Elsa stands in the corner, watching, and the director turns his camera on her, for a long, lingering shot, which tells us, the audience, that Elsa Could Be The Killer.
Helen and Julie go see WitherSpouse, and on the way we learn that he and MiniMadonna have broken up. WitherSpouse pretends to be unimpressed with the note. Helen says, "We need help." WitherSpouse replies with a trademark sneer, "Yeah, I'll say. You two look like shit run over twice." SMG tells him he's a prick. There's some more fighting until Julie reports that the name of their until-now-nameless victim is David Egan. She knows this because she read the newspaper reports that came out after last summer's hit-and-drown. David Egan washed ashore a few weeks later. At this point WitherSpouse asks, for no apparent reason, "What about Ray?" Oh, crap, do we have to drag Freddie back into this? Can't we just let him go ruin somebody else's stupid movie? Anyway, it's unclear what WitherSpouse thinks Ray has to do with anything ["well, Ray was driving when they hit the guy, so that's probably why" -- Sars], but he suggests Max as a possible note-sender, so they go find him in a fish market, hauling crabs.