I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

After the success of Scream, scriptwriter Kevin Williamson wrote another horror screenplay, the disappointing I Know What You Did Last Summer. A straightforward teen slasher flick, it was hampered by appalling direction from a novice who evidently had no idea how a horror film should be put together.

Despite the quality of the film, it still raked in scads of cash from undemanding teenage audiences, and hence this sequel. Even given that Danny Cannon is a marginally superior director, the bog-standard script teamed with a rebake of the original's chop-and-cleavage formula give no real surprises or fear.

The plot isn't worth mentioning, suffice to say that it machinates a situation where our heroes are cut off from civilisation with a nutter with a hook out to kill them. Again. Basically, the film doesn't make sense, the characters act like they've lost their brains in the shower, and the attempt to make the villian an ominous presence like Halloween's Michael Myers just doesn't work. Still, Jennifer Love Hewitt looks nice.

As you'd expect for a modern film, the 2.35:1 anamorphically-enhanced image looks excellent. Detail is high without grain, shadows reveal as many of their secrets as the cinematography wishes them to, and colour is natural and well-saturated. There are no film artifacts or MPEG problems to be seen.

Like the original, the sequel was shot in Panavision, so a pan-and-scan transfer is guaranteed to cut off nearly half the picture and look horrible, so Columbia have only included the widescreen version on this disc. If you want a full-screen version for whatever reason, you'll have to buy the dual-layer Region 1 disc.

A warning: if you haven't got a surround system, or one capable of decoding Dolby Digital, don't listen to this disc in a store, or you'll be scrabbling for your wallet! The soundtrack is extremely dynamic, with very aggressive use of the split surround channels and a lot of bass from all speakers. Just listen to the first minute of the opening credits and you'll see what I'm talking about.

This soundtrack will test your system thoroughly, as there is some dialogue that's quite difficult to make out over the music unless your equipment is capable of presenting it clearly and is well configured (preferably with a sound level meter).

You've heard the score in every B-grade horror ever produced: the ominous building chords, the scratchy violins mimicking scuttling rats, the loud dynamic stabs. Of course, being a Modern Horror Film, you also get the pop songs every ten minutes (gotta get those CD soundtrack sales!). The score is well recorded, and spreads itself around the room effectively, but is no classic!

The details on the packaging for the subtitles and language options are completely wrong. I am noticing this happening so often that from now on I will be comparing the packaging with the actual disc and updating DVD.net's details. Columbia, take note; this is not good enough!!

We get the usual filmographies I expect from Columbia, plus the 'annoying advert disguised as a behind-the-scenes featurette' (which tells us nothing of value whatsoever), a teaser trailer plus the US theatrical trailer, and Hewitt's fluffy music video, "How Do I Deal". Not particularly exciting, but this cynical money grab of a film doesn't really deserve more.

Another very well presented disc, which sadly contains a brainless, nonsensical film. It's a pity that the flashier a disc looks and sounds, the worse the actual content is, but I don't see the situation changing for a while yet.

I would suggest that instead of buying this DVD, the reader checks out classic horror films like Psycho, Halloween or Night of the Living Dead. These are films that made far more impact with far less resources, and didn't resort to unnecessarily graphic and cruel violence as this does. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against violence in films at all (hell, I own Straw Dogs and Dawn of the Dead!), but I do expect it to be used to support the story, not to supplant it.