Director: Jim Gillespie

I know what Kevin Williamson did last summer. He wrote a screenplay that embraced everything he loved about the slasher films he saw during his formative years, namely Friday the 13th, "the new and improved Friday the 13th!" as he enthused in Fangoria #160. Well, he was half right.

Based on Lois Duncan's 1970s novel for teenagers, I Know What You Did Last Summer has the same strengths and weaknesses as its older sibling Scream. In the hands of virgin feature director Jim Gillespie, and perhaps due to self-censorship, this newer film lacks the confident zeal of Wes Craven's box-office hit. I Know What You Did Last Summer is less concerned about celebrating 'slice and dice' cinema and more geared towards resurrecting mouldy stereotypes, which it does with varying degrees of success.

Set and filmed in the sea-side town of Southport, North Carolina (Williamson's home state), I Know What You Did Last Summer begins by thrusting its four main characters into a moral dilemma. While cruising home on a remote coastal road after a local beauty pageant, the driver Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr) accidentally ploughs the borrowed BMW into a dark stranger, knocking him – and his face, it seems – for six. Determined to do the right thing, Ray's girlfriend Julie (Party of Five's Jennifer Love Hewitt) insists that they take the man to hospital. She is out-voted not only by her boyfriend, but also another young couple Barry (Ryan Phillipe) and pageant queen Helen (Emmy Award winner Sarah Michelle Geller) after the injured man is rather hastily declared dead. Even worse than their powers of observation is their disposal of the 'corpse' in the bay, thus setting in motion a revenge-style killing spree which starts exactly one year later.

Lois Duncan's vehement public rejection of Williamson's version of her novel indicates just how much he tailored the story to suit his thriller sensibilities. Like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer has a well-devised plot which chugs along nicely, despite the contrivances needed to throw a scare, murder, or chase scene at the audience every ten minutes. I doubt that Duncan's outrage bothered anyone involved with the film, least of all the writer!

If Williamson's screenplay is ultimately crippled by its slasher leanings, the characterisation and dialogue makes amends. Few slasher movies can boast the sense of drama and verbal sparring offered by I Know What You Did Last Summer. It is this quality that has seen Hollywood go apeshit for Williamson's work – he has also sold a TV series to Fox, and might direct one of his own scripts according to a deal signed with Miramax's groovy genre arm, Dimension Films.

But, enough about Kevin bloody Williamson!

At times the movie is actually scary. Filmed by cinematographer Denis Crossan in a murky, washed-out haze, the picture's look heightens its menace. Even daytime shots look morbid. (Southport would be an ideal Innsmouth.) Resembling a spectre from a Ramsey Campbell story, our stalker wears a black water-proof slicker used by fisherman. When married to a deluge of other aquatic imagery – rain, clouds, ice, fish being gutted, trawling boats, gaffing hooks, crabs, pale corpses, red herrings (!) – the whole atmosphere becomes quite sinister, thereby maximising the well-orchestrated shocks; my favourite occurs in a clothing store. There's life in those cheap gimmicks yet, although the Dead Calm finale was shameless.

With a modicum of originality and genuine fear, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a minor revisionist footnote in the slasher film history books. Yet, as does Scream, it promises fresh blood for the genre. The incarnation of 'The Hook' myth was particularly impressive, and is the July 4th holiday a skewed reference to Independence Day? The Croaker Festival depicted in the movie is also informative; besides being a species of fish, a "croaker" is a prophet of evil, according to the Oxford. These touches add flavour to a potentially bland dish.

Let's hope that Williamson ditches his nostalgia trip soon and moves into less common terror-tory. Now that Hollywood has seen the dollar signs, horror films with generous budgets and quality scripts have a better chance than ever of shambling into mainstream cinemas.

[First published in Fatal Visions]