‘This island didn’t have a murder rate until you people showed up…’
Sending the cast of a long running TV show off on holiday is usually a sure sign that the writers are running out of ideas. Scrubs did it. Friends did it. Everyone succumbs to it eventually. To do this in only the second film of a potential long running franchise is surely a bad sign, however. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer sends its cast off to The Bahamas and the result is a truly terrible sequel to a film that wasn’t all that great to begin with…
Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) return, but now their relationship has become strained. The former is attending summer classes at Boston University, while the latter has stayed behind in Southport to become the most handsome and fresh faced fisherman who ever did scour the ocean blue. When Julie and her roommate, Karla (Brandy), win a trip to The Bahamas through a competition on college radio, Julie initially asks Ray to join her. When he doesn’t show up, she reluctantly agrees to give his ticket up to local heartthrob, Will (Matthew Settle), with Karla’s new boyfriend Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) taking the final ticket. Upon arrival, they are greeted with the news that storm season is about to begin, but they decide to stick around anyway (the first of many preposterous decisions included in Trey Callaway’s excretable screenplay). Against the backdrop of this, Julie is suffering from flashbacks of the events of the first movie, and a hooded killer may or may not be stalking the island. Even more frightening, however, is the appearance of Jack Black, inexplicably sporting dreadlocks, and delivering a truly smelly performance as the supposed comic relief. This makes for a tonally uneven film that aims for the same self-referential horror-comedy as the Scream franchise, but falls woefully short.
British director Danny Cannon was at the helm for this one and it is telling that he only produced two more feature films after this one despite the fact that I Still Know… was a box office success. The direction here is flat and uninspired. It is Callaway’s screenplay that really stinks the place out, however. The inclusion of Bill Cobbs (a fine actor) as a Magical Negro archetype who bizarrely performs a benevolent voodoo ritual in the third act is truly baffling, as is the final reveal, which lands with a wet fart rather than a bang. Horror legend Jeffrey Combs as a misanthropic hotel manager, and a spirited performance from Love Hewitt are the only bright spots here in what is an otherwise complete chore of a movie.
I keep threatening to write a book chronicling the 50 worst horror sequels of all time. If and when I ever get around to that prestigious task, this monstrosity will surely feature prominently – a franchise killer and a disaster that is almost totally without merit.
