I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

 "A toast. To us, to our last summer of immature, adolescent decadence.

I hadn't seen this film since uni, until now, and that's twenty years and change ago. Having seen it today, though... it's quite good. And much maligned, I think, by people unfairly expecting it to be something that it's not. Because, well... this is a script by Kevin Williamson and, while there's certainly wit in the script, it's a straight-up slasher and certainly no Scream.

But we need to appreciate how this came about- after Scream was a massive hit, an older script from Williamson, adapting a novel, was finally acted upon and we have this film to show for it. And, well, it works. There's lots of suspense and scares, which matters. There isn't a huge amount of gore, but why is that a problem? Horror films should be suspenseful, above all, and a focus on the gore of the violence itself will always detract from that. The film's restraint and, yes, the relatively limited number of killings, is no bad thing.

Then there are the four main central members of the cast. Sarah Michelle Gellar stands out, but all four of them are excellent. We're kept very much engaged throughout in terms of both suspense and character.

Perhaps the resolution isn't as good as it could be, as we don't learn about Egan's dead girlfriend until a fair way in the film, about her father until later, but it works. I'm a little confused as to why the killer should murder extra victims who didn't try to kill him last summer, admittedly, but we can handwave that. I tend to suspect this film is unfairly dismissed for not being a postmodern riff on the genre, something it isn't trying to be. Overall, this is a decent if workmanlike slasher movie.