I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) is directed by Danny Cannon and features a screenplay from Trey Callaway. It stars Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Brandy Norwood, Mekhi Phifer, Matthew Settle, Muse Watson, Jennifer Esposito, Jeffrey Combs, Bill Cobbs, Jack Black, and John Hawkes. This sequel to 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer takes place one year later, and once again follows Julie James (Hewitt), now living the college life with her new best friend, Karla (Norwood). After she wins a 4th of July trip to the Bahamas, Ray (Prinze Jr.) refuses to accompany her, which puts a strain on their relationship. Upon arriving at the resort, it quickly becomes clear that this was all a ploy by a past adversary she believed to be dead. With a hurricane fast approaching, Julie and her friends find themselves trapped. When Ray sets out to rescue them, they’re forced to hold out for as long as they can, but not everyone is who they say they are, and danger could be lurking around every corner.

Hewitt and Prinze Jr. return to their characters with ease, and new additions such as Brandy and Phifer are welcome. The problem is that the script is atrocious. The relationship between Julie and Ray feels like a regression from where we left them previously. There’s nothing wrong with presenting their relationship as troubled, but there needs to be good reasons why this is the case. This script essentially has the two characters act like immature robots who don’t even make the slightest effort to understand one another. They argue, get angry, and walk away—behavior that feels like a far cry from how they acted in the first film. The script succeeds in highlighting how both characters have changed, but it’s relegated to a single scene, and the implications of these changes don’t ultimately affect how they behave. 

It’s clear that the film has a larger budget than the original, but I suspect most of that money was used to pay its comparatively star-studded cast. It’s fun to see actors such as Jack Black, Jennifer Esposito, and John Hawkes, but their characters are either comically over-the-top, underused, or so generic that they fail to leave any kind of impression. Mekhi Phifer is fun as Karla’s testosterone-fueled boyfriend, Tyrell, but he’s essentially just the more stereotypical black version of Ryan Phillippe’s character from the first movie. The only real standout characters are Karla and Jeffery Combs’ creepy resort manager character. Brandy provides a ton of light comedic relief while Combs delivers most of the darker-edged jokes. 

Along with the majority of the characters being total failures, the script is also riddled with plot holes and inconsistent logic. For God’s sake, one of the first scenes in the film shows Julie attending summer college classes. The thing is, her entire auditorium is filled to the brim, and when she goes outside, the campus is swarmed with fellow students. No college campus on Earth is that busy during the summer, so I couldn’t help but laugh. The filmmakers even make the cardinal sin of having a six-shot revolver fire 8 times without a reload. Do I even need to mention the detail that Ray takes a fishing boat from New England to the Bahamas in the middle of a hurricane? Yeah, you read that correctly. And yes, it’s as absurd as it sounds. 

Overall, this is an uninspiring, creatively bankrupt sequel that fails to advance the characters or lore in any interesting ways. The script is problematic in nearly every aspect, including the fact that nothing significant happens until the last 15 minutes of the film. It’s basically just a bunch of stupid characters walking down dark hallways as they say dumb things and generally act like robots, especially the Julie James character. There’s almost nothing about the film that I can recommend beyond maybe Brandy as Julie’s best friend and Jack Black as a dreadlock-sporting stoner. If you enjoy the first film, you’re better off pretending this movie doesn’t exist. D