Harefooted Halloween: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

What I liked: The one sorta positive thing I can say about this piece is it does what any horror sequel should do, in some areas anyway.  They up the body count, crank the blood, dish out the sexiness, drug use is introduced and the setups are slightly more elaborate.  They also bring in new lead characters which would make sense since almost all of them died in the previous film.  Additionally, the backstory and lore is expanded on.  I mean it’s done in the laziest way possible but it’s here.

What I Didn’t Like: Jesus frick the villain’s plan is insanely elaborate.  I gotta go into spoilers for this so skip to the next section if you wanna be surprised by the bullshit.  *Spoilers* Turns out ol’ Ben Willis survived having his hand ripped off and chucked into the ocean at the end of the last film.  He and his son, Will Benson (get it?  Ben’s son?), hatch a scheme to finish the revenge plot by taking out Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt (The Tuxedo)) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr. (Summer Catch)), and boy oh boy you’re gonna love what they cooked up.  All Will has to do is get into Boston University, take the same classes as Julie and over the course of a year befriend her, gain her trust and hit on her pretty hard to show romantic interest.  Then behind the scenes orchestrate a fake radio contest where Julie and her friends win an all expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas.  Will and Ben want to bait their prey to a specific location that’s eventually revealed to have special significance (didn’t seem to matter the last time Ben went on a slaughter spree but whatever).  Now naturally Julie wants Ray to come along but he declines due to commitment issues.  Luckily Julie’s roommate, Karla (Brandy (Moesha)), invites Will along in Ray’s place (against Julie’s wishes by the way).  The hotel where they stay is located on a remote island only accessible by boat and the day they arrive is the last day of their regular season.  The next day, July 4^th, starts their off season which coincides with hurricane season and wouldn’t you know it, a storm is rolling in right on time.  All other guests staying at the resort flee the island leaving our four leads and five or six hotel staff.  Ben and Will knew this would happen so they could murder Julie and Ray in private.  Except Ray isn’t there.  Well, he feels bad about breaking Julie’s heart so he decides to surprise her and show up anyway (he plans on proposing).  Ben intervenes en route and attempts to kill Ray but he escapes and continues to make his way to the Bahamas.  At the hotel Will and/or Ben dispatch the remaining staff (can’t leave witnesses) and then work on the kids.  Boom, revenge achieved.  Simple, right?  Wrong!  What the fuck is the matter with these assholes?!  Listen, Ben’s goal is to kill Julie and Ray, he can do that anytime anywhere.  The hoax radio contest, the luring of the victims to a faraway isolated hotel (the connection is Ben worked there in the past and murdered his wife in the honeymoon suite), the needless killing of the entire resort staff and Julie’s friends (some are setup to be kinda jerky but they’re all still innocent people), the timing of the events to occur on July 4^th (the date when Ben was run over in the previous film), it’s all completely unnecessary.  The only part I can see working is Will sneaking his way into Julie’s inner circle only to turn on her but he makes the task way harder on himself than he needs to.  Man these two dickheads needed to pause for a sec and reevaluate their whole murder plot.  In this case less definitely would’ve been more.

Overall Impressions: I think they were going for a The Shining vibe with our protagonists trapped in a minimally staffed hotel cut off from the rest of the world.  The place has a dark history of homicide that took place in Room 2XX and someone from the outside attempts to travel to the island to save the day (Ray).  Julie even wields an ax towards the end.  It’s winked at pretty damn hard and I don’t think that did it any favors.

In my opinion this is, uh, not a good movie.  Everything about it is irritating and none of it makes a lick of sense.  It’s not the worst time when you’re in it but even taking a half step back you quickly realize this is a dumb fuckin’ picture.  And I’m not the first to point this out but the title alone is nonsensical.  This takes place a year after the events of the first film which means they plowed into Ben Willis with their Beemer two summers ago, not last summer.