The Long Memory of a Fisherman

It's easy to pooh-pooh jump scares, to call a horror movie composed of little else a trite failure. But when I see a movie that completely bungles each and every jump scare, like 1998's I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, I must admit there's some skill in it. We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer follows on from I Know What You Did Last Summer, in which the killer knows the teenagers almost killed him last summer. It's hard to forget that sort of thing so the Fisherman (as he's called because he's a fisherman) is still trying to kill Jennifer Love Hewitt in the second film. Also, her new friend played by Brandy.

Somehow, the combination of sound effects, editing, music, and shot composition come together in totally toothless shock moments. Every swing is a miss. Jennifer Love Hewitt's at home alone when she hears a funny noise, she creeps up slowly to her closet where someone is plainly inside going through her clothes, and instead of saying, "Who's there?" she continues to creep up until Brandy pops out and they both scream. But we don't all scream. We cannot share in the terror feigned by these pretty young actresses.

Then it's off to the Bahamas for our young heroines as they seemingly win a radio contest--I say seemingly because the killer has played a trick on them in one of the film's halfway clever moments which I won't completely spoil. It turns out it's the off-season so there are no other tourists and the staff at the hotel are reduced to five while all the exteriors conveniently look like they could've been filmed in California. Cheap sets and minimal cast add up to a very low budget, or a budget that went towards certain unmentioned perks. But that minimal cast includes Jack Black in an early role and none other than Jeffrey Combs as the hotel manager. What a trooper. In the grand schlock horror tradition of established great performers in thankless minor roles, he milks all he can from his exasperated lines about hysterical tourists imagining they've seen corpses.

In the end, Freddie Prinze Jr. personally pilots a boat through a hurricane to save Jennifer Love Hewitt but can even Kanan Jarris save her from a killer who can mysteriously appear right behind someone without being seen by the people talking to him? My favourite part is when the killer ties Jennifer Love Hewitt's tanning booth shut and the solution to this contrived by one of the other teens is to pick up a dumbbell and hit the top of the tanning booth. There's the sound effect of broken glass and somehow the thing swings open. It feels like the filmmakers' disinterest in logic extends to a fundamental contempt for physics and cause and effect.

I wonder if I'll remember this movie next summer.