Coming up alongside the smarmy self-aware SCREAM series was the equally absurd but more entertaining I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER TRILOGY, on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER: A quartet of Southport high school seniors – aspiring lawyer Julie (PARTY OF FIVE's Jennifer Love Hewitt), aspiring actress Helen (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER's Sarah Michelle Gellar), her jock boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillipe, CRUEL INTENTIONS), and Julie's aspiring writer boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr., SHE'S ALL THAT) are celebrating the 4th of July on the beach telling ghost stories. On the way back, a bit of reckless driving results in a roadside casualty. Worried that no one will believe it was an accident and concerned about their futures, the four decide to dump the body in the ocean and let the currents deal with it. Unfortunately, they do not realize that the man is not quite dead until they have dragged him to the docks and shoved him into the water; whereupon the four vow to take the secret to their graves. A year later, Julie's college performance is suffering and she reluctantly returns home for the 4th of July to discover the titular anonymous note waiting for her. She also discovers that the incident has also affected her estranged friends. Helen could not cut it in New York and is now working the cosmetics counter at her parents shop, Barry also spends his vacation home from college drunk, and Ray has been working on a fishing boat. The other three try to downplay Julie's fears until someone tries to run Barry down with his own car, cuts up outgoing beauty queen Helen's hair in her sleep, and leaves a body in the trunk of Julie's car. Suspects include Julie's other would be suitor Max (ROSEANNE's Johnny Galecki), Helen's older sister Elsa (Bridgette Wilson, MORTAL KOMBAT), and the dead man's unstable sister Missy Egan (Anne Heche of Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO remake); however, someone in a rain slicker wielding a hook starts narrowing down the list before going after the Julie and her friends.

Scripted by Kevin Williamson who had an instant hit with Wes Craven's SCREAM – the film went into production before that film's release but Williamson's script had been making the rounds for some time and was known in the industry – from a novel by young adult thriller author Lois Duncan (SUMMER OF FEAR), I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is a more straightforward and serious work than Craven's obnoxiously recursive film; so much so that Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker mined it for an equal amount of material as the Craven film for their parody SCARY MOVIE. Using the urban legend of "the hook" as a jump-off point, the film notes the variations of the story and the interpretations of it, including a warning of the dangers of premarital sex and a metaphor for castration (both of which have resonance with a throwaway bit involving a photograph of Julie's absent, possibly dead father and her inability of the four main characters to continue their relationships in the aftermath of the accident). A box office hit upon release, the film does deliver the jump scares but it is actually the better-plotted film, and Irish director Jim Gillespie's evoking of a fishing village coastal atmosphere gives the film a different atmosphere from the suburban-set Craven film, and the kills are rather restrained gore-wise (a few bits of effective prosthetic effects are the work of THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD's Matthew Mungle) but still brutal (the stalk and kill sequence set in the general store brings to mind the antique store sequence of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE). After an effective two thirds, the final act does suddenly veer into slasher movie bad decision-making before a reasonably tense climax aboard a fishing boat and the nonsensical usual jump scare ending. Philippe and Gellar fare best while Prinze is bland and Hewitt is better at full-blown hysterics than drama (her big emotional moment is laughable).

I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER: Still haunted by the events of the first film, Julie would rather stay on campus for the 4th of July than return home. She is still having nightmares and seeing the hook-handed fisherman everywhere she turns. When her roommate Karla (MOESHA's Brandy) wins a trip for four to the Bahamian island of Tower Bay, they are joined by Karla's boyfriend Ty (Mekhi Phifer, the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake) and handsome Will (GOSSIP GIRL's Matthew Settle) when Ray claims he cannot get away from work. Ray actually plans to surprise Julie with a proposal only to discover that the fisherman is indeed still alive when he and his pal (John Hawkes, IDENTITY) are ambushed on the road. Escaping from the hospital, an injured Ray tries to catch up with Julie and her friends; however, they have arrived on Tower Bay to discover that summer is the winter in the Bahamas and July 4th is the start of storm season. The quartet, hotel keeper Brooks (Jeffrey Combs, RE-ANIMATOR) and his minimally-trained off-season staff – including bartender Nancy (Jennifer Esposito, DRACULA 2000), suspicious porter Estes (Bill Cobbs, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS), and the island's white Rastafarian drug supplier Titus (an uncredited Jack Black) – hunker down for a hurricane unaware that there is a killer in their midst.

Overall more absurd than the first film, with some borrowings from SCREAM – indeed, this film more so than the first has the look and feel of one of Dimension Films' teen horror films – I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER manages to be the more entertaining film even if it is often more clunky than clever with a ludicrous backstory for the original film's killer, a laughable name game twist, and a shock ending that manages to even dumber than the original. Performances are decent overall, so much so that one actually feels sorry for the actors who have to deliver some of the script's dialogue howlers. JUDGE DREDD director Danny Cannon and cinematographer Vernon Layton (SEED OF CHUCKY) give the film a handsomer look, the scoring of John Frizzell (ALIEN: RESURRECTION) may be more on-the-nose than John Debney's accompaniment to the original but is still effective, but the compilation soundtrack-ready selection of songs is infinitely superior to the first film (thankfully the ending credits utilize Gorecki's "Lamb" for the bulk of the sequence and push Hewitt's own song "How Do I Deal" to the very end when most will have already tuned out).

Although a third film I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER was reportedly in development while the cast were doing press for the second film – with some preliminary poster artwork featuring Hewitt, Prinze, and Brandy – the film did not emerge until 2006 as a standalone entry from Sony's direct-to-DVD line. On July 4th 2005, a new set of Colorado ski resort town teenagers – aspiring photographer Amber (Brooke Nevin, INFESTATION), jock boyfriend Colby (FLASHPOINT's David Paetkau), American Idol hopeful Zoey (Torrey DeVitto, THE RITE), and prankster Roger (Seth Packard) – are involved in a prank gone wrong involving the urban legend of the fisherman that results in the accidental death of popular local kid P.J. (Clayton Taylor, ICE SPIDERS). Worried about their chances of getting out of the dead-end town, they vow to take the secret to their graves, letting the locals – including P.J.'s sheriff father (Michael Flynn, CHOKE CANYON) and his cousin Lance (Ben Easter) – think that a killer is on the loose. A year later, the friends have become estranged, with Amber only then discovering that Colby's L.A. internship did not work out and he has been back for some time working as a lifeguard at the local pool, Roger has become a recluse living up in the mountains repairing the ski-lifts, and Zoey has come to resent her putting off repeated invitations to see her band's gigs. When Amber receives a threatening text – yes, now the killer is using current technology – Colby and Zoey suspect unstable Roger, but when the fisherman starts trying to kill them, they look further afield for their list of suspects including the sheriff, Lance, and even seemingly nice Deputy Hafner (YELLOWSTONE's K.C. Clyde) who keeps offering a listening ear to Amber to unburden herself.
The pretty much universally-panned conclusion to the series, I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER may have worn out its welcome for some slasher fans by virtue of its title alone, but there's plenty more wrong with it than that. Things start out well enough, with the question raised early among the four as to whether P.J.'s death really was a freak accident (before promptly abandoning it) as well as an attempt to turn the tables on a suspect with a "we know what you did" note of their own. After a relatively diverting first and second act, the third act has the characters reverting to stupidity, putting themselves in danger, hooking up, and splitting up before the dumbest twist yet which completely negates the whodunit aspect of the story. It is difficult to tell if the filmmakers were attempting to vary the formula a bit or if the writing was simply sloppy in that all four of the principals seem to embody different aspects of the first film's character archetypes inconsistently with final girl Amber coming across as increasingly unlikable compared to the other three inevitable victims: the film has it at first that the two guys take the greater blame for the prank gone wrong only to suggest in throwaway dialogue that the scheme actually originated with the two female characters and then does nothing with that revelation. If the final scare seems less insulting than the previous two, it may be because the audience could at least hope that the final girl would not turn up in another sequel. The second feature film of director Sylvain White (STOMP THE YARD), I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is awash in ugly, desaturated photography, jittery handheld camerawork, and every filmmaking trick in the book used by 2000-era filmmakers from constant mood-destroying flash cuts and lens flare to Kyle Cooper-esque opening credits and quick edits that make the film look like a cheaper DTV title than something from a major studio's low budget line. While there is something perverse about setting a slasher film in a ski resort town in the middle of summer, the more absurd but entertaining slasher contemporary SHREDDER ultimately made better use of the slopes.

Released theatrically by Columbia Pictures, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER had requisite anamorphic DVD editions – with the first film getting a subsequent special edition with added commentary – while I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER went straight to DVD. The first two films also received Blu-ray releases from Sony in 2008 and 2009 respectively while the third film remained consigned to DVD (perhaps deservedly). 88 Films' press makes no mention of new transfers but the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.40:1 widescreen from the existing masters look quite good apart from a little noise in the fine horizontal strips of Settle's shirt during an early scene in the sequel. Despite a handful of genre offerings like CHRISTINE, Sony has been rather conservative in their UltraHD reissues of older titles, but the transfers on this set should suffice. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer of I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOUD DID LAST SUMMER on the other hand reveals just how ugly and grainy this shot on film, finished in HD video production really is. The first two films sport state-of-the-art Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes encoded in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and in Dolby ProLogic-compatible LPCM 2.0 stereo with busy rear channels aiding the film's respective evocations of a fishing town and a coming tropical storm. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 stereo tracks of the third film, on the other hand, are not quite so ambitious but serviceable for the budget, only really suffering in a handful of sequences like the opening where the ADR is really dodgy and the sync of the band performances during the climax (for which the actress is more to blame than the mixers). All three films have optional English HoH subtitles in which such British-isms like "tyre" seem odd for oh-so American films.

The disc of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER ports over the audio commentary by director Jim Gillespie (BILLIONAIRE RANSOM) & editor Steve Mirkovich (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA) in which the director reveals that he knew nothing about the source novel but discovered that nearly all of the females who auditioned for the film had read it and his desire to make a thriller rather than a slasher film. Of the cast, he reveals that he had to fight for Phillipe since the producer envisioned a six-foot jock for the role, that Gellar was cast during pre-production, auditioning on location in North Carolina (and the boon of casting her just before her BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER fame), as well as casting against type for Wilson in a part that was scripted as bespectacled, plain, and geeky. They also discuss matching Bodega Bay and Southport, North Carolina and the amount of work that goes into making a real fishing village actually look like a fishing village on film (including a marine coordinator to fill the dock backgrounds with moving boats). New to the set is an audio commentary by podcasters The Hysteria Continues who recall favorable reactions to the film upon release (a couple among them even enjoying it more than SCREAM), describing it as "the FRIDAY THE 13TH to SCREAM's HALLOWEEN" – while also noting the detractors to the second slasher film boom's labels of "Stridex horror" or "trendy horror" (noting that even the advertising favored labeling it as a thriller rather than a slasher) – and being "not afraid to take itself seriously and be a bit dumb." They note Gillespie's quoted allusions to Hitchcock and his desire not to be pigeonholed – although his two subsequent prominent credits have been the Dimension slasher VENOM and the recent D-TOX/EYE SEE YOU in which Sylvester Stallone is a detective in a rehab clinic with other law enforcement personnel being stalked by a killer – while Williamson enthusiastically-acknowledged his genre influences.

Gillespie also appears in a new interview "My Own Summer" (43:03) in which he recalls getting his start in Ireland on BBC and being told he did not have enough experience to direct a feature film even though he had already directed a television feature, so he set out to direct a short film as a calling card, the result being JOYRIDE – not to be confused with the John Dahl slasher – which he describes as the "world's smallest DIE HARD movie," and it was that film's screening at the Telluride Film Festival rather than the BBC that got him industry invites to Los Angeles where he got a job writing an outline for the first X-MEN movie, not getting to direct it but being able to do more networking and meeting Williamson who he hired to do a rewrite on a feature film script that went unproduced. Williamson remembered him and recommended him for I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. Although Gillespie notes that the film was greenlighted based on the script alone and needed no stars, he reveals that he did try to get Reese Witherspoon for the lead and that it was she who recommended Phillipe.

"He Knows What You Did" (15:25) is an interview with fisherman actor Muse Watson (PRISON BREAK) who recalls becoming smitten with acting, coming to Hollywood and working as a teamster and transportation coordinator before establishing his own industry truck rental company that allowed him to make money while waiting for the phone to ring. Of the film, he speaks favorably of his co-stars while also recalling the difficulty to conjuring the character and the sort of loss that would lead to killing. He also discusses the shooting, including the stunt work, and bursting the blood vessels in his eyes during part of the climax where he was suspended upside down. Gillespie's aforementioned short film JOYRIDE is included along with optional audio commentary by director Jim Gillespie (10:10) – both ported from the Sony release – along with the vintage making-of "Now I Know What You Did Last Summer" (27:04) in which producer Stokely Chaffin (FREDDY VS. JASON) recalls discovering the book, taking it to partner Erik Feig (THE HUNGER GAMES) and knowing about Williamson through the SCREAM script which had been making the rounds, while Williamson himself discusses the changes he made the script, utilizing the hook urban legend, its variations, and the various interpretations of it. Also ported from the Sony release is the "Hush" music video (2:56), the Kula Shakar cover of the Billy Joe Royal song so prominently featured in the film's advertising, as well as the film's theatrical trailer (2:12).

I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER is accompanied by a new audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues in which they note that not only did Gillespie turn down the sequel but that sequel director Danny Cannon had originally turned down the first film. They are even more favorable of the sequel than the first film, noting that it is more like an eighties slasher film, likening it alternately as a "slasher version of SCOOBY DOO", a "nineties HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME", and the "FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING of the nineties." They also reveal that the producers had actually commissioned two screenplays simultaneously, the one by Trey Callaway eventually used, and one by Stephen Gaghan (SYRIANA) set in New Orleans, as well as discussion of the original abandoned third film, and noting how different the soundtracks are between the two films a year apart. "He Still Knows What You Did" (11:59) is another interview with actor Watson in which he expresses his disappointment with the sequel's backstory but also speaks positively of the shooting experience, recalling a prank gone wrong on Hewitt and the prop master's revelation that the grave dirt he would be covered in would consist of crumbled cookies. A making-of featurette (5:39) has been ported over, but is more of a promo than an informative piece, as well as Hewitt's "How Do I Deal" music video (3:29), and the theatrical trailer (2:00).

Perhaps undeservedly, I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER gets two commentary track. The first with director White from the DVD release may grate with some viewers as he emphasizes surface details over story, noting his use of temp music in constructing sequences, coming up with a way to do the flash edits in-camera simply by starting and stopping the camera quickly (so that the shutter remains open and overexposes a few frames of film), noting the "cheesy horror movie style" he used for the opening sequence but not seeming to realize that the entire film looks no different. A lot of his discussion reveals just how much a seat-of-his-pants production this was, with a lot of comments about scenes and sequences that had to be figured out on location on the night of the shoot, and indirectly explaining some of the bad ADR by noting how bad the production sound was for the opening carnival scenes.

More informative is the audio commentary by film historians Dave Wain & Matty Budrewicz who use the film's retreading and riffing on sequences from the first film as an excuse to provide a quick overview of their own opinions and factoids for the first two films, and how an overview of "millennial teen terror" lead to this film by way of the various mutations and variations that happened in both slasher booms. They also reveal that White actually replaced Damon Santostefano (BRING IT ON: AGAIN!) two weeks before the shoot, and also note the career of screenwriter Michael Weiss who left a production position at Miramax where he had worked on SCREAM and other Dimension genre pics to become a screenwriter, writing genre pics for Nu Image like CROCODILE and OCTOPUS before a string of Sony Destination Films DTV sequels including THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT 2, HOSTEL: PART III, THE SCORPION KING 4, and JARHEAD 3 with his only non-sequel being the poorly-received JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH which along with the third MUMMY film was pretty much the end of Brendan Fraser's tenure as a leading man.