REVIEW DATE: 8:1:9:9
Unlike other reviewers (who shall remain nameless) I like slasher movies, dagnabit! Everything from there horrible, bloody death scenes, to there often abhorred twist endings. No real reason why, probably just my reptile brain needing to scratch an itch. And let me tell you, Faithful Reader, no writer on this Earth has been able to scratch that itch better the Kevin Williamson.
Kevin basically came straight out of left field with Scream, and then pulled a double play (at least with this critic) with Scream 2. In the 7th inning stretch between those two, however, he wrote this little picture, one which I had never seen until an influx of cash allowed me to bless myself with the gift of Cinimax.
Being true to form, Williamson kicks off things right from the start. On the way home from a 4th of July shindig, four high school graduates get in a hit-and-run accident. Knowing that this will ruin any chance at life that they might have the foursome dump the body in the ocean and swear never to tell anyone.
Fast-forward on year. The four drift apart and reunite in their hometown. Once there, they begin to receive letters with the movie's title written on them. Eventually, the sender, a quite homicidal man dressed in a rain slicker and carrying a meat hook, starts to chase our foursome down with obviously less-then-wholesome intent.
Just to make sure I run these sports metaphors into the ground, right where they belong, let's look at our starting line up. We have:
Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt): Nice girl, smart one, too. She wanted to be a lawyer, but the guilt caused by killing someone isn't known for helping your grades. They nose dive like Value-Jet and she even breaks up with her boy friend . . .
Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.): The Nice Guy of the cast, and the above-mentioned boyfriend. He has trouble excepting the break up throughout the rest of the movie.
Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar): Beauty queen and wannabe actress (and TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Despite the fact that she looks damn good in a swimsuit, the actress thing just doesn't work out, and she winds up working in the local department store.
Barry (Ryan Phillippe): The Stupid Jock. At the beginning he's Helen's girl with big dreams of play pro ball. Then his car becomes a murder weapon, which, as noted, doesn't help relationships that much.
We'll get to the bad stuff first: This is not Scream, so you can crush that dream right now. There are no "hip" references to slasher movies (well, maybe a few), no Weird Boy who knows everything there is to know about the horror section of the movie store, and no masked killer.
That's right, there is no mask here. Killer apparel for 1997 includes a simple, discreet, black rain slicker, with wide brimmed floppy hat. This combination completely obscures the killer's facial features with shadowplay. Thank you Jim Gillespie, the director. He may not be Wes Craven, but he keeps things well paced, even through the few slow spots the movie has during the middle.
Of course, like most things, his directing style has a down side. At least for people like me. Like I said, he isn't Wes Craven, so there are no horrible, gory, Drew Barrymore gutted-and-hung-from-a -tree deaths here. Though, for some, that could be music to your ears.
The characters, too, are not up to the caliber of Scream. For me, it was the Horror Trivia inspired humor that really made me like those characters. They weren't stupid; they knew parallels between their situation and stupid horror movies. At least, some of them did. Not so here. While there are no retched, Friday the 13th style clichés Williamson does go for the easy scare in a few scenes.
Don't worry, little lamb, you shouldn't doubt him. He comes through. While none of them seam to remember Psycho, Williamson does give us a group of characters unique in there own right. Going heavy on the pathos, both writer and actors make us care about these characters through the crushing guilt they feel, and how it has seemingly ruined there lives. Particularly good is Hewett, being the main character who gets the most screen time. You can really believe that this is eating at her, and I feel her pain. Plus she looks a lot better then that idiot jock, Barry.
Geller, though . . .ummmm. Buffy.
Sorry, had a mild testosterone attack. Can you blame me?
Hey, remember how, in Scream, Williamson fooled us into believing that a certain character was the killer, only shift his focus to someone else, thus causing us to go, Hey . . . maybe I was wrong. He's the one. Damn, he's good at that. Well, he still does that, though the outcome is a bit more pedestrian the in either Scream, considering he kills off Liev (Phantoms, Scream 2) Schreiber's character early on. A mistake, in my opinion. I mean, he just looks evil and he's good at it, his character, Max could have used more screen time, without a doubt.
I should stop my comparisons, I know. Not everything Williamson does has to be a Scream, just like not every thing Jeff Goldblume does has to be a Fly. Hell, I gave Scream 5 Gs, so you can't top that. But I think this movie is a fun, well made, scary movie. The cast is top notch, the writing is tight and the directing solid. IKWYDLS is defiantly good enough to stand outside of the rather large shadow cast by Scream's pantheon of rip-offs. And there are lots of those, man, let me tell ya. They seam to have sprung up over night, too.
They're like mini-malls, I swear.
RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
