I Know What This Movie Thinks Is Scary. Dream sequences. After ending its predecessor with one, I Still Know opens with another one, scaring Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) awake during a class at Generic Northeast Liberal Arts college, possibly the same one from Urban Legend (“There’s this girl in my class who was menaced by a hook man. No seriously, I swear it happened to someone I know!”). After we’re briefly introduced to nice guy cuckold Will Benson (Matthew Settle), Julie gets a surprise visit from Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) who has taken the drive from North Carolina to pick her up for their old hometown’s July 4th celebration. Julie, understandably doesn’t want to go back to the town where her friends were murdered and they almost died not even a year ago. But Ray is grumpy that she doesn’t understand his blue collar, down-home sensibilities and storms off, presumably to drive all the way back home. Phones, Ray, pick ‘em up.
Next, we get a cheap jump scare as roommate Carla (Brandy) is creeping around the house in the dark. Look, you’d think that, knowing your roommate was almost murdered and keeps a kitchen knife in her bed stand, that creeping around the closets at night would be mildly triggering. But Carla is an asshole anyway, as we’ll learn, in the long tradition of secondary I Know franchise players. Carla’s boyfriend, Tyrell (Mekhi Phiffer), is also a dingus and that’s about the full extent of his characterization. Out at a club, Julie thinks she sees Captain Philips up in the rafters but no one else is acknowledging the dude in full rain slicker so it’s probably a hallucination. And that’s where, once again, the movie comes close to stumbling into being interesting and/or suspenseful. Julie is clearly suffering from some form of PTSD, why not make it seem like she could possibly be the one picking up the hook? But nah, fuck it, that might limit the amount of high angle shots on JLH’s low cut wardrobe (the full extent of this film’s direction, mind you).
And now the movie goes full retard in assuming the audience is already on the short bus with it. Carla receives a phone call from a radio station telling her that if she can name the capital of Brazil, she’ll win a trip. Carla, who is basically a 13-year-old girl has no fucking clue. Julie, a poli-sci major, also doesn’t know.
Allow me to take a personal aside here. Sometimes horror movies stick with you, long after the credits have rolled. After seeing The Ring, I turned my TV to face the wall for a few nights. I’m still off put by the haunted bereavement of the Palmers from Lake Mungo. Thinking about the claustrophobic shots of The Descent give me tachycardia. When I was a young, naive, not-so-cynical child of 11, my father took me to see I Still Know in theaters (like I’ve said previously, these films are Puritanical compared to what I’d been watching to that point anyway). Off the top of my head I couldn’t name the capital of Brazil. But I knew it wasn’t Rio de Janeiro. It’s a fair guess, I suppose, as the most populous city in Brazil and likely the first one to come to mind. If you asked a Brazilian the capital of California they’d probably guess LA or San Fran (or maybe they wouldn’t, American public school systems am I right, folks?). But here’s where the film just assumes you’re as dumb as it is. With no Google to turn to, Julie pulls out a bag of coffee, which somehow makes them think of Rio (wuha?), to which the DJ exclaims they’ve won a trip to The Bahamas (WAT?!). Brazilia is the capital of Brazil. I know that now and will never forget it because even at 11 I knew something really fucking stupid happened. Sure, this is obviously the writer’s “clever” way of letting a few people in the audience know something isn’t right. But what the fuck? Why do you feel the need to make your characters idiots and, by proxy, call your audience mouth-breathers just for watching your shitty flick? On top of that, Julie makes the decision to bring along Will, Ben’s Son, which is the fulcrum of the killers’ entire plan. What if she brought along Ray as an attempt to repair their relationship? Oh wait, she DOES try this but Ray is a cranky baby man. This isn’t even a nitpicky thing, it’s a major plot point of a major motion picture and the screenwriter is sitting at his desk saying, “Ah fuck it, everyone is a moron.” Eat an arm-length, hook-shaped dick, movie.
Oh, and then we get a JLH song on the soundtrack playing over Ray being mopey cause farrrrrrrrrrrt. But actually he’s planning on proposing to her but for plot reasons turned down the vacation to the Bahamas but then changes his mind and instead of calling to say, “Sorry for being a Barry,” he and his friend (John Hawkes) decide to drive the 12+ hour trip up to surprise her as if she doesn’t have to make this decision right now and AAAAAAAAAAAAA. Strap in, IT GETS DUMBER.
On the drive up Ray and Meatpal come across a body in the road but it’s not a body it’s a mannequin dressed like Ben Willis and the real Ben Willis murders his friend and chases Ray down with a car leaving him for dead. It’s a good thing Ray left his Mapquest print out back at the docks so Fishsticks McGee would know exactly which route he was taking and when he’d get there. He probably used all that road construction equipment he had to set up a detour from the first movie to divert all the traffic to the 95, too. I hate this movie.
The cast arrives only to discover that hurricane season starts today and all that’s left is the off-season skeleton crew. You can probably hear me sighing and rubbing my temples through your computer screen at this point. This island in the Bahamas which is an obvious tourist destination, closes shop on Fourth of July weekend because, like clockwork, a hurricane will most definitely hit there at the same time every year and not let up for weeks or even months. Maybe this Caribbean island is in the Southern Hemisphere where summer is winter, toilets flush counter-clockwise, up is down and Rio is the capital of Brazil. Why not gift them a trip to a private island resort for rich fucks where each set of suites is separated by miles of dense jung-NO. STOP IT BRAIN. STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE MORE THAN ANYONE WHO HAD CREATIVE INVOLVEMENT.
The next 50 minutes are Ray’s zany adventures, jump scares, stupid red herrings and padding the body count. The running up of the murder score is even more egregious this time around because Fisherman Stevens murders the entire staff of the island when his target is only Julie. Side note: when he has the chance to kill Julie, sleeping in a tanning bed, he opts to instead lock her in and then teleport away. Even Benny doesn’t want to rob the audience of breasts. Thanks, Ben! Then, Julie repeats the “What are you waiting for, I’m right here!” monologue nearly verbatim because the original has gone down in the annals of cinema history and is worth doubling down on.
The final chases are neither suspenseful or scary and go on forever and a day. We’re spared more Julie James PI work with an info dump about how Ben Willis used to work on the island and murdered his wife and daughter, but I guess didn’t bother knocking off his son and then moved them to North Carolina where he had time to murder more people before being run down? If you can’t figure it out, don’t worry — neither could the writer.
Ray appears in the nick of time. Ben, Will’s Son does the usual “I’m the killer, time to flip the crazy switch and overact no TV and no beer make Ben, Will’s Son something something, by the way have you figured out my name yet?” Will, Ben’s Son gets stabbed by his father when Ray, a student of WWF tag team matches of the mid-80s moves out of the way of a fatal clothesline in the nick of time. Will, father of Ben, Will’s Son gets shot eight times by a gun that holds six in the chamber. The movie ends on what could only be yet another dream sequence.
And thus ends the Julie James saga. The sun comes out, ending the hurricane season, I guess and shitty Carla, boring Ray and dumb Julie made it through. I started writing this when the credits rolled and then, I shit you not, after the credits is a JLH music video.
The I Know duology is miserable. At its best it’s a barely serviceable slasher for babies with some decent acting (limited entirely to the first). At it’s worst it’s insulting and contemptuous towards the viewer. At it’s middling it’s JLH’s cleavage and, hey, that’s something for 11 year old me.
Fuck You, Movie
-If I decided to list every piece of idiot bullshit in this movie the review would have just been a video of a monkey drinking his own piss. It’s everything. All the time.
-During JLH’s karaoke (and/or subtle plug for her failed singing career), the words “I STILL KNOW” come up on the karaoke screen. Only Julie sees it somehow so either they were playing up Julie being maybe crazy (a plot point which, as mentioned, doesn’t actually exist textually) or Ben Willis is a technomancer.
-Tyrell: “See any killers out there Julie? How about Freddy or Jason?” I wish.
-Oh hey, there’s two killers that’s original.
Voorhees Scale of Inhuman Feats Performed By a Human Killer: 7/10
-Precognition: Knowing the exact route Ray will take on his 12+ hour trip North, setting up a fake radio station prize and elaborate vacation to Kokomo knowing that Will will be invited along as a third wheel.
-Teleportation: Dragging bodies in and out of places and cleaning up the mess in minutes, Bamfing all around Hotel Willis, suddenly appearing behind Tyrell while three other characters are looking at him.
-Invulnerability: Surviving the events of the previous film, if the closing stinger isn’t a dream then add surviving 8 rounds to the chest.
-Possible Technomancy
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