20 Films That Prove The 1990s Was The Worst Decade For Horror
5. I Know What You Did Last Summer
When Scream arrived in 1996, it was widely proclaimed a game-changing horror movie, and the start of a new age for the slasher movie. However, whether or not it changed the game for the better is more open to debate.
To whit, look no further than the next horror movie with Williamson's name attached. The Scream scribe adapted Lois Duncan's 1973 novel into a teen horror of the blandest variety, centred on an utterly unsympathetic teen quartet (superstars of the time Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe and Freddie Prinze Jr) who kill a stranger in a car accident, and agree to dump the body and keep it a secret - until one year later, when the secret catches up with them, and people start dying.
While it's frequently mentioned in the same breath as Scream, and ostensibly shares a lot of common ground as Wes Craven's film (slasher format, cast of famous faces from TV), I Know What You Did Last Summer is miles apart in terms of quality.
Where Scream was a knowing, self-aware dissection of slasher movie codes and conventions, I Know What You Did Last Summer just plays by the numbers. It may have been a revelation to younger viewers of the time who were unfamiliar with slashers, but for everyone else it's sheer tedium.