I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer -- 2006 -- R

This was a direct-to-DVD special that I watched after viewing the first two in the franchise, and to be honest, I didn't find it to be as bad as everyone was afraid it was going to be. I always tend to review from a story perspective, rarely getting into production stuff unless it becomes distracting.

This version has nothing to do with the "Last Summer" mentioned in the first two films. It rather uses those films as a backstory to provide a foundation to what happens in this one. At one point in the film, they pull out a scrapbook of sorts of articles mentioning "the fisherman" and the murders committed in the coastal town and Bahamas island of the first two films.

This film opens with the "fisherman" story and a chase through a fairground (and by the way, what the hell is with all these fairs? Is 2006 the year of the fair or something? Final Destination 3, When A Stranger Calls...anyway) until he corners one of the friends on top of a building. Well, this friend miscalculates his escape and ends up impaled on the top of a tractor. We learn that this fisherman chase is a big prank, but one that, with the death of the friend, has gone horribly wrong.

It begins to stand out more as a remake when many of the characters'...well, characters...resemble the four of the original film. This, however, does not detract from the enjoyment of the film, but rather serves to add to it, since it provides a sort of grim familiarity to what's going on.

One concern I started to have was how this killer can be everywhere. He pops up in the strangest places, and at one point, he attacks our heroine on a gondola quite a few feet above the ground. I was all set the poo-poo the ridiculousness of this whole unlikely crap when finally the reveal came. As with all of these teen scream flicks, there's a question mark leading us through the film of whodunit and this one is no different. It points the finger quite deliberately at just about everyone within the plot, revealing that their "secret" was not much of a secret at all. Several other people knew about the prank and knew who was behind it. What did this do? Give our fisherman more fodder to hack up. The reveal did what it should do: clean up the loose ends it was dangling throughout the film and allow what appeared to be stupidity to get itself to making sense.

I will admit that the film provided very little suspense, and barely classifies itself as a horror movie. It's kind of like the latter Nightmare on Elm Street films where it's basically a low-key action movie, and accepting it from this perspective will add to its enjoyment. You want a horror movie? Well, it has some blood in it, I guess.

Take it for what it is: a continuation/remake of the best part of a franchise, and a decent enough twist to give it its own legs to stand on. It's not the greatest film ever made, but it was a fun romp to chew up an hour and a half. The way they worked the franchise was just the next logical step it had to take.