After watching the incredibly over the top performances in “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” I’m suddenly not so shocked that subsequent this film, the four stars of this slasher never actually amounted to much cinematically. Not to be cruel or anything, but where as most slashers suffer from an abundance of bad acting, this film attempts to sap melodramatic performances from its four stars. That means a lot of shouting, and screaming, and attempted self-aware jabs at the horror genre. Ryan Phillippe in particular sounds like he’s auditioning for drama class as the testosterone laced Barry who runs around screeching at every character for the first fifteen minutes of the film. The incredibly loose almost pointless adaptation of the Lois Duncan novel “I Know What You Did Last Summer” stars a cadre of nineties stars trying their best to mine the gold left behind by Kevin Williamson’s “Scream.”
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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Jeffery Combs, John Hawkes, a dreadlocked Jack Black with a heavy inexplicable Jamaican accent, you’d be pretty stupid not to watch this at least once in your lifetime. “I Still Know” this times seems to embrace the inherent stupidity of the film’s premise and completely wraps itself around the film’s utter moronic plot elements and red herrings at every turn. Replacing the bland Sarah Michelle Gellar is the even blander hip hop star Brandy, who is protagonist Julie’s on again, off again best friend and roommate Karla. Julie is back (apparently that final scene in the first film was a dream or something) and now in college. She has a nasty habit of waking up screaming in class, thanks to her recurring nightmares of the evil sailor man so obviously not a lot of people in her school want to be around her.
Ichi (2008)
I guess you can refer to “Ichi” as part of the official Zatoichi canon since the story of Ichi is one the reflects the effect Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman had on the people of Japan during his travels. Though not a remake or a reboot of the Zatoichi series, “Ichi” is an unofficial spin off that takes from the film series and creates its own branch off of an epic story about a beautiful young Goze who is taking a journey to find her savior before finally lying down to die. Haruka Ayase is incredibly beautiful and fierce as the Goze Ichi who spends most of her life wandering around from village to village trying to survive one more day while on a search for something in her life that’s kept her motivated to fight ever since she was a child.
I Spyders (2012)
Preparing to go in to festivals soon enough, I was able to get a hold of “I Spyders” through online means and I’m glad that I did. “I Spyders” is quite possibly one of the most skin crawling and yet unabashedly demented short films you’ll see in a while. This is one of the few short films that manages to have a spider wrangler on set, and when they can acquire an actual wrangler, you know the director is at least trying hard to get his point across. That’s called effort, filmmakers. That’s the word for this review. “I Spyders” isn’t so much a horror movie in the traditional sense, but its premise is very much horrific. Especially for anyone who is an avid arachnophobe.
I Am Number Four (2011)
Flawed and by no means a masterpiece, I sense “I Am Number Four” is a film that will become one of my favorites that I’ll be defending for years to come. I won’t sit here and claim this is a flawless piece of science fiction action cinema, but for what it promises in the beginning, it works wonders in delivering what’s essentially a teen oriented action film. “I Am Number Four” touches on my weak points in fiction concerning teens realizing their destinies and aliens from another world battling it out on mid-west suburbia confronting each other in a war that neither of us can fathom.
Insidious (2011)
Assuredly one of my favorite horror films of the year, it’s safe to say that director Wes Craven never stood a chance. With the creators of “Paranormal Activity” and “Saw” behind the horrific “Insidious” it was a safe bet a classic story about ghosts and goblins would do wonders over mere films about slashers and the modern internet age. One part “Poltergeist” and “Altered States,” and two parts “The Haunting,” director James Wans’ ghost story is the classic creaks by the stairs story about an average family who move in to a house and discover that the past residents of the house have decided they want to stay.
I Saw the Devil (Akmareul boattda) (2010)
Revenge like anything is best served when in intricate doses. Batman, The Punisher, Freddy Krueger, they didn’t elicit their revenge in bouts of quick murder and or suicide. They instead withheld the final blow for as long as they possibly could and made the experience about as painful and immensely grueling as possible before the final closing shot. That’s the case for “I Saw the Devil” one of the most finely tuned revenge films ever created. It’s not just a movie about a man on a rampage looking for the monster who destroyed his life. It’s about a man embracing his inner most monsters and destroying the life of the man who took great pleasure in ruining his.