Released in 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer had the heat and cachet of an adaptation of Lois Duncan’s teen-friendly novel by Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, as well as the mushrooming star appeal of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt. (For the ladies, there was also Ryan Phillippe and some kid named Freddie Prinze, Jr., who I’m now convinced was an aberrant, late ’90s collective hallucination on the part of teenagers and Hollywood casting directors.) After a $72 million domestic gross, its rushed-into-production sequel attempted to urbanize things with the addition of Mekhi Phifer and pop-singer-turned-reciter-of-words Brandy Norwood, the result being diminished returns across the board.

The series’ straight-to-video nail in the coffin, then, the decidedly less buxom I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, arrives with a cast of unknowns, but definitely less of a creative thud than one might expect. Still, the point is that the original I Know What You Did Last Summer (which came out when one of this sequel’s costars, Torrey DeVitto, was 13) wasn’t a movie predicated on twist or concept - it was a star vehicle, albeit a collective and relatively minor one. This film doesn’t have the dangled promise of any known cleavage - or much cleavage at all, really - and as such will find a hard time establishing any sort of commercial beachhead, even in the straight-to-video market.

Distancing itself from the first two movies, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer finds its requisite group of teens pulling a July 4th prank based on the urban legend of those characters. When things go wrong, though, and a friend ends up dead, Amber (Brooke Nevin), Colby (David Paetkau), Zoe (the aforementioned DeVitto), Roger (Seth Packard) and Lance (Ben Easter) are devastated. Flash forward a year, when someone begins stalking them and telling them they know about their dark, shared secret.

Director Sylvain White utilizes a variety of in-camera cuts to up the movie’s frenetic pacing, and though the angsty panic that this flash technique induces eventually morphs into overpowering music-video affectation, it’s at least a bit different than the sort of hopelessly straightforward rendering one might expect. White is aided in this regard by veteran cinematographer Stephen Katz (the original The Blues Brothers), who does a great job of evoking mood on a budget; it’s not at all a stretch to say that I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer has the more mannered look and feel of a European film, and White and Katz deploy an effective array of practical “trick shots” usually not indulged in such a movie. At the same time, while I won’t spoil the final revelatory twist, it does feel like a reach, and would drag the franchise in the wrong direction if ever followed up upon in the same vein.

Packaged in a regular Amray case, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer is presented in a solid, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and a French language Dolby surround track. (Optional English and French subtitles are also available.) Special features include a feature-length audio-commentary track in which director White details the movie’s cold Park City, Utah shoot (which substitutes for summer in Colorado) and his attempts at subtly tweaking genre expectation. There’s also a hearty, quite nice 27-minute making-of featurette which provides an array of on-set footage and interviews with cast and crew, including veteran stuntman Don Shanks (Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers), who plays the menacing, hook-wielding fisherman. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)