Ends in the water

Everything is weighty, rough, visible. Youth. A maniac is waiting, he wants to hook us. An iron squiggle in the throat - and there was a torn apart

Horror films about and for teenagers remain the most relevant dish of the season.

Americans scream with fear and delight and scatter popcorn. The echo of the most fashionable film trend has echoed in Moscow: on March 16, the horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” will be released on the capital’s screens. About the adventures of a fisherman-killer - Stanislav F. Rostotsky .

Jim Gillespie's film "I Know What You Did Last Summer" has a boulevard, but still quite literary basis - a thriller for teenagers of the same name, written by a certain Louis Duncan. That’s why I’d like to start talking about it in the tradition of the classic American short story—slowly, smoothly, with arrangement. For example, like this: “Fourth of July

Everyone celebrates in their own way. In a small

a fishing town so typical in its blissful silence that it seemed that it was not built by unknown pioneers, but depicted by Norman Rockwell; in the monastery of peace, where young people, having reached a certain age, do not remain in the parental nest, but fly away in all directions, full of the illusory aspirations of youth, in the hope of becoming actors, lawyers or writers;

in a world of ineradicable sea aromas, nets darkened by salt water and garbage cans full of gutted fish entrails...” In a word,

here on Independence Day there were no aliens. Instead of mobilizing ordinary people for a war with pimply creatures from another world, the city authorities staged

The traditional Kraken Festival is in honor of the fish, the extraction of which has been the main source of income for local residents from time immemorial. A thorough and intoxicating provincial celebration - with carousel horses, homemade punch and the election of a beauty queen.

The holiday, as expected, was a great success, and when dusk fell on the coast, the four friends (Helen, the newly crowned queen, with her friend Barry, the good girl Julia and her friend Ray) went to the sea for their own little picnic. On the way back, an incident occurred that caused terrible events.

ties that shock the young imagination no less than an alien invasion. A fisherman, who appeared in the middle of the road seemingly out of nowhere, fell straight under the wheels of a teenager’s car. So until death, the confused friends had no choice but to drag the lifeless body to the pier and throw it into the water. At the very last moment, the hand of a dead man - is it a dead man? – she convulsed. But for Helen, Barry, Julia and Ray, he was already dead - and the dark water closed over the unfortunate man’s head...

A year has passed. Memories, especially unpleasant ones, tend to disappear from a young memory under the pressure of new impressions, so Julia, returning on vacation to the city of her childhood, was cheerful and carefree. Until her mother handed her an envelope containing a letter consisting of only seven words. But these words confused the girl much more than paperback books, films about the living dead and all the scary stories ever told around a fire at night.

Seven words.

"I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER."

At this point we can finish with the fiction and move on to the film itself. In principle, screenwriter Kevin Williamson could come up with such a story without referring to any book (in the original source, by the way, the four main characters

knocks down not a fisherman, but a boy on a bicycle. With the same success, however). Of course, the mysterious ill-wisher not only tells the accidental killer that he knows about the crime, but will also get down to business very soon. So the main entertainment for the viewer, especially an experienced one who trained on last year’s super hit “Scream” (the script of which was written by the same Williamson), will be guessing the sequence of eliminating the heroes, a kind of countdown

The main entertainment for the viewer will be guessing the sequence of eliminating the heroes, a kind of countdown of the strung

nykh. But even here everything is clear. The victims of the ripper in a fisherman's raincoat and with a huge hook will be, first of all, Helen (beauty queens have been ordered to suffer since the days of King-De Palma's "Carrie"), Barry (for too long he did not believe in the seriousness of the maniac's intentions and was misinformed) and, of course, a minor policeman who will sternly ask the panicking couple "What are you doing here?" will immediately choke on his own blood. The rest is just as textbook. Nevertheless... Box office receipts quickly exceeded eighty million in America. The film grossed about ninety million at the global box office (analysts' forecast was one hundred and fifty). Finally, at the end of 1998, the sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” should be released - Fantômas is alive. We have surveillance

for fashion, cinephiles were waiting for him almost more than “Jackie Brown”. Considering that the film, even if one wants to, can be called entertaining at best, we will again have to talk about something other than art

cinema, but about the latest twists and turns of the collective unconscious.

The trend is obvious. After the stunning (and clearly not equal to the true quality) success of Wes Craven's Scream, which became almost the event of the film year, and on the eve of Scream number two, a film about the relationship between teenagers and a killer would probably go with a bang.