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.
Except for the dreamy classmate William Benson who insists on following her around and fawning after her. Julie and ex-beau Ray are mostly distant exes, and keep in touch on occasion. One day after many staged hallucinations, Julie’s friend Karla wins a trip to the Caribbean for four. Julie is convinced by Karla to go along with her and her boyfriend and intends on inviting Ray along with them. Wouldn’t you know it? Ray decides to drive to Julie’s town to go on the trip with her, and along the way he and his friend Dave (played by Hawkes) are attacked by the evil fisherman along the side of the road. While Dave is killed, Ray is nearly run over and is pretty much left for dead. Opting instead for classmate Will as a travel companion, Julie goes along with Karla to the Caribbean where they’re holed up in a really crappy resort hotel where all the guests are colorful and eccentric.
In other words, they exist simply to be red herrings. While the vacation is going well, Julie finds someone has followed the group there and is intent on stalking them and upping the body count by the hour. Who would want to hurt them? Is it the eccentric hotel manager played by Combs? The shady but sexy bartender Nancy, played by Jennifer Esposito? The goofy Rastafarian Titus played by Jack Black? Karla’s boyfriend Tyrell? Could the movie actually invest in an African American serial killer? Nah. He gets killed real good, though! Or maybe it’s enigmatic baggage man Estes, as played by Bill Cobbs, who seems to be committing voodoo spells in his cabin? It surely can’t be the innocent travel companion Will Benson. As is made obvious the sequel ups the count of character actors who are there to lend mystery or comedy to the story, while Julie finds herself being psychologically tormented by the fisherman who has found his way on to the island with the group and is intent on murdering pretty much anyone he comes across. And did I mention there’s a very creepy storm headed toward the island?
I’m going to spoil the film’s surprise right now because the story asks too much of its audience. If the killer is in fact Will Benson, why is it never mentioned that the original killer had another son? What ever happened to the original killer? Did he actually die? How did he know his dad wanted to kill Julie? Why did he seek out to murder Julie? Did he agree with his dad’s attempt to murder his brother? Did the writers really think it was clever to name Ben’s son Will Benson? Mrs Voorhees wasn’t named Mrs. Jason’sMom. How did Will convince Karla she was going to the Caribbean? How did he fake the radio broadcast again? How did he mask his voice? Didn’t they have caller ID? Don’t these prizes require going to the station to get the tickets? What if Karla didn’t want to answer the big prize question?
What if Will didn’t kill Ray and died instead? Would Julie have gotten on the trip anyway? How did Will know Julie would invite him, anyway? What if she invited her father or her brother? Would he have to travel to the island and go on with the plans? Why not do that in the first place? Why travel with them to get them on an island to murder them all? Why not just lock them in a storage locker and poison them? There are just too many lapses in logic to be even remotely sensible, but then as stated above, “I Still Know” embraces the idiocy, so in the end, it’s an brainless movie, and a terrible slasher film. Once a guilty pleasure slasher film, “I Still Know” lacks memorable characters or even remotely tense situations, and it’s just so much more absurd than the original with a villain who really doesn’t frighten us in to submission. “I Still Know” is a goofy and downright irritating slasher, but one that at least has Jennifer Esposito.