Remember that old round-the-campfire story about the escaped convict with the hook for a hand, well, turn him into a fisherman and you have the villain of this movie. Scary. The story concept deals with 4 teens who, on July 4, accidentally run over a man on the highway, and to avoid any legal problems, decide to dispose of the body. The next year, the kids are being stalked and recieving messages saying... you know. From there all the typical things ensue: mistaken identity as to who the killer is, lots of bickering between the main characters, lots of dead people, people who don't believe them once the truth is told, and the (all too) frequent scream. The unoriginality of this film is surprising considering it was written by Kevin Willamson, writer of those delightfully inventive (or rehashed to the point of ingeneous) Scream flicks.
T.V. teen icons Sara Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party of 5) try to pull a Neve Campbell with this one, but do little to portray a strong female image aside from screaming and running away. And what's with all that middle name crap? I don't know if it's the writing or the acting, but I didn't ever feel sympatehic towards the main characters with their "I'm so much better than everyone else" attitudes. At once point I thought "you could kill them all off and I don't think I'd care. The dialogue was poorly written and poorly executed, the "tense-moments" were rarely that, and the suspense was nigh, but there was a shimmer there of craftiness on the part of Williamson which hopefully can be expanded upon.
Overall the movie played like a low budget 70's horror, except in place of the nudity and gory death shots, they put a long, drawn out fight scene on a boat, and a lesbian (you know, Anne Heche, Ellen DeGeneres' girlfriend). Oooh, how exciting. Worth about $1.25 of the $1.50 I paid to see it.