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I Know What You Did Last Summer

This October, Decider.com is going to celebrate Halloween by honoring horror movies, and in particular, the characters who manage to survive the guts and garrottes and emerge at the end: the Final Girls. Each Friday, we’re going to profile a different Important Final Girl in horror history and pay tribute to what makes their finality truly special. Sometimes it will be one character, sometimes it will be an actress whose roles spanned multiple Final Girls.

This week’s Final Girl is Julie James.

NOTE: spoilers for the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies follow.

The Final Girl

Julie James, as played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, in both I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

The Killer She Evaded

A vengeful fisherman with a propensity for hooks by the name of Ben Willis.

Ill-tempered, irrational, and downright rude, Willis’ daughter Susie was involved in a fatal automobile accident in which her boyfriend, David Egan, survived. A year after the attack, Ben Willis (presumably) murders David Egan, but is then struck by an automobile driven by Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr). Looks like we also know what karma did last summer.

Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Barry Cox (Ryan Phillippe) are also in the car that strikes Willis.

Why She Slays

Listen, Ben Willis isn’t exactly a pillar of sanity or conflict resolution, but if everybody, and by “everybody” I mostly mean mega-jerk Barry, would have just listened to Julie in the first place, this whole debacle could have been avoided. Julie was the one who wanted to go to the police when they struck (and thought to have killed) a complete stranger. Despite his previous murder, maybe Willis would have respected a sincere “Sorry for running you over” and the hardiest of handshakes. WE’LL NEVER KNOW.

Even though she was in the midst of receiving a number of ominous threats and was forced to deal with a disappearing CORPSE in her car, Julie still figured out that Willis was the maniac killing all of her friends. Eventually, she shares this information with Ray and he’s like, “I don’t know. Maybe.” He behaves so bizarrely that Julie suspects that Ray might actually be the killer, and honestly, I’m still not 100% convinced he’s not.

Ugh. This is why you’re still two years away from being all that, FPJ.

Her Best Moment

While feisty, Julie James isn’t the greatest fighter in horror movie history. But what she lacks in strength she recoups in decibels. That’s right, J-Love has the greatest scream in horror movie history. If she wasn’t almost always on the precipice of death, it would almost be soothing. Sidney Prescott may be tougher, but the true queen of scream is Jennifer Love Hewitt.