KyFx Feature

Let’s talk about “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer’s” Karla Wilson for a second.

by Kyasia Fields on August 04

I found myself casually scrolling through Hulu’s Horror section as one usually does and came across “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” (1998). I’ve seen far worse films, and it wouldn’t hurt to watch. I hadn’t seen the movie in eons, and I totally forgot how disgusting Jack Blacks Character looked in that Loc wig, but more importantly, it was such a joy watching R&B legend Brandy Norwood grace the screen as character Karla Wilson. I began reminiscing on how cool it was to see “Moesha” (that’s who she was to me as a child) in this scary movie. It was refreshing to see a black girl not die within the first 20 minutes or be used as a prop or background space and let’s be honest, there would be no “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” without the star power and charisma of Brandy.

Brandy Norwood ruled the ’90s, and 1998 was her year. Her sophomore album “Never Say Never” sold over 16 million copies worldwide. She had the biggest Grammy award-winning hit of the year “The Boy is Mine” ft  R&B Singer Monica, which spent 13 weeks on the Billboard charts. AND the year before she starred in Roger and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, all while playing her recurrent role in the UPN hit sitcom Moesha. Brandy was the “It” girl of the late 1990s. 

“I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” (1998) was Brandy’s film debut. The under ordinarily written sequel came out during the peak of the “90’s horror film” era, or should I say the “Let’s put as many known celebrities in a film to overcompensate for the lack of substance in the script era with films like Anaconda (1997) starring Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, Deep Blue Sea (1999) starring LL Cool J and Samuel L Jackson, House on Haunted Hill (1999) with Taye Diggs.   The list goes on. Brandy stood alongside actors Jack Black and Mekhi Phifer (who ironically was in “The Boy is Mine” video).  Karla Wilson was the rationality that Julie needed. She exudes confidence, leadership, and was the life of the party. Though she seems to have overstepped her home boundaries a bit with Julie, the audience could vividly feel the loyalty and love that she had for her. Karla was the supportive friend we all needed and seemed to only want Julie to be happy, even going far enough to hook her up with Will to help her get over Ray (Karla was not fond of Ray).

In most cases the Final Girl in the original film survives the sequel (i.e., Nev Campbell in Scream 2 ) but not without the added stresses of shyness, anxiety, lack of confidence, and the occasional hallucination that the killer is behind a window or in a closet, but the point is .. she survives again. Her life is valuable enough to keep pushing through survival. Karla was the anti-final girl. For starters, she was a Black woman, and we all know that Black people tend to die within the first 30 minutes of said films, she was outspoken, and it was implied that she was sexual with her boyfriend Ty played by Mehki Phifer. Those things alone check her off of the survival list, well that and in most cases, only one woman survives. Still, Karla Wilson bypasses all of the other Black characters’ deaths in the film, including the most notable one of Ty in the kitchen scene and SURVIVES, but not without a fight. She got her ass kicked in this movie,  falling through glass roofs and was so close to getting hooked numerous times by “The Fisherman,” but sis survived and walked away to tell the story. The attention and action were all on Brandy in the last 30 minutes of the film, even though it’s really Julie’s moment to kick ass, but the audience is drawn into Karla. I finally got a moment to see someone walk away that looked like me, and I’m sure Brandy’s back was in pain from carrying the entire film on it. 

KyFx Horror Group , LLC 

Houston, TX,