Stage 21 at Sony Pictures Studios. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jennifer Esposito and Brandy try to maintain their balances as they crawl on their knees along the spindly attic beams. Brandy lets out a scream as she loses her footing and almost falls through a window. The women gather in what they think is a safe corner, clinging to one another and panting as they await impending doom.

Suddenly, a huge steel hook bursts through the trap door they had just bolted shut. The shadow of a psychopathic fisherman looms over them.

Director Danny Cannon yells "cut". The killer retreats to wait for the next take and, inevitably, his next slash. The wardrobe department huddle around the actresses, drying them off with towels. The house lights come up to reveal the cast in all their gory - the fake bruises, the blood-stained clothing, the dripping hair. Buzzed up on the scene they've just played, they shine their torches in Cannon's face. Hewitt creeps up behind the director to scare him. Cannon smiles back devilishly and continues talking with the cameramen about some of the upcoming shots.

Just another day on the set of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The follow-up to I Know What You Did Last Summer was no accident - the producers began on a sequel while the original was going strong at the box-office just a month into release. As part of his initiation, the producers sent Danny Cannon off to see the first movie with an ordinary audience.

"I had a great time. It was like being in New York watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show and it suddenly occurred to me why this genre is so popular. It's because the audience owns it. The participate in it."

Unlike it's sequellian half-brother Scream 2, Cannon wanted to do differently with I Still Know: "Scream sends up the genre, but I Still Know takes itself more seriously." Cannon suggests it is dangerous to fill a film with irony beyond belief. "It's stupid to be too cliquey with the genre because it gives the audience the impression the film-makers are smarter than them, so they stop caring. So we tried to get more involved with the characters, to see them in a social environment. You really do hang out with the characters, so when it kicks off we are actually in jeopardy with them."

The movie's setting was important in distinguishing I Still Know from both I Know and all the other teen horror movies.

The script for I Still Know What You Did Last Summer takes the cast to an island paradise where they are supposed to have a great time. "With an island environment Trey and Stephen (the other screenwriter) created a new world with endless possibilities. We were always reassessing what was on the page. I'd hear myself say, 'why don't we make them wait just a bit longer?' On set I'd turn to the AP (assistant producer) and say, 'if you knew that was coming then I'd better do it another way'. The audience loves to guess when it's coming."

Once the location was sorted, Cannon refined the slasher formula: cleavage + buckets of blood + a common garden tool = lots of fun.

The cleavage: "There is something about Jennifer [Love Hewitt] that I can't define. I instinctively feel protective towards her, as do audiences. You can't help but want her to survive."

The buckets of blood: "Done in the best possible taste."

The common garden tool: "The fish hook is to do with the whole pantomime quality of this kind of film. The audience really gets involved and when you signal they can participate it drives the action. It's a great weapon. Something like a specially designed knife with jewels in it would not be as scary as an everyday object. A pair of scissors is more scary. A razor blade is scary because we've all been in contact with them and possibly hurt ourselves with them."

Cannon made sure that he stuck by the rules of slasher etiquette: loose women get wasted, the chaste will survive. "It seems that women are punished for promiscuity, and that the killers in these films do represent the tall dark strangers against whom women are warned."

This element of moralising takes place in all teen slasher movies and the religious overtones projected by the opening sequence of I Still Know are testament to it. "The film is about guilt. The promiscuity, drinking and obnoxiousness that some teenagers pursue is punished because they have to be responsible. Since the fifties that's been the essence of this genre. I was sitting in a room with the writer and we were looking at visuals. I was looking at the poster for the first film and in it Jennifer is wearing a crucifix and I said, 'Does she ever go to confession?' Then I stopped and thought: you could start the movie with Jennifer [Julie James] at confession.

Jennifer never confronted Ben Willis properly in the first film except by way of an action sequence. So the idea for the opening sequence came from wanting her to confront the killer on more of a psychological level."

Never mind the opening sequence. Could Cannon please give us a definitive interpretation for the ending? "The footprint is the clue to whether or not what's happening is real. To see the audience walk out with a smile on their face is great. We don't make these kinds of films for critics. So many times you are bound by reality. This is the most unpretentious film experience I've ever had. It ain't rocket science. It's pure entertainment."