When you remove the rose colored glasses, the late 90s/early 2000 junk horror genre is actually a pretty terrible run of films. Pretty people in silly b-movie slashers never really worked, and works even less in the streaming age. 1997 “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is really only survived by the immensely successful careers of its young cast and not so much the film itself. The actual movie is bad even by its own genre standards, and while I can give it a lot of credit for being the best looking trash cinema film of its kind, it’s still a golden trash bag among the dumps.
The latest “I Know What You Did Last Summer” attempts to be a requel – a reboot of the original and a sequel to it as well. Its basic narrative is barely good enough to prop up the more simple approach and unfortunately proves to be unsustainable here.
Despite another collection of young actors whose only job is to be rich, hot, and add to the kill count, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” feels more unnecessary than even the most unnecessary sequels out there. It has forgettable, second screen watchability and is hardly fit for the big screen. It constantly drags and you feel every overextended minute as it starts to get close to being 2 hours. Add to that how overstuffed and convoluted it is and you’ve got yourself an absolute slog most of the time. It’s a big disservice to the cast who are all actually trying to tap into the cheesy, self aware satire vibes half of the script wants to carry all the way through but constantly clashes against the other half trying to make sense of an entire franchise that frankly shouldn’t exist in the first place. It’s fun to see familiar faces, but like most things the connective tissue that forces them into a new chapter is where things really start to fall apart.
Written and directed Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (“Do Revenge,” “Thor: Love and Thunder“) and co screenwriter Sam Lansky, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” returns to Southport roughly 30 years after the events of the first film and introduces to a new gang of beautiful rich college kids coming back home for an engagement party on The 4th of July. After the party they decide to a trip up the cliff side to watch the fireworks, and of course a car veers off the road and before they can save them falls off a cliff. While they decide to call 911 and let them deal with the wreckage, the also decide that it’s best not to go to the police themselves, flee the scene and make a pact never to speak of it again. Fast forward one year later and of course, the past doesn’t stay quiet. One by one they are hunted and killed, forcing them to uncover the secrets of the night before what they did last summer ends them hook, line and sinker.
The film stars Madeline Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prince Jr..
Nostalgia bait can work perfectly well and should work here, but it crumbles under its own inability to have an identity of its own and just not being a very well made film. Flimsy story aside, Saira Haider’s manic editing fails to put any of the many pieces together in any kind of way that makes sense. Cline and Wonders are actually great leads and understand the actual assignment, and when they’re allowed to tap into the cheesiness, it actually works pretty well.
Withers might have one of the funniest line readings of the year, one that sent the entire theater (myself included) howling. I actually wish the entire film maintained that energy throughout and ditched the reliance on being connected to its previous entries. When it is having fun and embracing the sillier side of slashers, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is actually kind of fun to watch, and if for nothing else, Cline absolutely SERVES with her stunning beauty and influencer mockery.
I feel this way about the first too, but I just can’t justify the brutality that happens to our protagonists. Their dark secret doesn’t warrant gruesome hook deaths no matter how gnarly they are to watch. This film struggles to justify itself, but also struggles to justify being a story worth telling in the first place. The twists and turns try their best to give it some weight and provide some more answers than the first go around, but I just don’t know that I can get on board with a hit a run that was reported to the police as a secret so dark you need to be publicly hung by your limbs on the docks of a seaside town. It’s a dumb hang up, I know. But if you’re not completely sold on that idea then you’re not sold on anything “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is selling. You’re forced to feel the film’s length and be bewildered by its editing and construction, leaving you with nothing and no one by the time it finally ends.
It just can’t nail the tone, the front half loaded with more grisly inventive kills and more tongue in cheek characterization, while the back half overloads itself with more than it can handle and far less gory dispatching. It wants to be its own thing and a continuation simultaneously, and ultimately fails at both. You can actually piece together the best and worst of Robinson’s work, with “Do Revenge” being her most dialed in and tonally balanced and “Thor: Love Thunder” being everything she struggles with as a writer and tonally all over the place. “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is the love child of those works, with more genes from the latter and that’s not a compliment.
I didn’t hate it, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t laugh out loud at a number of moments. But it doesn’t have enough of them to warrant a good time at the movies, and even then it doesn’t really do enough with those moments to overcome many of its shortcomings. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it’s not whatever this ended up being. An instant solution would be to simply reboot it and let it stand on its own merits, but you can feel that no one – not Robinson, not Sony, not even the story itself – believed it was strong enough so it banks on nostalgia bait and hopes that’ll carry it through.
Sadly, it doesn’t and nostalgia alone for a movie most of us remember fondly because we haven’t seen it in 30 years isn’t a good enough reason to make another one. “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is neither better or worse than the original, and when nostalgia runs its course it amounts to nothing at all.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer below.
