I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Stars: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Freddie Prinze jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Joshua Orpin, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols.
In the mid 90s Kevin Williamson was one of the hottest writers in Hollywood. He had a good grasp of the tropes of the horror genre and gave us Scream, which played around with those conventions, and the teen slasher horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer. That 1997 film was successful enough at the box office to produce a sequel a year later with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which saw original stars Freddie Prinze jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt return. A third sequel, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer was released direct to DVD in 2006. And there was a short lived tv series of the same name in 2021, showing that there was still some life in the concept. And now we get a new take on I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is a hybrid – part remake and part legacy sequel set three decades later, and which manages to bring back a couple of the original characters.
This is the sophomore feature screenplay for writer Sam Lansky (I Wish You All The Best) and it follows some of the familiar formula from the 1997 film, and even works in several references to that film and brings back Freddie Prinze jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt, who again reprise their characters from the original, and Sarah Michelle Gellar briefly appears in a dream sequence.
The film is set in the coastal town of Southport, North Carolina. A group of entitled and shallow, narcissistic twenty something friends gather for the engagement party of the spoiled Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline, from Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, etc), who flaunts her wealth. The group includes Ava Bucks (Chase Sui Wonders, from Bodies Bodies Bodies, etc) and her former boyfriend Milo Griffiths (Jonah Hauer-King, from the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, etc), Danica’s doofus of a fiancé Teddy Spencer (Tyriq Withers, from tv series Legacies, etc). They decide to head off to a lookout to watch the July 4 fireworks. They invite along their former friend Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon, from tv series The Wilds, etc), who has just emerged from a stint in rehab. They abandoned Stevie when her father went broke but take this opportunity to try and rebuild bridges with her.
At the top of a long and winding road, ominously known as Reaper’s Curve, they cause an accident in which a car runs off the road and crashes on to the rocks below. They leave before the authorities arrive. Teddy arranges for his father Grant (Billy Campbell, from The Rocketeer, etc), a powerful local politician and real estate developer, to cover up their involvement.
A year later the group all gather for Danica’s wedding. She has split up with the temperamental Teddy and is now engaged to her new fiancé Wyatt (Australian actor Joshua Orpin, from Home And Away, etc). While opening some gifts Danica opens an envelope. Inside is a card which contains the ominous message: I know what you did last Summer.
In town is true crime podcaster Tyler Trevino (Gabbriette Bechtel, from the punk rock band Nasty Cherry), who has come to create a podcast on the murder spree of 1997. She is interested in the fact that the town’s powerful businesspeople have tried to bury any mentions of those long ago events to ensure that the town’s growing reputation as the “Hamptons of the south” is not ruined by careless speculation or wild rumours.
When Wyatt is brutally killed by a harpoon wielding fisherman, the young people of the town are being killed off one by one by a mysterious figure dressed in a black raincoat and carrying a fishhook and a harpoon. The group becomes convinced that someone knows what happened a year earlier and is coming after them. Several gory and inventively staged deaths ensue.
Desperate to understand their situation, the surviving youths turn to the two survivors of the original killing spree for advice. Since the events of 1997 Julie James (Hewitt) has moved away from South Port and teaches trauma studies at a university, while Ray Bronson (Prinze) has remained in the town and runs a local bar. Julie suggests that the killer may have had some personal relationship with the victim of the accident. The film plays out as a sort of whodunnit, and there are a few suspects identified and a couple of red herrings along the way before the identity of the killer is revealed. And unlike the original, which featured a cast of hunky rising young actors, here the audience fails to really care about the fate of these largely unknown actors and their one-dimensional characters.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is the third feature for director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who co-wrote Thor: Love And Thunder with Taika Waititi. She imbues the film with a knowing wink at the usual tropes of the genre, and she draws inspiration from several horror films. Audiences can have some fun in ticking off the obvious references. But she also suffuses the material with an undercurrent of black humour.
Prinze imbues his Ray with a world-weary cynicism, while Hewitt has a strong, welcome presence.
I Know What You Did Last Summer was largely shot on location in South Australia, with its coastal towns standing in for the town of South Port. The film has been nicely shot by cinematographer Elisha Christian (The Night House, etc).
This new take of I Know What You Did Last Summer is formulaic, but it is also passable fun while on screen and makes a fair addition to the slasher subgenre. Its target demographic should enjoy it. However, it is also eminently forgettable once you leave the cinema.
★★★
