Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's reboot is a no-nonsense horror film, with a touch of "Scream," that knows what was happening in the multiplexes of the last century.
By the time "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was released in 1997, the horror film genre was already 25 years old, and everything possible had already been done. It had emerged, from disorganized nightmares like "The Last House on the Left" (1972), from the raw, crude compost of the early 1970s drive-in and movie theater world. It had shocked, scared, and scandalized people. It had reached a disturbing level of Hitchcockian artistry in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974).
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Writers: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky, Leah McKendrick
Stars: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King
It was popularized with "Halloween" (1978), and then boringly formulated with "Friday the 13th" and its sequels. It had been given a disturbing feminist twist in "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978). And then, in the '80s, it became a deliberately extravagant homicidal burlesque with the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films and a hundred other tacky, extreme imitations of Z-rated movies.
The novelty of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" lay not in its hulking psychopathic killer, who was a less terrifying version of Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees dressed as Gorton's pet fisherman, nor even in its premise, which was that four teenagers from Southport, North Carolina, emerge unscathed from the fatal car crash they caused, so that when they start getting murdered, they are actually haunted by guilt. After all, when did the slasher genre ever need an excuse to kill beautiful young women in gory and provocative ways? The whole point of the genre was to massacre children... simply for the crime of existing.
No, the "innovation" of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was that it was the gory take on a Hollywood teen flick, featuring avant-garde stars like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prinze Jr. And so it marked the final evolution of the slasher genre into a mildly edgy consumer product. The film was as entertaining as it was forgettable (no better, no worse). However, there was a touch of karma in the fact that it was written by Kevin Williamson, the screenwriting genius behind "Scream" (which came out the year before). In "Scream," Williamson tore the slasher genre apart, revealing that his audience was totally hooked on the joke of how much smarter they were than almost all of these movies. "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was, in effect, Williamson returning slasher cinema to its pre-ironic, absurdist roots.
No, the "innovation" of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was that it was a gory take on a Hollywood teen movie, featuring avant-garde stars like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prinze Jr. And so it marked the final evolution of the slasher genre into a slightly risqué consumer product. The film was as entertaining as it was forgettable (neither better nor worse). However, there was a touch of karma in the fact that it was written by Kevin Williamson, the screenwriting genius behind "Scream" (which was released the year before). In "Scream," Williamson tore apart the slasher genre, revealing that his audience was totally hooked on the joke of how much smarter they were than almost all of these films. "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was, in effect, Williamson's return to the slasher film to its pre-ironic, absurdist roots. But the unsensational, almost nonexistent quality of the massacre is related to something the film is trying to achieve. "I Know What You Did Last Summer" faithfully recaptures the plot of the 1997 version: Our decadent friends, on a night out, block a curve in the road, causing a van to crash through the guardrail, and despite their best efforts to save the driver, the van plunges down the hill. Their crime is making a pact to pretend they were never there.
What's different this time is that, with the slasher vibe staged in a restrained way, the film plays out even more like a whodunit. There's a conspiracy related to the first film: the murders back then caused property values to plummet, but now Southport has gentrified into the "Hamptons of the South," so the powers that be want to bury any memory of what happened 28 years ago. The New Wealth is the real theme here; it's what the characters are actually being punished for. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Danica (Madelyn Cline), a dementedly privileged princess with a full-time therapy and meditation regimen, is celebrating her bachelorette party. Her best friend, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), is more important to her than her fiancé, Teddy, who's a hip-hop geek (though Tyriq Withers makes him strangely likable). Danica and her friends are children from a privileged family, but as that fateful night on the road unfolds, they are joined by Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), their old high school friend, who fell foul of them when her father lost his money. This influences everything.
Robinson draws on influences from "Scream" and "Bodies Bodies Bodies" and invents an unpredictable character: an omnisexual gothic horror podcast host, played by musician and model Gabbriette Bechtel. The film relies on our desire to see the killer unmasked, which removes it from the mythological level of so many horror films. (She doesn't wear a mask, but she's always in the shadows.) I appreciated that Robinson tried to make a real movie out of all this. However, it's not a real movie. It's an invention imitating one.
That said, Robinson mixes three of the original stars into her strategy, and they're not just cameos. Jennifer Love Hewitt returns as Julie James, now a traumatized law professor; Freddie Prinze Jr. plays Ray Bronson, a local bar owner who carries a deep resentment (with his gray hair, Prinze evokes Frank Langella, and is a far more interesting actor than before); and Sarah Michelle Gellar appears in a dream sequence, her strangely relatable hauteur magnificently intact.
Do we care about any of the characters? Not at all. It's not that the actors are bad; it's that the film's format encourages us to want to see them die, because there's really nothing at stake beyond that. The revelation of the killer's identity owes an obvious debt to the "Scream" films and feels just as arbitrary, if perhaps less funny. At the very least, "I Know What You Did Last Summer" delivers on the nostalgic promise of its title, but that's a qualified compliment. The film should have been called "I Know What You Saw at the Megaplex Last Century—and You're Still Seeing It."
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