I Know What You Did Last Summer Review

The early 90's were not kind to the slasher genre, which sputtered out in an anticlimax until 1996's "Scream" took the world by storm, and left millions of young-adult horror fans for something else to sink their, ahem, knifes into. Enter 1997's "I Know What You Did Last Summer," based on the 1973 book by Lois Duncan, which spawned its own series of sequels and knockoffs. Then the genre died out, again, until I'd say 2018's "Halloween," and soon cinemas were flooded with remakes, reboots and legacy sequels; at least the 1990's boon were fresh, I guess.

I've never read Lois' book, or seen any of the subsequent three films, for that matter, so what irony that this totally-a-sequel-totally-not-a-remake, annoyingly also titled "I Know What You Did Last Summer," works as entertainment more so than the most recent entry in the property that inspired it, "Scream VI." Don't get me wrong, "IKWYDLS" is objectively a pretty lousy flick, filled with conveniences, red herrings, characters doing things only dumb horror movie characters would do and to top of it all off, a talky villain. Or should I say villains? Ha, I'll never tell.

Yet I found myself caught up in some of its twists, which are ludicrous and often illogical and I am ashamed I couldn't spot them ahead of time. I didn't, and so I sat in my comfy reclining leather-like chair smiling that the film got me. How could I not see it coming? I can't dive into spoiler-territory, but I can at least proudly proclaim that I did correctly guess 25% of the ending. Suppose that's something.

Still, that doesn't mean this is worth seeing: despite being a slasher film, it contains very little in the way of actual onscreen bloodshed, and just two sex scenes. With no nudity! What does a person need to do to see a breast!? I know that I'm not being too classy here, but this is the territory this movie occupies and it does not succeed in giving its depraved audience the sinful abandon it so wants in a picture like this.

Oh yes the plot, I had almost forgotten: one fourth of July night, a group of friends inadvertently and drunkenly cause a car accident while trying to watch some fireworks off on some narrow mountain road. With the driver barely alive and clinging on for life inside, the party tries to stop the truck from falling down the watery cliff below, but are unsuccessful. Now in full-panic mode, each of them spits out a different idea of what to do once the cops are called; do they drive away? Head to the police station? Go and check on the driver of the vehicle? And before you cry out that this is exactly how the original played out, this time they were not only drinking, but also smoking pot. So totally modern. And then, one year later, one of them opens a note with the words "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and then the bodies start piling up. Sigh, to be in my twenties again...

The friends are played by Madelyn Cline (Danica), Chase Sui Wonders (Ava), Jonah Hauer-King (Milo), Tyriq Withers (Teddy) and Sarah Pidgeon (Stevie), and they are as stereotypical a band of mad-slasher movie cliches as you can get. Danica is ditsy, Stevie is a bit of an outcast, Ava is internally distraught but tough and Teddy is a meathead- yawn. Oh right, Milo, he's, uh, forgettable?

But the performances are all quite good and their dialogue is occasionally smart, sometimes riffing on the silliness of the entire production of it all (a throwaway line about Scooby-Doo had me laughing loudly), but my gosh these people are idiots. When they're not in a situation they should be using their cell phone to call someone, they're splitting up by themselves in a place they shouldn't be in. And then "boo," the shadowy figure in a slicker with a hook comes along, swings it a few times, either killing one off or trying to. You might be wondering "where are the police," and that's a great question. See, Teddy's dad has the whole force on his payroll, since he breathed new life into the town after the events of the first movie, so they beat around the bush and try to brush all this off. Didn't think we'd be ripping off "Jaws" in a slasher film, but here we are.

And also in case you were wondering, the lug head's daddy is also how, despite the proliferation of phones, cameras and cars with GPS tracking, that a pickup could go flying into the ocean and no one know who did it. And they say the rich don't have problems of their own.

I should mention that some familiar faces reappear here in extended cameos, but I won't go any further to risk spoiling the fun, because that's what this new "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is: it's fun. It had me nostalgic for a series I've never seen, as if my mind wanted to escape back to autumn 1997 instead of realizing how close we are to 2027.