Director: Jennifer Kaityn Robinson
Writers: Sam Lansky, Jennifer Kaityn Robinson
Stars: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon
Synopsis: A group of friends are terrorized by a stalker who knows about a gruesome incident from their past.
I have no idea why people have reverence for Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is essentially Scream if you order it off Temu, but 90s horror seems to be a prime time for many fans of the genre. Plus, who doesn’t love to see Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Jennifer Love Hewitt in movies? We used to see them all the time, and now they’ve disappeared off the map.
In a way, it does make sense for Sony to want to capitalize on the recent trends of legacy sequels, or, more aptly named, requels and attempt to expand the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise with fresh new faces, while Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt return to reprise their iconic roles as Ray Bronson and Julia James. After all, the Danny Cannon-directed sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, was critically and commercially reviled (I personally thought it was fun, but in an extremely stupid kind of way), and the Sylvain White-helmed direct-to-video third outing, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, is incredibly mean-spirited.
With Jennifer Kaityn Robinson in the director’s chair, who gave us Do Revenge in 2022 and also co-wrote the screenplay for Thor: Love and Thunder, there was hope that this new installment in the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise would revamp this unique slasher for new generations. Unfortunately, there’s very little here that actually works. Apart from retreading the same plot beats as the original, focusing on a group of teenagers who accidentally kill someone in a car accident and decide to keep it a secret, until they are stalked by a killer wearing a fisherman’s outfit and exacting its victims with a hook, the movie then decides to “spice things up” by doing something no person who has some form of reverence for the original would.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, and won’t dare spoil this denouement that is bound to leave the audience equally perplexed and frustrated. For a good chunk of the movie, Kaityn Robinson stays in platitudes that repeat what the first film laid out without the desire to try anything new with Kevin Williamson’s formula. Though if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? And while the cast’s chemistry may not reach the levels of the original, each respective actor does a fine job in attempting to uncover who the serial killer could be. But it won’t take long for you to guess who it is – even if the filmmaker will attempt to insert red herrings that could exonerate them and divert your attention to someone else.
Obviously, the one who looks suspicious isn’t the killer, and the one who is the least suspicious is. It won’t take long for you to put two and two together, especially if you’ve seen the latest iterations of Scream or, more recently, Heart Eyes, and the rest of the movie is as dull as you think. Even the kills aren’t that impressive. The usage of hooks and fishing instruments does give the franchise a bit of an edge that most slashers don’t have, but Kaityn Robinson’s sense of geography and rhythm during repetitive chase scenes and gnarly kills contains little thrills. The kills aren’t nearly as playful and elaborate as the original, and their impact is lessened by cinematography that seems restrained to shock – or surprise – viewers in its attempt to modernize a series that didn’t necessarily need a revamp.
Because when Julie and Ray eventually show up to help Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline), Ava Brooks (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King), and Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon) track and hunt the killer before his hook finds them, their purpose in the movie seems limiting, other than giving exposition to the characters on events that happened in the original two movies. Hewitt is barely in the picture, spoon-feeding things that could make tracking the assailant easier, and then dropping out entirely, save for one semi-compelling exchange with Ray that showcases how the two stars still haven’t lost their spark.
There are a few surprises that admittedly worked on me, particularly a specific dream sequence, but most of the “legacy” appearances are pedestrian at best, and baffling at worst. There’s a narrative decision that happens later on in the movie so insulting to the fans of the franchise that the potential for a cult following is pretty much evaporated once we get to this sequence and Kaityn Robinson doubles down on this giallo-inspired twist that, in any circumstance, doesn’t work.
Only Sarah Pidgeon from the new cast comes out of this requel unscathed, especially during the climax, where she seems to enjoy each new twist and turn the story takes, knowing how baffling they are. It’s a shame no one shares the same pleasure she has in letting loose and playing with the confines of such a unique slasher that Kevin Williamson wrote as a deviation of sorts from Scream. Even a post-credits scene, which reintroduces a character that may or may not resonate with fans, reeks of desperation instead of actual fun. We’re promising audiences that the next one will be more entertaining than this one, when all we wanted was a good time at the movies, in the present moment.
