‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' should get the hook

Boston Globe

2 days ago

Despite a high body count, director-cowriter Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's version is not gory enough to satiate gorehounds. The atmospheric cinematography, by Elisha Christian, and the bombastic score, by Chanda Dancy, fail to accompany or elicit a single good scare. And unlike the original, there's no reason for this film's killer to don a fisherman's slicker.
The outfit exists because the filmmakers believe that this franchise villain's look is as iconic as '
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The Fisherman in action in Columbia Pictures "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
Brook Rushton/Sony Pictures
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Unless you're a fan of the original movies, you can skip this reboot. I keep writing 'reboot,' but that's a false statement. The new 'IKWYDLS' is really a sequel masquerading as a reboot. When you bring back original cast members like Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., then involve their characters, Julie and Ray, in large chunks of the plot, you may as well have ditched the new cast.
There isn't much difference between the 1997 original and this movie. We still have a group of privileged twentysomethings from the fictional coastal town of Southport, North Carolina who swear themselves to secrecy after causing a seemingly fatal accident. A year later, an avenger emerges to teach them a painful lesson via grappling hook. The murders start after the killer sends a note with the film's title scrawled on it.
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The characters are slightly more likable this time, but still as vapid and obnoxious as Ray and Julie were back in 1997. There's Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), her engaged friends, Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Ava's potential love interest Milo (Jonah Hauer-King).
(L to R)Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, and Tariq Withers.
Brook Rushton/Sony Pictures
There's also Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), their former hang out buddy, who has fallen on such hard times that she's working as a server at Danica's big bash. The crew feels sorry for Stevie, and invites her to join them on a dangerous, curved road to view the July Fourth fireworks, a location that just screams 'accident waiting to happen!'
Their presence in the middle of the road
leads to the apparent death of an innocent person. As in the original, the friends swear themselves to secrecy. However, this time, the group has Teddy's rich father, Grant (Billy Campbell) to help them hide the evidence. Grant is an expert at covering up Southport's dirty laundry: in order to maintain Southport's reputation as a tourist attraction, he erased nearly all traces of the murderous events of the 1997 movie from the internet.
Cut to a year later. Milo picks Ava up from the airport just after she's hooked up with crime podcaster Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel) in the bathroom. Ava is back in town for Danica's party celebrating her engagement to Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), the guy who stepped in after Teddy ditched her.
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Gabbriette Bechtel in Columbia Pictures "I Know What You Did Last Summer"
Brook Rushton/Sony Pictures
Tyler is in town because she wants to broadcast the story of the fisherman murders witnessed by Julie and Ray back when they did what they did 28 summers ago. She tracks down
Julie, who tells her to kick rocks, because she's so traumatized by the events in Southport that she's moved away forever. Never mind that Julie lives only 45 minutes away, rather than on the other side of the world like most people would have moved.
No matter. Soon after Milo's arrival, Danica gets a card at her party that reads 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.' She thinks it's Teddy trying to ruin her life. He denies everything, and that's when the bodies start piling up. Wyatt, by virtue of being completely extraneous to this plot, is the first one to go. His slow, painful death occurs while Danica is chanting self-help mantras in her bathtub.
At almost 2 hours, 'IKWYDLS' starts to drag fairly early. Between the obligatory stalking and murder scenes, you're left with long stretches where you're bored enough to start asking questions. Slasher movies aren't bastions of logic by design, so this is a problem.
Freddie Prinze Jr. stars in "I Know What You Did Last Summer."
Brook Rushton/Sony Pictures
For example, once people start getting gutted, Ava seeks out Julie for advice on how to outwit a different fisherman than the one that terrorized Southport back in 1997. If you recall, all Julie and her friends did was run around screaming. She and Ray survived both of their films by pure luck, so they're the last people you'd run to for help.
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You'll also have time to think about who's behind that fisherman's slicker, a resolution you'll easily figure out if you know anything about the economy of characters in a slasher movies, or if you've seen 'Scream.'
Besides being overlong and unsatisfying in its resolution, the biggest sin committed here is the slavish devotion to fan service. They want fans to like this movie so much that they not only have a sequel-previewing mid-credits sequence that will make zero sense to non-fans, but they also bring back characters who were dead in the first movie. Even so, there's a moment that may turn fans against the movie. You'll know it when you see it.
On a personal, petty note: One of the characters in this film quotes the infamous Nicole Kidman AMC ad. Readers know that I hate that infernal ad so much that I boo it at the theater. For his bad taste, the movie kills that character off, which added a half-star to my rating. You should probably subtract it.
★1/2
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Written by Robinson and Sam Lansky. Starring Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel. At AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 111 min. R (graphic violence, gore, language)
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.