'I Know What You Did Last Summer' review: The last one wasn't good either...
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Cast: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols, Freddie Prinze Jr, Jennifer Love Hewitt
The rebooted I Know What You Did Last Summer feels more like a recycled I Know What You Did Last Summer.
This legacy sequel to the 1997 horror hit, which followed in Scream's reawakening of the teen horror machine, follows the familiar beats of the original film, except with less personality and a total lack of suspense. With results this tepid, who cares what you did last summer?
On a cliffside road one night, a group of CW-ready North Carolina friends — including Danica (Madelyn Cline), her best friend Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and her fiancé Teddy (Tyriq Withers) — are party to an accidental death they sort of maybe had a hand in partially causing.
Ok, time to start taking bets on who's going to die first.
They try to keep the incident a secret amongst themselves, but a year later it comes back to haunt them in the form of an anonymous letter sent to Danica which reads in full, I know what you did last summer. Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Enter the hook-wielding killer, who inspired enough references to the Gorton's Fisherman back then that there's no need to rehash them here.
The difference is this time around there's precedent for the events, which means all sorts of references to 'The Slaughter of '97', which the town attempted to bury in an effort to rebrand itself as the Hamptons of the South.
That also means bringing original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. back into the fold to reprise their original roles.
You'd think the Ghost Whisperer would know better than to stick around a town with a serial killer.
Look, we're in an era where everything that was once old can always be new again, where nothing or no one ever really dies until they're buried 6 feet deep, and even then things are open to negotiations.
I Know What You Did Last Summer was never that good the first time around, and co-writer and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (2022's dark comic teen thriller Do Revenge) doesn't do much to spice up this revisited take.
The characters are flat and unlikeable, the staging of the horror sequences is clumsy, and the kills are wan and uninspired. What are we doing here?
I Know What You Did Last Summer isn't quite scraping the bottom of the barrel — that would be an Urban Legend reboot/sequel, quite frankly — but it's a lifeless attempt to squeeze blood from a stone that didn't have much to offer in the first place
Nostalgia is overrated, Jennifer Love Hewitt's character says at one point late in the movie. You said it, sister. – Adam Graham/The Detroit News/Tribune News Service
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