Review: ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' is ‘Love Island,' but with murder
There are impossibly good-looking, 'Love Island'-like young people at a sun-dappled seaside resort occasionally hooking up with lots of drama, then murders spoil the fun.
Although it is the first feature theatrical release in the franchise since 1998's 'I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,' it seems so familiar. The first two are a constant staple on streaming and cable, and a one-season Prime Video series, which like the original 1997 film was based on Lois Duncan's 1973 young adult novel, debuted in 2021.
The current film is not a remake, but a sequel, and one of its drawing cards is that original cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprise their roles. Plus another person, but we're not allowed to say.
But it's most definitely the year 2025 and it's a young person's show. While not a game changer in any way, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Netflix's ' Do Revenge ') has delivered an appealing, efficiently packaged but rather predictable slasher film with a game cast.
In other words, it's as advertised — no more, no less.
The weird thing, though, is that the 'crime' that gets the young people in trouble isn't really a crime. In the original, they accidentally hit a pedestrian and then sank the body in a nearby river to hide the evidence. That's a couple of crimes at least.
In this one, a careening car goes off the cliff trying to avoid hitting a clowning around Teddy (Tyriq Withers) as a group of five young people are enjoying Fourth of July fireworks. 'That's manslaughter!' says one as they justify fleeing the scene.
Uh, not really. Any good lawyer can prove that the car was driving dangerously.
Anyway. The damage is done, and Teddy and the rest of them — his fiance, Danica (Madelyn Cline of ' Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery '), her best friend Ava (Chase Sui Wonders of Apple TV+'s ' The Studio '), Ava's current crush Milo (Jonah Hauer-King of ' The Little Mermaid ') and the group's estranged friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon of Hulu's ' Tiny Beautiful Things ') agree never to tell anyone.
Nonetheless, a year later, at Danica's bridal shower, she gets a greeting card with the ominous 'I know what you did last summer' scrawled in blood. The bodies then begin to pile up, courtesy of what I call the Gorton's Fisherman's evil twin.
There are plenty of twists and turns — by the killer's signature hook as well as the plot — as the 20-somethings band together to stay alive and solve the crime. They look to Julie James (Hewitt), a survivor in the first two films, for advice; Ray Bronson (Prinze) is a bar owner who is mentoring Stevie.
Look, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is fun, recapturing a '90s slasher film vibe. It's no 'Bring Her Back,' the Aussie horror chiller released around Memorial Day, but it's not meant to be.
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Chicago Tribune
25 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Untamed' review: Eric Bana investigates a Yosemite murder as an agent for the National Parks Service
In Netflix's 'Untamed,' Eric Bana plays a rugged, no-nonsense special agent for the National Parks Service working the mystery of a woman's death in Yosemite. The six-episode series isn't doing anything new, which tends to get a bad rap these days. The streaming era has prioritized breaking from, or at least playing around with, TV norms, but these kinds of meat-and-potatoes offerings can be as satisfying as shows with wilder ambitions. That said, 'Untamed' suffers from some object permanence issues; nothing about it stayed with me after watching it. But while it was on in front of me? A good (enough) time. A lot of that has to do with executive producer John Wells, whose vast array of credits include everything from 'ER' to 'The West Wing' to 'The Pitt.' He doesn't have a recognizable style like fellow super-producers Shonda Rhimes or Ryan Murphy, but he understands television in ways that have become increasingly rare. Here he's working with show creators Ellie Smith and Mark L. Smith (the latter of whom was the screenwriter of 2024's 'Twisters'). The series opens with two climbers ascending the vertical rock face known as El Capitan. Suddenly, a woman's lifeless body comes hurtling past them from above, getting caught in their ropes and nearly taking them down with her. The circumstances of her death become the show's driving plotline. When Bana's Kyle Turner arrives at the summit on horseback, a park ranger says with a mixture of envy and annoyance: 'Here comes Gary Cooper.' Turner is haunted by past mistakes, a broken marriage, a dead son and a tendency to find solace at the bottom of a bottle. 'What's with you tonight?' someone says. 'You're extra serious even for you.' That sums up his personality. The ranger assigned to assist his investigation is a rookie and that's because Turner has burned through everyone else with his stubborn insistence on doing things his own way. When an Indigenous character shows up, it's because Turner (and Turner alone) has befriended him. These are common tropes that can be tedious in the wrong hands — the dead child has become overused as a shorthand meant to add sympathetic texture to a character's backstory — but 'Untamed' is made with enough talent and skill that these pieces feel right, instead of hacky. Credit that to Bana's performance, which doesn't belabor the guy's issues nor his stoicism. The Gary Cooper thing isn't too far off. Lily Santiago plays Naya Vasquez, the inexperienced park ranger with whom he's paired. She's from the city and therefore not thrilled with the idea of jumping on the back of a horse to explore the area for clues, but Turner won't budge. 'This park's the size of Rhode Island. It's got five separate highway entrances bringing over 100,000 people a week,' and going off the trails, on horseback, is better than going in his truck. That she will eventually come around to him, and he to her, is a foregone conclusion. Sam Neill and Rosemarie DeWitt round out the cast as the seasoned head park ranger who looks out for Turner and Turner's amiable ex-wife, respectively. The series' premise is better suited to a movie. But at six episodes, it doesn't overstay its welcome. The wide open spaces and the occasional appearance of (CGI?) wildlife are as picturesque as you'd expect — it's one of the show's selling points — although filming took place not in California-based Yosemite but in British Columbia. I suppose one soaring, mountainous forest looks like another. The park rangers are stuck wearing unflattering uniforms, but Turner has too much swagger for that and is outfitted in jeans and a sand-colored work shirt worn with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The show's subtitle might as well be 'Untamed: Eric Bana's Forearms' Where other shows try to leverage the sex appeal of their male lead by having him doff his shirt within the first 20 minutes, 'Untamed' takes a different tack, and I like it. Hollywood has never really understood the appeal of a good pair of forearms. Now's as good a time as any. 'Untamed' — 2.5 stars (out of 4) Where to watch: Netflix
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
For Eric Bana, ‘Untamed' and its wilderness was hard to leave behind
When Eric Bana is not filming, he's more than likely riding a motorcycle in a remote part of Australia. He's been doing it since he was a kid, having grown up in a semi-industrial part of the suburbs of Melbourne on the verge of farmland. Now, it's his solace on days off. 'It's a vulnerable feeling, it's an exciting feeling,' he says on a video call. 'You have to be self-sufficient. You have to think worst-case scenario. What happens if I get a flat tire when it's 120 degrees and there's no water around? It keeps you awake.' So when, back in 2019, Bana was given the pilot script for the Netflix limited series 'Untamed,' he was immediately attracted. He would play the role of Kyle Turner, an agent in the Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service in Yosemite — essentially a park detective. It's a murder mystery yet set against the kind of wilderness that Bana loves. 'I just felt a kinship for Kyle immediately,' he remembers. 'I don't know if it was just like the shared love for the outdoors and how that affects our psyche and our well-being, our sense of self, our emotional journey in life — I just immediately felt very strongly for Kyle.' Bana stuck with the project through the COVID pandemic and the Hollywood strikes, allowing the series created by Mark L. Smith of 'American Primeval' and daughter Elle Smith to finally hit the streaming service on Thursday. The show finds Bana's character investigating the death of a young woman who plummets off El Capitan and into two rock climbers. The case unexpectedly connects two other traumatic incidents that have happened in the mountainous wilds — at least one of which directly involves the taciturn Kyle, grieving the death of his young son. 'He exudes that kind of sensitivity and strength at the same time,' Elle Smith says. 'It allowed him to just really embody Turner. Because he's been living in this show for so long, so many years and kept it alive and has remained passionate about it, once we got into production, he was Turner.' 'Untamed' also marks the latest in Bana's unconventional career that has seen him touch nearly every corner of the Hollywood machine, even though he has always chosen to live in Australia when he's not working. It never made sense for him to move to Los Angeles when many of his shoots were overseas anyway. When we chat, he's briefly in town for 'Untamed' press. Though he started his career as a comedian in his home country, he was part of the superhero craze before it was a craze, playing the title role in Ang Lee's 'Hulk,' a movie that's now undergone a critical reassessment. He's been a 'Star Trek' villain and a Steven Spielberg protagonist in the historical drama 'Munich.' (Over the past 12 months, more and more people have been bringing up the role of the Mossad agent tasked to respond to the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics: 'With the passing of time, you realize how incredible some of the observations were,' he says.) More recently, he ventured into the world of television, playing the sociopathic John Meehan in the first season of the anthology series 'Dirty John.' Bana says he tends not to think about specifically playing characters that contradict his previous work, but he understands that coming off that role probably was one of the reasons he gravitated toward Kyle in 'Untamed.' 'There was no doubt that the character of John had a level of toxicity to him that was just so high,' he says, adding, 'I realized that Kyle was a warmer character for the audience to follow than John.' Before he actually got to play Kyle, he started a mini-franchise in Australia with producing partner and director Rob Connolly thanks to 'The Dry' and its sequel, in which he plays another investigator reeling from a traumatic past. For creator Mark Smith, Bana was the ideal person to embody Kyle because of his ability to convey a lot with very little dialogue. 'We felt like he was just so expressive in his eyes and his face,' Mark says. 'He can do so much without saying anything, and that was crucial to this guy who really doesn't want to speak — he doesn't want to talk to people. He just wants to be kind of off on his own, doing his thing in the wilderness.' Because Bana got on board early, the Smiths could start writing the rest of the scripts with him in mind. One of Bana's requests: The more he could be on a horse, the better. In the show, Kyle eschews motor vehicles for a trusty steed, which gives him more access to the less traversed areas of the park. Bana ended up loving his horse. 'I desperately wanted to smuggle him on the plane and take him home,' he says. Mark and Elle Smith conceived of the series after being sent articles about the National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch. They were not familiar with that world but were nonetheless fascinated by this strange profession that is part FBI agent and part park ranger. Bana had visited Yosemite years ago as a solo tourist but didn't have the chance to go again before the shoot, which took place in British Columbia. Still, he spoke to rangers and ISB employees to get a sense of 'just how crazy' some of their work can be. 'When you mix drugs, when you mix people coming from all kinds of different backgrounds and having different entitlements to the places that they're in, it's really interesting,' he says. Bana understands from personal experience that the attraction to the outdoors is partially based on the fact that danger is almost always lurking around the corner. In Australia, he adds, 'there's always something trying to get you, whether it be two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged or whatever.' On the set of 'Untamed,' he was incredibly eager to see a bear — and was disappointed when it never happened. 'We had a bear guy on set who was responsible for our and the bears' safety,' he says. 'We had very strict rules around food and all that sort of stuff. I was desperate, desperate to have an encounter with a bear of the positive kind, and I never saw one.' Elle Smith confirms that most everyone else got to see a bear. 'He had really bad bear luck,' she adds. But even with his lack of bear sightings, Bana's love of being outside was crucial for the entire production. Mark explains he's not the kind of star who returns to his trailer, instead pulling up a chair to hang out. 'This was a tough landscape that we were shooting in,' Elle Smith adds. 'I think it really helps in terms of tone setting if your movie star is willing to get out on the rock and do the climb. It really helps the crew also feel like they're able to do the climb.' Bana was intoxicated by his environment — so much so that he wouldn't want to go back to the sterility of a soundstage. 'Going to work in a studio after doing something like this — the thought of it is just debilitating creatively,' he says. 'There's something about a camera coming out of a box when the sun rises and going back when the sun goes down. There's an energy, there's a cadence to that.' For his follow-up, he went back into the elements for 'Apex,' an upcoming film opposite Charlize Theron, where they play a pair of rock climbers. He says he did intense training in the skill or else he would have looked like a 'fool.' And just like how Bana is willing to let the weather dictate his shooting days, he is also patient with his career. It's one of the reasons he was willing to wait for 'Untamed.' 'I've been in this business for a period of time now where I realize you really do have to go with the ebbs and flows and you really do have to pace yourself, but at the same time when you find something that you love you just have to try and protect it,' he says. It's something you could also say about the natural world, and Bana hopes that 'Untamed,' even with all its dark deeds and buried secrets, encourages audiences to go see for themselves. 'I hope people enjoy the feeling of being in that space, and in a perfect world, feel motivated to go and seek them out,' he says. He certainly will be.
Tom's Guide
an hour ago
- Tom's Guide
Prime Video is releasing its latest No. 1 show 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' for free — here's where to watch
Prime Video's romantic drama "The Summer I Turned Pretty" has officially returned for its third and final season. Season 3 had its two-episode premiere yesterday (July 16), and fans clearly wasted no time and dove right in, as the show shot straight to No. 1 in the streaming service's charts (stealing the top spot from "Bosch" spinoff, "Ballard"). But if you're not caught up on Belly's (Lola Tung) story just yet, Prime Video looks to be making it even easier (and cheaper!) to get up to speed on the show so far. I just spotted that Prime Video is releasing the first two seasons of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" for free over on YouTube. At the time of writing, only the first three episodes of season 1 are currently available to stream for free. However, episodes 4-7 all have premiere times set, and Prime Video has them all gathered together in a playlist aptly titled ""The Summer I Turned Pretty" Seasons 1-2 Full Episodes." And seeing as these next four episodes are dropping over the next couple of days, I'd be surprised if the rest took long to drop, either. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. So, even if you don't currently have access to Prime Video, you can still add a new show to your summer watchlist. And if you enjoy the first two seasons, you can look forward to streaming "The Summer I Turned Pretty" season 3 on Prime Video later down the line. "The Summer I Turned Pretty" is a coming-of-age romantic drama based on the novel series written by Jenny Han. As Prime Video puts it, ""The Summer I Turned Pretty" is a multigenerational drama that hinges on a love triangle between one girl and two brothers, the ever-evolving relationship between mothers and their children, and the enduring power of strong female friendship. It is a coming-of-age story about first love, first heartbreak, and the magic of that one perfect summer." In addition to starring Lola Tung, "The Summer I Turned Pretty" cast also includes Jackie Chung, Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno, Rachel Blanchard, Sean Kaufman, Colin Fergusion, Tom Everett Scott, Kyra Sedgwick Isabella Briggs, Kristen Connolly, and more. Already caught up on the show so far? You can find a season 3 synopsis below (consider this a spoiler warning): Read More Season three finds Belly at the end of her junior year of college, looking forward to another summer in Cousins with Jeremiah. That future seems set in stone... until some core-shaking events bring Conrad (her first love) back into Belly's life. On the brink of adulthood, she's at a crossroads, and she has to decide which brother has her heart after all Looking for even more recommendations? Check out our list of the best shows on Prime Video for tons more streaming suggestions worth watching. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
