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Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' should get the hook
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 ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The Fisherman in action in Columbia Pictures "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Brook Rushton/Sony Pictures Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.
UPI
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- UPI
Movie review: 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' fumbles horror, legacy
1 of 5 | Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline and Tyriq Withers, from left to right, star in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment LOS ANGELES, July 16 (UPI) -- I Know What You Did Last Summer, in theaters Friday, is not a very good horror movie. With unsatisfying fan service, it is not a good legacy sequel either. The film, the fourth in the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise, is set in Southport, N.C., the same town where the original 1997 movie took place. It too centers on a group of friends who cover up a roadside accident and are subsequently stalked by a killer with a fisherman's hook for a hand. This sequel opens with Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) returning to Southport for her friends Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy's (Tyriq Withers) engagement party. Their high school friend, Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) also attends, and when they discover old classmate Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) working as a caterer, they invite her for a drive to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. After two fakeouts, the actual accident is caused by Teddy, who seemingly hits and kills a pedestrian, then convinces his friends to leave by promising he called someone for help. If this franchise is good for anything, hopefully it is to convince people never to leave the scene of an accident. When Ava returns next year for Danica's wedding, a lot has changed. Danica now hangs out with Stevie regularly, and is engaged to a different man due to Teddy spiraling after the incident. When the killings begin, the first several victims were not even involved with the crime. While they add to the body count, their deaths interminably prolong any danger to the main cast, and dilute the threat to the characters actually involved in the coverup. There are more fake jump scares than genuine peril. The killer's fisherman slicker, at least, is scarier than the '90s incarnation. I Know What You Did Last Summer hints at the cycle of history repeating itself when society fails to learn from it. The Southport police, with the help of Teddy's father, Grant (Billy Campbell), have effectively swept 1997 under the rug. When the copycat killings begin, authorities spin both the accident and the summer's very public deaths, as unfortunate coincidences. They also offer a pastor, basically sending thoughts and prayers. The theme of whitewashing the past could have been relevant; instead, it's simply an excuse to rehash the franchise without interrogating it. On her return trip, Ava hooks up with a stranger, Tyler (Gabriette Bechtel), at the airport. Tyler turns out to be a true crime podcaster investigating the 1997 murders in Southport. She serves to dump a ton of exposition in her recordings, and also takes Ava to an iconic location from the original so the filmmakers can recreate that movie's ominous mannequins covered in plastic. I Know What You Did Last Summer is not the first legacy sequel to make podcasters characters. The 2018 Halloween and Terrifier 3 both have true crime podcasters, and the Ghostbusters sequels literally have a character named Podcast. Not only is this sequel set in the same place as the 1997 film, but original stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return as their characters, Julia and Ray. Hewitt and Prinze are great sports but many of the callbacks to their previous movies feel condescending, not loving. One callback is so silly it is insulting. Portraying the surviving original characters as trauma survivors has also become an old trope. It is appreciated when handled with the sensitivity of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween or Neve Campbell in Scream, but I Know What You Did Last Summer just wants to get Hewitt to say her famous lines again. The eventual unmasking of the killer is not satisfying either. A lot of dialogue has to be spoken really fast to even justify it making sense. Finally, I Know What You Did Last Summer has the gall to set up yet another sequel in a mid-credits scene. If they're following the 1998 sequel, they'll have to call it I Still Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Sky News
5 hours ago
- Sky News
Should children of online sex offenders receive more support?
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈 "John" is a convicted sex offender. "Ava" is his daughter. She was only told about her father's crimes weeks after his arrest. But the impact of those crimes could last a lifetime. Online sex offenders receive counselling as part of their rehabilitation, as do their victims. However, there is currently no support for the families of those perpetrators - despite the devastation they have caused. In today's Sky News Daily, our correspondent Katerina Vittozzi tells us about her in-depth interviews with both John and Ava (not their real names) and examines the system that offers more help to offenders than those they leave behind. Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@ in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
Sky News
21 hours ago
- Sky News
'My world crumbled': The teenage girl who found out her dad was a child sex offender
Ava was heading home from Pizza Hut when she found out her dad had been arrested. Warning: This article includes references to indecent images of children and suicide that some readers may find distressing It had been "a really good evening" celebrating her brother's birthday. Ava (not her real name) was just 13, and her brother several years younger. Their parents had divorced a few years earlier and they were living with their mum. Suddenly Ava's mum, sitting in the front car seat next to her new boyfriend, got a phone call. "She answered the phone and it was the police," Ava remembers. "I think they realised that there were children in the back so they kept it very minimal, but I could hear them speaking." "I was so scared," she says, as she overheard about his arrest. "I was panicking loads because my dad actually used to do a lot of speeding and I was like: 'Oh no, he's been caught speeding, he's going to get in trouble.'" But Ava wasn't told what had really happened until many weeks later, even though things changed immediately. "We found out that we weren't going to be able to see our dad for, well we didn't know how long for - but we weren't allowed to see him, or even speak to him. I couldn't text him or anything. I was just wondering what was going on, I didn't know. I didn't understand." Ava's dad, John, had been arrested for looking at indecent images of children online. We hear this first-hand from John (not his real name), who we interviewed separately from Ava. What he told us about his offending was, of course, difficult to hear. His offending went on for several years, looking at indecent images and videos of young children. His own daughter told us she was "repulsed" by what he did. But John wanted to speak to us, frankly and honestly. He told us he was "sorry" for what he had done, and that it was only after counselling that he realised the "actual impact on the people in the images" of his crime. By sharing his story, he hopes to try to stop other people doing what he did and raise awareness about the impact this type of offence has - on everyone involved, including his unsuspecting family. John tells us he'd been looking at indecent images and videos of children since 2013. "I was on the internet, on a chat site," he says. "Someone sent a link. I opened it, and that's what it was. "Then more people started sending links and it just kind of gathered pace from there really. It kind of sucks you in without you even realising it. And it becomes almost like a drug, to, you know, get your next fix." John says he got a "sexual kick" from looking at the images and claims "at the time, when you're doing it, you don't realise how wrong it is". 'I told them exactly what they would find' At the point of his arrest, John had around 1,000 indecent images and videos of children on his laptop - some were Category A, the most severe. Referencing the counselling that he since received, John says he believes the abuse he received as a child affected the way he initially perceived what he was doing. "I had this thing in my mind," he says, "that the kids in these were enjoying it." "Unfortunately, [that] was the way that my brain was wired up" and "I'm not proud of it", he adds. John had been offending for several years when he downloaded an image that had been electronically tagged by security agencies. It flagged his location to police. John was arrested at his work and says he "straight away just admitted everything". "I told them exactly what they would find, and they found it." The police bailed John - and he describes the next 24 hours as "hell". "I wanted to kill myself," he remembers. "It was the only way I could see out of the situation. I was just thinking about my family, my daughter and my son, how is it going to affect them?" But John says the police had given information about a free counselling service, a helpline, which he called that day. "It stopped me in my tracks and probably saved my life." 'My world was crumbling around me' Six weeks later, John was allowed to make contact with Ava. By this point she describes how she was "hysterically crying" at school every day, not knowing what had happened to her dad. But once he told her what he'd done, things got even worse. "When I found out, it genuinely felt like my world was crumbling around me," Ava says. "I felt like I couldn't tell anyone. I was so embarrassed of what people might think of me. It sounds so silly, but I was so scared that people would think that I would end up like him as well, which would never happen. "It felt like this really big secret that I just had to hold in." "I genuinely felt like the only person that was going through something like this," Ava says. She didn't know it then, but her father also had a sense of fear and shame. "You can't share what you've done with anybody because people can get killed for things like that," he says. "It would take a very, very brave man to go around telling people something like that." And as for his kids? "They wouldn't want to tell anybody, would they?" he says. For her, Ava says "for a very, very long time" things were "incredibly dark". "I turned to drugs," she says. "I was doing lots of like Class As and Bs and going out all the time, I guess because it just was a form of escape. "There was a point in my life where I just I didn't believe it was going to get better. I really just didn't want to exist. I was just like, if this is what life is like then why am I here?" 'The trauma is huge for those children' Ava felt alone, but research shows this is happening to thousands of British children every year. Whereas suspects like John are able to access free services, such as counselling, there are no similar automatic services for their children - unless families can pay. Professor Rachel Armitage, a criminology expert, set up a Leeds-based charity called Talking Forward in 2021. It's the only free, in-person, peer support group for families of suspected online child sex offenders in England. But it does not have the resources to provide support for under-18s. "The trauma is huge for those children," Prof Armitage says. "We have families that are paying for private therapy for their children and getting in a huge amount of debt to pay for that." Prof Armitage says if these children were legally recognised as victims, then if would get them the right level of automatic, free support. It's not unheard of for "indirect" or "secondary" victims to be recognised in law. Currently, the Domestic Abuse Act does that for children in a domestic abuse household, even if the child hasn't been a direct victim themselves. In the case of children like Ava, Prof Armitage says it would mean "they would have communication with the parents in terms of what was happening with this offence; they would get the therapeutic intervention and referral to school to let them know that something has happened, which that child needs consideration for". We asked the Ministry of Justice whether children of online child sex offenders could be legally recognised as victims. "We sympathise with the challenges faced by the unsuspecting families of sex offenders and fund a helpline for prisoners' families which provides free and confidential support," a spokesperson said. But when we spoke with that helpline, and several other charities that the Ministry of Justice said could help, they told us they could only help children with a parent in prison - which for online offences is, nowadays, rarely the outcome. None of them could help children like Ava, whose dad received a three-year non-custodial sentence, and was put on the sex offenders' register for five years. "These children will absolutely fall through the gap," Prof Armitage says. "I think there's some sort of belief that these families are almost not deserving enough," she says. "That there's some sort of hierarchy of harms, and that they're not harmed enough, really." 'People try to protect kids from people like me' Ava says there is simply not enough help - and that feels unfair. "In some ways we're kind of forgotten about by the services," she says. "It's always about the offender." John agrees with his daughter. "I think the children should get more support than the offender because nobody stops and ask them really, do they?" he says. " Nobody thinks about what they're going through." Although Ava and John now see each other, they have never spoken about the impact that John's offending had on his daughter. Ava was happy for us to share with John what she had gone through. "I never knew it was that bad," he says. "I understand that this is probably something that will affect her the rest of her life. "You try to protect your kids, don't you. People try to protect their kids from people like me."
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘It hurts my feelings': Jeremy Renner on ex-wife's claim he tried to kill her
Jeremy Renner, best known for his role as Hawkeye in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is speaking publicly for the first time in years about allegations made by his ex-wife during their contentious 2019 custody battle. In an interview with The Guardian over the weekend, Renner reflected on the emotional toll the accusations took on him and his daughter, Ava, whom he had with Sonnie Pacheco. The Canadian actress and model was married to Renner for just 10 months before filing for divorce in December 2014. 'Being accused of things you've not done, right? That doesn't feel good to anybody,' he said. 'It certainly doesn't feel good when you're a celebrity and it's known to everybody.' Renner dismissed the claims. 'It's all the salaciousness that happens out there,' he said. 'It's clickbait, and it hurts my feelings and it dehumanises people.' In 2019, during a highly publicized custody dispute, Pacheco accused Renner of threatening to kill her and himself, and alleged the actor fired a gun inside their home while their young daughter was in another room. The pair now share joint custody of Ava, who is 12. 'Her mom and I get along very well, and we're in each other's lives,' Renner said. 'It's lovely.' The interview also explored a defining moment in Renner's recent life: the near-fatal snowplow accident on New Year's Day 2023 that left him with more than 30 broken bones, a collapsed lung and other serious injuries. The incident occurred outside his Lake Tahoe home as he tried to stop a 14,000-pound snowcat from hitting his nephew. This year, he published a memoir, 'My Next Breath,' about the incident and his long recovery, which he said has reshaped his priorities toward philanthropy and family. 'I've never been more connected and more open and more vulnerable and more loving,' Renner told The Guardian. 'It's an honor to be alive.' The event, themed 'Protecting Lake Tahoe: Balancing Sustainable Recreation and Conservation,' will take place on Aug. 6 at Valhalla Tahoe — a venue favored by the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who co-founded the event alongside Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
