Latest news with #KevinWilliamson
Wall Street Journal
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' Review: Oops . . . They Did It Again
Millennials adore the 1997 slasher film 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' just as they do 'Hocus Pocus' and 'Space Jam.' The taste of millennials is hereby called into question. Based on a 1973 novel by Lois Duncan, it was written by Kevin Williamson, also the writer of 'Scream' and the creator of 'Dawson's Creek,' whose pop-culture-drenched characters, especially his swaggeringly insolent women, and steady stream of teasing references to genre conventions made him one of the defining voices of Gen X. 'Last Summer' starred a Mount Rushmore of 1990s teen idols: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe.
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
I Know What You Did sequel is hooked on setting up another sequel
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER ★★ MA. 111 minutes. In cinemas Like many young horror fans, I raced to see I Know What You Did Last Summer when it came out in 1997. But it proved a letdown, especially compared to the massively successful Scream, scripted by the same writer, Kevin Williamson, the previous year. Where Scream broke the fourth wall with the regularity of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, this hasty follow-up was just another slasher movie, with a single gimmick given away in the title. The victims lined up for the slaughter are being punished for their role in a hit-and-run accident – so while we're not precisely invited to side with the killer, there's a sense in which they had it coming. The advantage of remaking this kind of film is that it's not too hard to improve on the original. But the new I Know What You Did is disappointing in its own right, even though the director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has a few more ideas than Williamson (like him, she disregards the nominal source material, a 1973 young adult novel by Lois Duncan that barely qualifies as horror). Although it's not evident straight away, the movie is not a remake but a 'legacy sequel,' taking place in the same fictional universe as its predecessors (there'a brief shout-out to the 1998 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in which the survivors of the first instalment go through it all again in the Bahamas). In the tourist town of Southport, North Carolina, the roads are still slippery, the police are still useless, and history appears to be repeating. Once again, a group of young people with everything to live for are implicated in a fatal accident and decide to walk away. And once again, rough justice is meted out by a hook-wielding killer whose intentions are announced in scrawled anonymous messages. But the very fact that this has happened before adds a layer of Scream -like self-awareness. Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who survived the ordeal the first time round, has become an academic specialising in trauma, though it's her practical experience that comes in handy when the heroine Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and her friends show up in search of advice. The movie has a whole knowing retro side: I would bank on Robinson being a fan of Heathers and Wild Things, and there's even a touch of Jaws, via the character of a bigwig real estate developer (Billy Campbell), whose main concern seems to be how the killings will affect his income.
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
I Know What You Did sequel is hooked on setting up another sequel
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER ★★ MA. 111 minutes. In cinemas Like many young horror fans, I raced to see I Know What You Did Last Summer when it came out in 1997. But it proved a letdown, especially compared to the massively successful Scream, scripted by the same writer, Kevin Williamson, the previous year. Where Scream broke the fourth wall with the regularity of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, this hasty follow-up was just another slasher movie, with a single gimmick given away in the title. The victims lined up for the slaughter are being punished for their role in a hit-and-run accident – so while we're not precisely invited to side with the killer, there's a sense in which they had it coming. The advantage of remaking this kind of film is that it's not too hard to improve on the original. But the new I Know What You Did is disappointing in its own right, even though the director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has a few more ideas than Williamson (like him, she disregards the nominal source material, a 1973 young adult novel by Lois Duncan that barely qualifies as horror). Although it's not evident straight away, the movie is not a remake but a 'legacy sequel,' taking place in the same fictional universe as its predecessors (there'a brief shout-out to the 1998 I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in which the survivors of the first instalment go through it all again in the Bahamas). In the tourist town of Southport, North Carolina, the roads are still slippery, the police are still useless, and history appears to be repeating. Once again, a group of young people with everything to live for are implicated in a fatal accident and decide to walk away. And once again, rough justice is meted out by a hook-wielding killer whose intentions are announced in scrawled anonymous messages. But the very fact that this has happened before adds a layer of Scream -like self-awareness. Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who survived the ordeal the first time round, has become an academic specialising in trauma, though it's her practical experience that comes in handy when the heroine Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and her friends show up in search of advice. The movie has a whole knowing retro side: I would bank on Robinson being a fan of Heathers and Wild Things, and there's even a touch of Jaws, via the character of a bigwig real estate developer (Billy Campbell), whose main concern seems to be how the killings will affect his income.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
I Know What You Did Last Summer review – fun 90s slasher revival hooks us back in
Rushed into production after the surprise success of 1996's Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer has forever lived, and suffered, in the same bracket. Sure it's another slasher with another cast of unblemished faces and sure it's also written by Kevin Williamson but it's always been a far simpler, straighter, sillier film. Scream was trying to reinvent the wheel while I Know What You Did Last Summer was just trying to keep it going. As a franchise, it then quickly became the very thing Williamson was poking fun at in the first place with a rubbishy Bahamas-set sequel (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer!) and, at the time, an inevitable, tossed off, straight-to-video follow-up (I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer!). People quickly gave up caring what anyone had been up to during any summer on record and as the subgenre died, it wisely followed. But as Hollywood continues to fixate on millennial nostalgia, history is repeating itself as a revival of Scream (with two new films both hitting bigger than expected and a third on the way) is now being followed by a return for the fisherman, still thrashing away in the shadow of Ghostface, grunting dumbly while his predecessor delivers a self-satisfied lecture on the state of genre film-making (like Scream, there was also a limp TV resurrection that's best ignored). Expectations lowered, there's enough hokey fun to be had here, the familiar formula – kids do a bad thing, someone tortures them for it, with a standard 2020s uplift – new cast meets old cast. It means a return for 90s heartthrobs Jennifer Love Hewitt (who's been cashing in with a role on TV's absurd procedural 9-1-1) and Freddie Prinze Jr (who's been appearing in films you definitely haven't seen), bringing back one-note characters that were never more then chess pieces but doing it well (they share a solid one-on-one scene that's more substantial than anything yet given to the returning Scream leads). Like Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode who became an alcoholic headmistress in Halloween H20 (a far superior sequel than anything in David Gordon Green's aggressively stupid trilogy), LoveHewitt's Julie James is now working in education (a professor!) and she's dragged back to her home town of Southport when a group of twentysomethings receive a familiar note, a year on from a preventable accident. The sharp young cast, led by Bodies Bodies Bodies standout Chase Sui Wonders, Glass Onion's Madelyn Cline and Stereophonic's Tony nominee Sarah Pidgeon, are all stronger than the characters they've been given, their dynamic made less effective without the tragedy of high school innocence ending and with an unwise attempt to reconfigure the opening accident. In trying to upend expectations, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who made one of Netflix's sharpest and funniest teen comedies Do Revenge) messes with the beats a little too much and never really finds a way to smartly justify why the friends wouldn't have fessed up in the beginning. But what Robinson does understand is that the original two films were both slickly made studio horrors underlined by a real sincerity and her redo is both ravishingly glossy (it looks like a real movie unlike 2022's Scream which looked like a Netflix movie) and taken just about seriously enough without resorting to easy wink-wink smugness. When the script, co-written by journalist and author Sam Lansky, does try to inject humour, it's mostly of a limited LA brand, referencing guided meditations and astrology but not doing much with it (I was genuinely shocked that vaping wasn't also used as a source of comedy). It's not annoying enough to distract but it's never quite as funny as it could be. While the first film did achieve some genuinely jolting set pieces (Sarah Michelle Gellar's final chase scene remains a seat-edge highpoint), there's a lack of equivalent suspense with an uptick in gore used instead. The death scenes are certainly gnarly but there's a rhythm that's slightly out of step and Robinson is far more comfortable with the soapy mystery of it all, keenly aware of the franchise's origins in high school paperback storytelling (the first was based on a 70s young adult novel) and there's a propulsive snap to the Scooby Doo plotting (a character even references the show at one point). So while the double-bluff finale might lack tension (both sequences taking place in the daylight is a real atmosphere-killer), the gleefully absurd reveals almost make up for it. There's something charmingly deranged about this kind of hyper-specific fan service, appealing to a select few with the brash confidence that everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. There's not only a surprise dream sequence cameo but a mid-credits sequence that's one of the battiest fanfic indulgences I have seen outside of a Marvel movie (am I, a 90s teen who grew up on these movies, being ruthlessly, and successfully, targeted?). Early buzz has suggested that a younger audience doesn't really know what happened last summer and an older audience doesn't really care and so it's possible that this will live on mostly as a pop culture curio. But at a time of nostalgia overload (Clueless, Legally Blonde and Urban Legend are next), Robinson finds a way to make her attempt not exactly necessary but unpretentiously pleasurable enough for that not to really matter. There might not be a next summer but this makes for an entertaining last hurrah. I Know What You Did Last Summer is out in Australian cinemas on 17 July and in US and UK cinemas on 18 July
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
I Know What You Did Last Summer review – fun 90s slasher revival hooks us back in
Rushed into production after the surprise success of 1996's Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer has forever lived, and suffered, in the same bracket. Sure it's another slasher with another cast of unblemished faces and sure it's also written by Kevin Williamson but it's always been a far simpler, straighter, sillier film. Scream was trying to reinvent the wheel while I Know What You Did Last Summer was just trying to keep it going. As a franchise, it then quickly became the very thing Williamson was poking fun at in the first place with a rubbishy Bahamas-set sequel (I Still Know What You Did Last Summer!) and, at the time, an inevitable, tossed off, straight-to-video follow-up (I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer!). People quickly gave up caring what anyone had been up to during any summer on record and as the subgenre died, it wisely followed. But as Hollywood continues to fixate on millennial nostalgia, history is repeating itself as a revival of Scream (with two new films both hitting bigger than expected and a third on the way) is now being followed by a return for the fisherman, still thrashing away in the shadow of Ghostface, grunting dumbly while his predecessor delivers a self-satisfied lecture on the state of genre film-making (like Scream, there was also a limp TV resurrection that's best ignored). Expectations lowered, there's enough hokey fun to be had here, the familiar formula – kids do a bad thing, someone tortures them for it, with a standard 2020s uplift – new cast meets old cast. It means a return for 90s heartthrobs Jennifer Love Hewitt (who's been cashing in with a role on TV's absurd procedural 9-1-1) and Freddie Prinze Jr (who's been appearing in films you definitely haven't seen), bringing back one-note characters that were never more then chess-pieces but doing it well (they share a solid one-on-one scene that's more substantial than anything yet given to the returning Scream leads). Like Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode who became an alcoholic headmistress in Halloween H20 (a far superior sequel than anything in David Gordon Green's aggressively stupid trilogy), LoveHewitt's Julie James is now working in education (a professor!) and she's dragged back to her hometown of Southport when a group of twentysomethings receive a familiar note, a year on from a preventable accident. The sharp young cast, led by Bodies Bodies Bodies standout Chase Sui Wonders, Glass Onion's Madelyn Cline and Stereophonic's Tony nominee Sarah Pidgeon, are all stronger than the characters they've been given, their dynamic made less effective without the tragedy of high school innocence ending and with an unwise attempt to reconfigure the opening accident. In trying to upend expectations, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who made one of Netflix's sharpest and funniest teen comedies Do Revenge) messes with the beats a little too much and never really finds a way to smartly justify why the friends wouldn't have fessed up in the beginning. But what Robinson does understand is that the original two films were both slickly made studio horrors underlined by a real sincerity and her redo is both ravishingly glossy (it looks like a real movie unlike 2022's Scream which looked like a Netflix movie) and taken just about seriously enough without resorting to easy wink-wink smugness. When the script, co-written by journalist and author Sam Lansky, does try to inject humour, it's mostly of a limited LA brand, referencing guided meditations and astrology but not doing much with it (I was genuinely shocked that vaping wasn't also used as a source of comedy). It's not annoying enough to distract but it's never quite as funny as it could be. While the first film did achieve some genuinely jolting setpieces (Sarah Michelle Gellar's final chase scene remains a seat-edge highpoint), there's a lack of equivalent suspense with an uptick in gore used instead. The death scenes are certainly gnarly but there's a rhythm that's slightly out of step and Robinson is far more comfortable with the soapy mystery of it all, keenly aware of the franchise's origins in high school paperback storytelling (the first was based on a 70s young adult novel) and there's a propulsive snap to the Scooby Doo plotting (a character even references the show at one point). So while the double-bluff finale might lack tension (both sequences taking place in the daylight is a real atmosphere-killer), the gleefully absurd reveals almost make up for it. There's something charmingly deranged about this kind of hyper-specific fan service, appealing to a select few with the brash confidence that everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. There's not only a surprise dream sequence cameo but a mid-credits sequence that's one of the battiest fanfic indulgences I have seen outside of a Marvel movie (am I, a 90s teen who grew up on these movies, being ruthlessly, and successfully, targeted?). Early buzz has suggested that a younger audience doesn't really know what happened last summer and an older audience doesn't really care and so it's possible that this will live on mostly as a pop culture curio. But at a time of nostalgia overload (Clueless, Legally Blonde and Urban Legend are next), Robinson finds a way to make her attempt not exactly necessary but unpretentiously pleasurable enough for that not to really matter. There might not be a next summer but this makes for an entertaining last hurrah. I Know What You Did Last Summer is out in Australian cinemas on 17 July and in US and UK cinemas on 18 July
