Latest news with #legacy sequel
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What Convinced Freddie Prinze Jr. to Return to ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer'
Twenty-eight years after the original, I Know What You Did Last Summer is back — and so are stars Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The new film follows five friends who inadvertently cause a deadly car accident and cover it up, then a year later a stalker sends them taunting messages about their crime. Realizing that the stalker is imitating a famous serial killer, the group seeks help from the two survivors of the Southport massacre of 1997, in Prinze and Hewitt's characters. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Review: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt Return for a Legacy Sequel Not Worth Screaming About Why Lola Tung and Nicholas Alexander Chavez Were Cut From 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Jennifer Love Hewitt Teases the Jaw-Dropping Ending of the New 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' At the Los Angeles premiere on Monday, Prinze told The Hollywood Reporter that he would usually have been hesitant to return to the franchise, but he was friends with director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson beforehand and was impressed by her 2022 film Do Revenge. 'She said, 'Look, I know you're going to pass, but let me just pitch you my version of this and let you see my vision and let's see if you dig it.' So it started by just telling me where these characters were at all these years later and how they dealt with this traumatic event and I liked that, and then she pitched me this wild vision that she had for the movie and I fell in love with it,' the actor recalled. 'I told her, 'Yo, I'm your guy' before they even wrote a script. I was like, 'I know it's going to work out, you and [writer] Sam [Lansky] will write a great script, she's a great writer anyway. I was like, 'You guys will write a great script but I'm in and we'll make everything work.' It was pretty easy once I heard the idea.' Prinze walked the carpet with wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, who also co-starred in the original film but did not return for the 2025 version as her character had died. He joked about coming back without his spouse, 'I don't think she cared — that's not a F.O.M.O. thing, she's not insecure like that.' The star also admitted that he doesn't 'see much of what I do [but] I've seen this movie; I really love it, I'm really proud of it, I'm grateful to be in it. I'm grateful to see Jen's vision from beginning to end in a studio movie, which is a harder way to make films these days because the notes are kind of crazy. But she was able to circumnavigate all of those speed bumps and maintain her vision, preproduction to postproduction to tonight, and I'm really proud and excited to see it again with all of these people.' In addition to the veteran actors, the new friend group is composed of Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers and Sarah Pidgeon. Cline — who is currently filming the final season of Outer Banks — noted that she grew up in South Carolina and 'everybody loves I Know What You Did Last Summer. And also, it's funny because some of our crew and our production also worked on the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, so we're all big fans, it's a legacy film. It's iconic — it's very, very cool to be passed the baton and have their blessing.' I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters on Friday. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' Review: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt Return for a Legacy Sequel Not Worth Screaming About
'So here we are, it's 1997 all over again,' one of the characters says tellingly in I Know What You Did Last Summer. That line, of course, is not from the original film in the series but rather its same-titled 'legacy sequel,' which, if you're not familiar with Hollywood parlance, basically means 'Let's see if we can squeeze more dollars out of this sucker.' Slavishly reminiscent of its predecessors, the film also features so many Easter eggs that it mainly serves as canned nostalgia. Those throwbacks, ironically, are the most fun aspect of this new installment, which is unlikely to garner the same sort of cult following as the 1997 original. The concept remains the same, with a group of extremely good-looking young people (here in their mid-20s rather than teen years) covering up a violent death for which they were responsible. Cut to a year later, when one of them receives a note containing the ominous titular message. Not long after, a killer armed with a metal hook and clad in a fisherman's slicker and hat begins gruesomely killing them one by one. More from The Hollywood Reporter What Convinced Freddie Prinze Jr. to Return to 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Jennifer Love Hewitt Teases the Jaw-Dropping Ending of the New 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' Sarah Michelle Gellar's Goal Is to "Bring Back Everyone Who Has Died" on 'Buffy' for Reboot In this version, they're a fairly bland group, consisting of Danica (Madelyn Cline) and her fiancé Teddy (Tyriq Withers); Ava (The Studio's Chase Sui Wonders), their friend who's returned to celebrate their engagement; Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), with whom Ava has a romantic past; and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), their estranged friend from the other side of the tracks, who reunites with them for an ill-fated drive to watch fireworks from a stretch of highway accurately named Reaper's Curve. None of them winds up being the first victim of the stalking killer. That would be Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), Danica's equally bland new fiancé, with whom she got involved after breaking it off with Teddy. He didn't have anything to do with the incident that has spurred such violent revenge, but his demise serves the purpose of setting the murderous events in motion while still leaving the central cast members in play. Not receiving help from the local police chief or the town's chief real estate developer (Billy Campbell), who has a vested interested in covering things up, the group turns to two of the survivors of the previous rampage that took place nearly three decades earlier. They're Ray Bronson and Julie James (fan favorites Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt), who, needless to say, are still scarred by their experiences. Julie, at least, has made good use of her past, becoming a professor who teaches her students about the nature of trauma. For much of its running time, I Know What You Did Last Summer tediously lurches from one violent slashing to another, which would be fine if any of the kills showcased visual originality or genuine thrills, which they don't. It's not until the final act that the film goes seriously bonkers, throwing out so many red herrings and plot twists revolving around the true identity of the murderer that Agatha Christie would throw up her hands in disgust. It doesn't help that the more entertainingly colorful supporting characters, including a creepy pastor (Austin Nichols) and a sexy podcaster (Gabbriette Bechtel, very amusing) whose show is called 'Live, Laugh, Slaughter,' are sadly underutilized. Fortunately, Prinze Jr. and Hewitt are on hand to provide some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings (which is not a sentence I ever envisioned writing). Both are in excellent form, providing connective tissue to the original film and its sequel. And they're also good for some laughs, as when Ray, upon hearing one of the prospective victims announce that they should all simply flee the area and head to the Bahamas in a boat, sagely advises: 'For reasons I won't go into, I wouldn't do that.' Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Netflix's Do Revenge) and her co-screenwriter Sam Lansky display clear affection for the franchise, as evidenced by some fun cameos from unbilled performers whose appearances garnered delighted screams from the audience (be sure to stay for the end credits). But they haven't succeeded in breathing new life into a tired franchise that, creatively speaking, should have remained dead. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Solve the daily Crossword
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Movie Review: Nostalgia and gore collide in the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'
The new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' pretty much follows the plot of the 1997 film of the same name: A bunch of well-to-do young people get stalked and killed by a vengeful killer in a rain slicker with an ice hook. It even has some of the same stars. 'It's 1997 all over again. It's so nostalgic,' says Freddie Prinze Jr., who stars in both, this time around. Responds another returning star, Jennifer Love Hewitt: 'Nostalgia is overrated.' That line deserves a big laugh from a so-called 'legacy sequel' that blends old and new to resurrect a franchise long dormant but isn't sure where it sits in 2025. A wink here, an eye-gouging there. By aping the structure of the original — maddeningly calling itself by its predecessor's name — the new version of 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is both too tentative a step forward and yet too reliant on the past to fully break free of that gravitational pull. The new installment follows a group of post-high school friends (Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon and Tyriq Withers) who cause a fatal car wreck on July Fourth and swear to keep their involvement a secret. But a year later, someone wants them dead, offering the anniversary warning: 'I know what you did last summer.' This is a franchise that got a bit lost in the shadow of the 'Scream' dynasty, but still helped make household names of such Gen X heroes as Prinze, Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe. A relaunch makes sense but it's pretty vapid stuff until the OGs arrive. In fact, you may find yourself rooting for the killer. The five youngsters who have grown up in Southport, North Carolina — 'the Hamptons of the South' — mostly live lives of nepo privilege, drinking from flasks, driving Volvos, munching on macarons and taking Adderall. One lives on a 156-foot (48-meter) yacht with three decks. The movie mostly muddles along like a TV special, only coming to life when Prinze and Hewitt arrive, asked by the hunted youngsters for guidance. After all, the duo survived the 1997 attacks. 'Get them before they get you,' Hewitt's Julie advises. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sam Lansky, mixes gruesome stabbings, harpoon impalings and corpses displayed on hooks like fish at the dock with jokes that needle everything from Nicole Kidman's cheesy AMC commercials to our fling with true-crime podcasts. The filmmakers make half-hearted attempts to explain the ripple effects from trauma but we're not here for generational pain; we're here for the slashy-slashy. There is one dream sequence with a surprise returning OG that's worth the ticket price alone. The tone is all over the place — whimpering victims one moment, horny the next. The police in Southport are nefarious — in a nod to 'Jaws,' they cover up the murders for fear of turning off tourism — but there's a 'Scooby-Doo' vibe here (even a mention) that seems less playful than idea-deprived. There are elements of spoof, too, like a vain woman who has just lost someone close in a grisly bloodbath but worries about her skin care. Look, we hate to break it to you, it's not going to end well for many of this privileged set, as they hunt whoever is hunting them. Coherence is also stabbed a lot because a clear motive for the mass murder is really hard to understand. No matter: We get the scene when a scared victim with a massive knife sticking out of her back shoots a harpoon gun at the hook killer, and that's why we came in the first place. We also get Hewitt screaming her catchphrase, mocking her attacker: 'What are you waiting for?' Well, what are you waiting for? 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' a Sony Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R for 'bloody horror violence, language throughout, some sexual content and brief drug use.' Running time: 111 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
