While the dialogue is clunky, there's still plenty of schlocky fun to be had here with more depth than I expected.
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Horror franchises never really die. Interest crests and falls and you might enter some fallow years where future famous people star in the movies, but at some point the studio is going to circle back and make an honest to goodness sequel and reboot with a new cast of attractive young people to dice up. So in a movie landscape where Halloween got a new trilogy and Scream is back, it was only a matter of time before the B-level flicks like I Know What You Did Last Summer were brought back. And if you can bring back some of the old cast? Even better. Doesn't mean the movie will be any good, but we can give it a go. So let's see if this reboot/sequel has any gas in the tank.
The Setup
Set in the modern day in the same sleepy ocean-side town as the original, the film follows five friends who accidentally cause a deadly traffic accident. A year and a cover-up later, the friends' reunion for an engagement celebration turns sour when it becomes clear that someone knows what they did last summer...and they want revenge.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this movie isn't terrible. In fact there's an awful lot I like about it. But it does have a big problem that keeps holding it back. So before I address that let's get into what works.
Great Slasher Sequences
Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's career progression has been any interesting shift of movies with female protagonists and traditionally female-oriented genres that have gotten darker and darker. We started with a breakup romom called Someone Great, shifted into dark comedy with Do Revenge and now we're in horror with this one. And this genre fits her really well.
Especially in the slasher sequences. Something that's very frustrating about a lot of slasher movies is how feckless a lot of the intended victims are. I recently saw a YouTube video where someone parodied the genre by pretending to a girl being pursued by a killer who immediately falls to the ground and starts butt scooting while screaming "No!" over and over again, and man if it didn't hit.
Thankfully almost all of the sequences in I Know What You Did feel like pitched battles for survival where our visibly fit young people all do their best to fight back, maybe even get in some solid crack or two, or actually fend the killer off long enough to ask for help...that's too late for someone else.
They're also aided by a lot of action movie camera work that highlights eache dodge or strike and some unique uses of locations.
A Frustratingly Familiar Undercurrent
Would it surprise you to learn that this movie has some timely themes? Cause boy oh boy does it.
As much as the movie is about facing guilt for your mistakes (a hallmark of this particular franchise), one of the bigger and more impactful themes is the public and powers that be's desire to bury anything unpleasant.
Something we find out through the course of the movie is that Southport has rebranded itself as a bougie seaside tourist town and is looking to move on from and in many cases outright bury any mention of the killings that occurred almost two decades ago.
So when more young people end up dead, the town leadership pulls a mayor from Jaws (nice nod since we're still at a seaside town) and tries to downplay the seriousness. There's no reason to worry everyone. This is still a nice town where nothing bad happens. The girl who was visibly violently murdered was actually really depressed and completed suicide.
Which is...far more relevant than I'd like it to be in an era where people will outright deny reality or at least a third of the American population wanted to pretend that COVID wasn't serious.
It means that not only are our heroes being pursued by a malevolent killer, they're also not being treated seriously in a sadly believable way. Great example of how people with bad intentions can weaponize things like greed and self-interest to pursue their own ends.
But The Dialogue, Oh The Dialogue
Part of the reason I made a point to say that I think Jennifer Kaytin Robinson is a solid director is because she's also a co-writer for this movie. And while so much of this movie works really well, the dialogue doesn't.
The dialogue is going for a lot, all at the same time. It wants to be schlocky B-movie, give each of the main players enough cringe dialogue so that you kinda want them to get killed every now and then with more than a few meta-style jokes about the kind of movie we're in.
And I rarely do this, but I'm going to hone in on one bit of dialogue to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
It happens during the first kill, which is a solid and frightening setup. One of our leading ladies has gotten the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" message at her bridal shower and now she's understandably freaking out. Her fiancee suggests that she go upstairs and decompress with some music and a bath. She puts on headphones and drops a bath bomb while future husband drowns himself in alcohol.
He hears a noise, investigates the noise and is then hit with a speargun. Future wife is oblivious to carnage downstairs. Badly wounded and having trouble moving this guy starts doing the on the ground back pedaling I talked about before (nice inversion) and says "I can give you whatever you want. Here's the access info to my crypto wallet!"
And it took everything in my power to not yell, "shut the fuck up" at the screen.
And it took everything in my power to not yell, "shut the fuck up" at the screen.
My incredibly negative feelings about crypto aside and how drunk and oblivious this character is supposed to be, this kills the tension in the moment and also puts a stake into the exact date it was written. It's reeks of two folks around my age who heard too many people in LA parties talk about crypto and decided to drop it in like a buzzword.
And the movie is full of these clunkers at the worst possible moments where things are either supposed to be tense or sexy and someone says something that completely kills the vibe of the scene to be "funny."
And the movie is full of these clunkers at the worst possible moments where things are either supposed to be tense or sexy and someone says something that completely kills the vibe of the scene to be "funny."
Which really stinks because the movie is infinitely better when it indulges in things like freaky dream sequences to heighten the emotional anguish for our leading lady or all of its pretty straight forward kill scenes.
If they do happen to get a sequel, I really hope they lean into the stuff they did so well this first time around.
The Verdict: Just Stop Talkng
While the dialogue is clunky, there's still plenty of schlocky fun to be had here with more depth than I expected. 5/10
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