‘I Know What You Did Final Summer time’ assessment: Nonetheless has an excellent hook

There isn’t any preserving killer down. If there’s one factor slasher movies have taught us within the a long time they have been hacking throughout our film screens it is that it does not matter what number of occasions you shoot ’em within the head – they’re all the time popping up for another scare. Or years’ value of extra scares, even. And with the current revival of the Scream franchise it was solely a matter of time earlier than different entries within the late ’90s slasher growth slipped into their ol’ rain slickers and obtained again to doing what they do greatest.

Enter I Know What You Did Final Summer time, Do Revenge director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s enjoyable, frisky, and diabolically foolish legacy sequel to Jim Gillespie and Kevin Williamson’s identically-titled 1997 movie. Precisely just like the 2022 Scream “re-quel” we’re right here launched to a contemporary crop of fairly younger issues who instantly discover themselves on a particularly recognizable killer’s chopping block. And just like the Woodsboro teenagers, these youths should additionally hunt down the battle-scarred survivors of the sooner franchise (our outdated buddies Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr) to decipher whodunit, earlier than all of them discover themselves fish meals.

Even with its personal hook, I Know What You Did Final Summer time all the time lived in Scream‘s gigantic ghost-faced shadow, so it is solely proper and sincere for the brand new movie to go forward and embrace such xeroxed shenanigans. It is completely true to the spirit of the franchise. Nonetheless, it does supply a brand new surprises.

I Know What You Did Final Summer time places a brand new teen gang on the hook

Regardless of technically being a sequel to 1998’s I Nonetheless Know What You Did Final Summer time, 2025’s I Know What You Did Final Summer time kicks issues off with a primary act which may have you ever questioning if we’re not simply watching a full-on remake of the unique. Gang of teenagers events within the fishing village of Southport, North Carolina. Gang of teenagers unintentionally kills any person. Gang of teenagers covers it up and makes a pact to by no means converse of it once more till gang of teenagers begins getting hunted down by a hook-wielding maniac with a predilection for fancy stationery. You already know, the best hits. Standard!

In Robinson’s movie, the core gang has been aged up. Of their mid-twenties, these are former highschool besties reuniting for the engagement get together of their most esteemed (i.e. wealthy as hell) buddies. First, we meet Ava (the extraordinarily likeable Chase Sui Wonders from Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies), arriving again in her haunted hometown of Southport, after a couple of years away. The factor is, Southport ain’t so cursed anymore. The a long time since we had been final right here within the authentic movie watching youngsters placed on ice have been extraordinarily good to the city. It is now a shining jewel of the Jap seaboard, largely because of the vulturish actual property efforts of the mega-wealthy Grant Spencer (Billy Campbell). He swooped in when costs had been low (attributable to that aforementioned teen slaughtering) and gave the place a correct glow up. (Horror motion pictures and actual life agree: actual property builders will all the time be the true villains.)

It is Grant’s strapping son Teddy (Tyriq Withers, Do not Inform Mother the Babysitter’s Lifeless) who’s getting hitched — or because the banner above the get together’s entrance places it, “hooked,” wink wink — to former magnificence queen and Ava’s BFF Danica (Outer Banks‘ Madelyn Cline). Add on Ava’s former flame Milo (Jonah Hauer-King, The Little Mermaid‘s Prince Eric) and everyone’s estranged townie buddy Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon, Tiny Lovely Issues) who’s unexpectedly working the get together. We have now been launched to our new core gang, a few of whom will clearly not make it out of this city alive.

This slasher requel likes to swerve once we do not count on it

A well-known scene…or is it?
Credit score: Brook Rushton / Sony Footage

Like the unique I Know What You Did Final Summer time, a hit-and-run seals the fates of the movie’s characters. Nonetheless, this re-creation of the well-known scene performs out with surprises, giving us our first style of the smorgasbord of tips Robinson’s obtained up her directorial sleeve. Her script (co-written by Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick) is simply playful sufficient with our expectations to maintain issues energetic, marching to its personal loony beat even whereas stepping by way of acquainted tracks. It is a remix of types, figuring out what we wish and completely giving us a whole lot of precisely that, however in methods bizarre sufficient to maintain us guessing. Late within the movie, one character would possibly exclaim “Nostalgia’s overrated!” however the film does not skimp on it. It simply tweaks it a bit of, sufficient for some enjoyable occasions.

The truth that Robinson’s movie is cribbing from Jaws simply as a lot as it’s from the ’90s slasher franchise it is re-doing needs to be a sign that this ain’t your cool auntie’s identical I Know What You Did Final Summer time. For instance, wealthy man Spencer’s oligarchical methods would possibly work within the youngsters’ favor in relation to protecting up their vehicular manslaughter. However as their previous comes again to hang-out them within the type of that hook-wielding psychopath together with his all-caps handwritten threats, Spencer’s need to maintain his crown jewel of a neighborhood conspiracy-free means the children cannot belief his in-pocket police power to assist. They’re too busy waving their arms saying “Nothing to see here!” to see the our bodies piling up behind them.

The youngsters are alright in I Know What You Did Final Summer time (aside from that knife of their again)

Madelyn Cline as Danica.
Credit score: Matt Kennedy / Sony Footage

It is refreshing to see how genuinely likeable most of our important characters are in I Know What You Did Final Summer time. That was largely true within the authentic movie as nicely — Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) eternally! Nevertheless it’s vital contemplating how keenly targeted the 1997 movie was on its important foursome; screenwriter Kevin Williamson was principally delivering a model of his personal Dawson’s Creek with gentle bloodletting. The brand new I Know What You Did Final Summer time maintains a whole lot of that sense of dialed-in intimacy. It is one hundred pc keyed into who these youngsters are, so even after they’re being dumb, the film celebrates them for it. Or at the very least empathizes. And that is plainly good to expertise when so many of those motion pictures can not seem to stand their very own characters.

That is very true in Wonders and Cline’s portrayal of the connection between Ava and Danica, greatest associates who by no means miss an opportunity to inform one another how a lot they love each other, even when the strain of their deceitful historical past weighs on them. Slashers typically chorus, to their detriment, from making us care an excessive amount of about characters as a result of they’re, by style’s definition, meat for the grinder. All of the hacking and stabbing can cease being entertaining if we care an excessive amount of in regards to the hacked and slashed. However there’s a needle to be threaded in making us root for the protagonists, and Robinson and her actors thread it nicely. In consequence, we (whaddyaknow) discover ourselves additional scared for these youngsters discovering themselves in fixed unspeakable hazard. Everyone wins!

It is the weirdness the place I Know What You Did Final Summer time actually wins out

THEY’RE BAAACK.
Credit score: Matt Kennedy / Sony Footage

The factor in regards to the I Know What You Did Final Summer time franchise that all the time made it stand sufficient other than Scream and the opposite ’90s slashers to thrive was its bizarre little swerves — Anne Heche and her taxidermy farm anybody? Or what about Hewitt’s actually weird apocryphal story about an precise baby writing and directing her notorious “What are you waiting for, huh?” second?

Fortunately, Robinson nails that left-field whackadoo vibe as nicely. There are miniature subplots involving a bisexual horror podcaster (Gabbriette Bechtel) sporting covetable Helen Shivers merch, a cult-like pastor (Austin Nichols) preserving a serial-killer-ish scrapbook, and do not even get me began on the dream sequence that drew spontaneous applause from my viewers. The phrase “trauma” is uttered right here as many occasions as Jamie Lee Curtis landed it in her Halloween press run, however by some means it really works as a blessed, figuring out laugh-line. There’s simply sufficient winking occurring to make it go down simple, leaving the heaviness of so-called “elevated horror” to the previous.

Nowhere is that extra evident within the return of Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. as I Know What You Did Final Summer time‘s authentic survivors, Julie and Ray. Like Neve Campbell, Courteney Bass Cox, and David Arquette in Scream, these actors have sat with the legacy of the unique movie for 20 years, and soar proper again into it with the right mixture of seriousness and goofiness. Julie and Ray have loads to show the subsequent technology about surviving — not simply nice massive hooks flying at their faces, however embracing style silliness in its purest type.

Right here, Robinson’s movie leans into the enjoyable of horror legacy, taking part in to the strengths of the ’90s authentic and throwing curveballs at a brand new technology. It is all a studying course of: when life stabs you, you strike a pose in your designer denims and classic rock tee and stab it the hell again, child.

I Know What You Did Final Summer time opens in theaters July 18.