If you ranked the most spoofed horror movies of the ’90s, I Know What You Did Last Summer would be right up there at the top. The Kevin Williamson-penned screenplay was imitated by The Simpsons, Scary Movie, hell, even Dawson’s Creek got a lick in, but its campiness and laughably stale acting instantly made it a cult classic in the slasher canon.
What followed were four different instalments and a flop 2021 TV series under the same name, and now, a legacy sequel in the vein of Williamson’s Scream franchise revival in 2022. The expectations weren’t particularly high when it was announced that Jennifer Kaytin Robinson would be writing a 2025 reinvention of the series. Still, given the director’s track record with Gen Z-ready comedies (Do Revenge is an instant-girls-night-in classic), expectations went from nothing to… maybe this could be okay?
It’s been almost 30 years since the summer of 1997, when a group of four friends accidentally ran a man over, dumped his body, and were subsequently haunted by a blood-thirsty, hook-wielding fisherman. And in a very unfortunate twist of fate, another group of hot young adults find themselves in the same predicament. This time, though, he’s levelled up and got himself a harpoon.
Another group of hot young adults find themselves haunted by the hook-wielding fisherman
Millennial heroes Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt make an enjoyable return, alongside a cast of young Hollywood talent including Outer Banks’, Madelyn Cline, The Studio’s Chase Sui Wonders, and model Gabbriette who makes her acting debut. As with the original, characters are steadily picked off one by one, with the violence escalating to a thrilling climax, of course, on a boat.
Sui Wonders plays up to the ‘final girl’ trope with ease, balancing blood-curdling screams with the kind of feistiness that makes you believe she could probably be the last one standing. But really, nobody’s safe here. Swooping in to assist her in tracking down the masked killer, Love Hewitt reprises her role as Julie James, now a band T-shirt-wearing, cool professor of trauma psychology, and Prinze Jr. is a gruff bartender (with a surprisingly great skincare routine), scarred by his past but practical in his advice to the spiralling youngsters.
‘Nostalgia’s overrated,’ Love Hewitt quips in the rushed final third of the film. And while you find yourself rolling your eyes at some of the navel-gazing, I Know What You Did Last Summer still maintains some of its charm. The stabbing, harpooning, slashing, and hanging nod nicely to the ‘who’s next?’ fear of the original, and the fresh crop of youngsters trying to escape the demonic fisherman give the film enough zest that it doesn’t feel exhaustingly meta. But maybe we should give the reboots a break for the moment, yeah?
★★★
In cinemas worldwide now.
