Online you can find 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' — a sequel that shares with the original not only the title and the fisherman's hook of the killer, but also the characters and even most of the ideas. About how the slasher explores generational...
Just under 30 years ago, in the unremarkable American town of Southport, residents began locking their doors a little tighter: a killer in a fisherman's slicker and with a fisherman's hook wiped out part of the local youth, along with some of the town's prospects. However, years erase even such things, and although it seemed the blow was insurmountable, Southport in the 21st century turned out to be a rapidly developing and quite charming town with an abundance of new buildings.
In the original 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' four friends—two couples with complicated relationships—celebrated Independence Day and the victory of one of them (Helen Shivers played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) in a beauty pageant. After losing control of the car following a night of too much fun, they hit a man and dumped his body in the river. It was precisely for this that the fisherman killer sought to kill them, though he didn't spare some of their fellow citizens either.
In the new film, five friends become the cause of an accident, but in a much more indirect way. This time, Independence Day coincides with the engagement of Danika (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), representatives of the local golden youth. The story that unfolded in '97 as a tragedy with a hint of social commentary repeated itself in '25, now more as a comedy—though not always intentionally.
The friends, whose relationships have soured, meet again only a year later. The occasion hasn't changed—they're celebrating Danika's engagement, but this time not to Teddy (they broke up), but to his slightly drinking friend, who was apparently in love with her. She seems to be in love with him too, but in a somewhat sporadic way. In any case, Danika's family happiness is cut short again at the most interesting moment—she receives a note in which an anonymous person says they know what they did last summer, and soon after, Danika loses her fiancé. He, accordingly, loses his life, and the friends lose their peace.
In some other film, Danika's matrimonial misfortunes could have become an independent plot—either Gothic (every engagement is a tragedy) or detective ('The Bride Wore Black,' above all). Here, however, they turn out to be merely a prelude to a series of murders—initially bloody, in the best traditions of the slasher, then moderately dramatic. Danika and her friends, primarily Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), formally the main character but constantly trying to fade into the background, attempt to conduct their own investigation and, of course, find survivors of similar events thirty years ago.
Watching the successes of this group is not so much a dubious pleasure as an extremely optional one. Their ranks gradually thin, but never at the pace you expect: the avenger with the hook is surprisingly slow, and over nearly two hours of screen time, this, rather than a series of brutal murders, becomes his main crime.
As a slasher, the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' loses to the original and even more so to those . There's no particular fun here, the characters are hard to remember, and you think of the killer not so much as scary but how hot he must be in that slicker in summer. Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt save things a bit, but it's worth understanding that if Prinze Jr. can save your film, something is already seriously wrong with it.
When the word 'slasher' is mentioned, iconic maniacs like Freddy Krueger and creative chopping of stupid characters come to mind. We'll tell you where this formula came from, who was the main
Open materialNevertheless, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is far from the worst representative of its genre. But its main genre, of course, is not slasher but legacy sequel. This is no longer 'Crime and Punishment' or even 'Crime and Punishment 2,' but an exploration of how past events—in this case, a big massacre—changed everyone on both sides of the screen. It's not as overtly 'meta' as 'Scream,' but, say, Prinze Jr.'s bewildered look can be equally explained by the current state of his career and the internal state of his character.
Like all representatives of this internally sad genre, the film is literally preoccupied with the past and generational trauma. It pretends to be a slasher, tries to become a story about the power of female friendship in the finale, but it is primarily a film about the politics of memory. The Southport massacre, which once changed the lives of Prinze and Love Hewitt's characters, is now forgotten. The city develops as if nothing happened. The central plot device—the attempt to hide the past, cover up the crime—is repeated within the framework of urban, social history. And if the heroes are justly condemned for trying to cover up their own crime, the desire to erase someone else's life and death from collective memory in the interests of developing domestic tourism is only welcomed.
Of course, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson doesn't have an abundance of thoughts on such a promising topic, but more than you'd expect, and the central one, if you look under the gloomy slicker, is that punishment can be avoided, but not consequences. Unlike the same reboot of '', the sequel to 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' looks and feels like real cinema, not an exercise in corporate marketing. Alas, real cinema can sometimes be boring, somewhat unnecessary (did you seriously wait for the return of the killer with a hook?), and generally of non-obvious merits, but in the era of remakes, reboots, and requels, that's not even a complaint anymore.
Can you resurrect the dead? In life, no; in cinema, yes, or rather revive and renew a franchise. The psychopath in a mask with a knife returned to the screens to find out how much fans l
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