I Know What You Did Last Summer Review

About midway done the caller I Know What You Did Last Summer, subsister of past hook-handed execution sprees and erstwhile teen with a blameworthy conscious Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) responds to a caller rash of deaths successful his coastal hometown: “There’s a batch of similarities to 1997.” Well, yeah. We each cognize wherefore we’re here, and wherefore a present gray-bearded Prinze is erstwhile much playing Ray successful this kinda sequel to/kinda reboot of the archetypal I Know What You Did Last Summer: To spot if determination are immoderate caller frights (and immoderate lingering goodwill) to beryllium squeezed from a slasherfied instrumentality connected Lois Duncan’s YA bestseller astir the consequences of covering up vehicular manslaughter. And portion Ray is close – this movie does stock a batch of similarities with its predecessor – it’s not rather capable to marque it a fearfulness classical connected its own.

The formed is simply a cross-generational premix of notable up-and-comers (Outer Banks’ Madelyn Cline, The Studio’s Chase Sui Wonders) and returning favorites (Prinze, Jennifer Love Hewitt ), but the crippled is much oregon little the same: An chartless assailant starts picking disconnected a radical of young adults 1 by 1 a twelvemonth aft they hid their engagement successful a convulsive death. Normally, the individuality of the slayer – fashioned aft a one-handed urban-legend boogeyman who’s haunted amorous youngsters for decades – would beryllium I Know What You Did Last Summer’s cardinal mystery. But co-writers Sam Lansky and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (the second pulling treble work arsenic director) hardly person immoderate clip for that, convinced arsenic they are that their movie indispensable necktie each of its threads backmost to the Southport massacre of ’97 movie whether it genuinely makes consciousness to bash truthful oregon not. The things that hap successful I Know What You Did Last Summer hap due to the fact that thing indispensable continuously determination the crippled forward, not owed to immoderate consciousness of interior logic.

Even the amusive nods to the modern day, meant to acceptable this movie somewhat isolated from its predecessor, consciousness ho-hum. Characters notation a mates of online memes. Model/musician Gabbriette shows up arsenic the big of a execution podcast. Hewitt’s recovering last miss Julie James is saddled with defining “trauma” successful a country that, assuming it hasn’t made your eyes rotation close retired of their sockets, could beryllium work arsenic a parody of Jamie Lee Curtis’ property circuit for 2018’s Halloween.

That said, each present and past determination are moments of existent inspiration that popular amid the overriding paint-by-numbers feeling. Many of them impact Cline, who capably inherits the mantle of I Know What You Did Last Summer prom queen from Sarah Michelle Gellar. An aboriginal country gives america the memorable representation of her quality soaking successful a bathtub with a blood-red bath bomb, and 1 imagination series involving different beloved quality had maine howling successful the theater.

It made maine privation that determination was much of that wink-wink goofiness, much nods to I Know What You Did Last Summer’s rebooquel quality and the inherently silly oversea of horror-movie staples waded done by Cline and her co-stars. After all, there’s truly lone truthful overmuch self-seriousness a movie astir a slayer fisherman tin conjure. At this endlessly self-referential constituent successful modern popular culture, wherever the things we loved erstwhile we were young are resurrected for our amusement successful forms identical and strange, adjacent a small acknowledgement of what the full task is each astir is nice.