“I Know What You Did Last Summer” is back.
The original film, made in 1997, was loosely based on Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel of the same name, and was a slasher movie in the guise of a morality play – a group of numbskull teens (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr.) run over a pedestrian and, a year later, are viciously bumped off one-by-one. The cosmic joke of the movie was that, yes, we were rooting for them to survive (they were all so cute, after all) even if we knew, deep down, that they probably deserved it. (A less morally complicated sequel, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” was quickly churned out the following year. A direct-to-video sequel came out in 2006. There was also, incredibly, a streaming series in 2021.)
Now, the title and general conceit are back with “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” a legacy sequel that takes the survivors from the first one (Hewitt and Prinze Jr.) and places them into a narrative involving a new group of youngsters (Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon and more) who are stalked one year after a similar crime.
But what did they actually do last summer? Read on to find out.
Major spoiler warning for the new “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” If you read this without seeing the movie, a faceless fisherman will track you down.
What did they do last summer?
See, this is part of what makes the movie so interesting – and, for some people, so frustrating. The first movie had an inciting incident that was much more concrete – the kids, joyriding and drinking, not paying attention to the road, are responsible for someone’s death. They run an anonymous pedestrian over. And they pay for it later.
In the new movie, they are on the side of the road, watching the Fourth of July fireworks, as one does in a small seaside town (we guess). One of them (Withers) wanders into the middle of the road; he’s drunk and can’t help himself. He starts quoting Nicole Kidman’s AMC pre-roll (yes, really) and generally acting a fool. After one car comes careening around the corner (dubbed Reaper’s Curve, of course), nearly hitting them, a second car comes a little later. Except this pickup truck doesn’t drive off; it hits the barrier between the road and a sheer cliffside.
Unlike the more callous kids in the first movie, our new bunch tries to help. But after they get scared (the passenger tries to break through the glass), they let go of the truck’s flatbed and it falls down the cliff and into the ocean. They could have attempted to help him (although it’s unclear how, exactly – it was steep!) but instead decide to go back to the house of one of the kids (Withers, again), get their stories straight, and pretend like it never happened.
Wait, they don’t call the cops?
No. And this seems to be their true sin in this movie – not that they were responsible for the accident but that they chose not to say anything.
How far does this coverup go?
Well, Withers’ father is played by former Rocketeer Billy Campbell. Campbell is close with the mayor and chief of police; he’s also a real-estate developer who is trying to make sure that nobody associates the quaint community of Southport with any kind of nastiness. He arranged for a similar coverup to the 1997 crimes. Now he’s doing it again with this poor guy’s death on the side of the cliff. Anything to make sure that housing and development costs stay sky high!
Does this actually work?
It’s an interesting choice, for sure, and some critics have called out the filmmakers’ decision to not have the new kids directly involved in the death that starts off this horrific chain of murders. But it somehow feels right, for a story set in contemporary America, to have lead characters who attempt to do the right thing, but it ends up being performative and illusory. They’re just as selfish and out for their own good as before, but it’s underneath the veneer of altruism and doing the right thing. Now if the rest of the movie works as well as the set-up, that’s an entirely different discussion.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” is in theaters now.
