It might be the funniest single moment in any summer-movie trailer, and it is not exactly intentional. In both iterations of the coming attractions for I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of young people bedeviled by a raincoated, hook-wielding slasher maniac are clearly seeking help from a mysterious figure they’ve never met before. The figure turns to face them, revealing… Jennifer Love Hewitt! It’s on!!!
Is it, though? At first glance, I Know What You Did Last Summer seems like the last, desperate gasp of the legacy sequel. Scream, other late-’90s slasher movie written by Kevin Williamson, was a genuine event that spawned two big hit sequels and was a natural candidate for a 2020s revival. I Know What You Did Last Summer was… basically an unofficial Scream sequel itself, another Williamson-penned slasher in the murder-mystery mode that did surprisingly big business circa Halloween 1997, seemingly in part out of anticipation over Scream 2, which was then just months away. (Call it the Stargate effect, after the 1994 sci-fi movie that seemed like it tapped into fanboy anticipation for Star Trek: Generations.) I Know spawned its own quickie sequel; I Still Know What You Did Last Summer did OK numbers in fall 1998 (because of Jack Black’s bit part, maybe?!), but there was enough dropoff that the world moved on (this was a thing people did sometimes back then) and the final sequel was a direct-to-video cash-in. There was also a TV series, apparently, just like there was with Scream.
In other words, it’s the kind of movie that seems ripe for maybe a clever remake, not a remake featuring cameos from beloved (?!) characters like Julie (Hewitt) and, ah, the guy Freddie Prinze Jr. plays (Freddie Prinze Jr.). Other members of the semi-all-star quartet anchoring the first movie, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe, are dead (although, it’s also a horror franchise, so who knows). And anyway, the original movie is more about a hooky (sorry) premise than teen-movie star power. Adapted from a 1973 YA novel by Lois Duncan, it’s a classic use of horror-movie guilt: Four teenagers seem to accidentally kill someone in a hit and run; a year later, they’re stalked by someone who may be their victim. It was the perfect story for the post-Scream era, where slashers were briefly reconfigured as whodunits, as well as a strong starter horror for younger audiences, not too transgressive or gnarly for plenty of late ’90s sleepovers.
It doesn’t seem out of bounds, then, to say that maybe Hewitt’s Julie isn’t a fascinating enough character to anchor even the last act of a remake-quel. In the latest trailer, she can be heard offering priceless advice such as: “Whoever’s doing this, it’s personal to them.” (Ah, so the man in the raincoat doing themed kills preceded by highly specific threats isn’t doing this at random? Julie, your wisdom is unsurpassed!) At one point, one of the characters appears to be Mousetrapped. It all feels like something that should have been re-enacted by the cast of Riverdale five years ago; director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson even directed the Camilla Mendes-starring Do Revenge for Netflix. It’s a self-conscious throwback to the “’90s teen movies” that Mendes’ Veronica name-checked on Riverdale, and which themselves were mostly just pastiches of movies from the decade before. Real snake-devouring-tale stuff.
And yet. AND YET! Maybe there is something kind of irresistibly stupid about making a new I Know What You Did Last Summer, not least because this is the first one to actually hit theaters during the actual summer. The first movie takes place partially over the Fourth of July weekend, and there’s a nice little tension between the quaint beach-town tourism of their hometown and the world outside that a manslaughter rap could keep them from exploring. In other words, it’s a teen movie where some of the callousness is built into its premise, rather than something to be cynically laughed at or stumbled over. Maybe there’s even some value in pairing some buzzy newcomers (like Outer Banks‘ resident hottie Madelyn Cline) with a couple of teen movie escapees like Hewitt and Prinze and putting them all back into a situation where the characters clearly don’t know much of anything except what they did that summer. It may be absurd to revive I Know What You Did Last Summer in a way that expects audiences to care about continuity. But maybe franchises could use an entry where looking back is an actual horror for once.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
