Like its villain, this slasher re-quel makes some big swings – which mostly miss.
★★
Welcome back to Southport, NC.
Once again, as in the 1997 original I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of fresh-out-of-collage buddies – who are clearly all pushing 30 – accidentally cause the death of an innocent man in a car crash, then swear a pact to keep it secret. One year later, they receive the eponymous “I Know What You Did…” note, before a hook-wielding figure in a fisherman’s smock begins picking them off one by one.
This update all starts out promisingly, with a modest glimmer of the campfire urban-legend quality that the original at least partly managed to convey. But the script soon begins to disintegrate before our eyes. It was probably always poorly written, but it’s also been clumsily reworked in the edit – never more obvious than in a cemetery scene, where two characters appear in long shot (mouths conveniently barely visible) and rattle through some hasty ADR: “Why are we here again?” / “Because the bodies from the first killing spree are buried here, so there may be clues!” / “Oh yeah!” It’s the kind of patch job modern viewers can spot instantly, and it’s used liberally throughout to cover jarring narrative leaps.
As the plot accelerates, potential plot threads go nowhere. Characters are introduced, sketched out, then dispatched before they can play any meaningful role. This is a whodunnit-style slasher, but several of the intended red herrings feel like their scenes were hacked out entirely – they drift around the edges of frames, before being dispatched with a swing of the hook. Presumably this was in the name of ‘narrative efficiency’, or more likely to try cram in as many screenings per day as possible and wring every last penny from this film (that wasn’t even screened for UK press.)
As the plotting grows increasingly flimsy, it tries to fold in multiple legacy characters from the franchise. But rather than lending emotional weight, they crowd out the new characters, stealing focus and muddying the plot. The result is a film caught between generations, cut to the bone, and ending with a post-climactic flippancy where you can practically hear the screenwriter throwing in the towel.
There’s some camp fun to be had, with a ridiculous-but-fun murder-podcast goth girl (Gabriette), and a couple of nostalgia-pandering scenes (one made all the funnier by the terrible CGI, the other buried mid credits and teasing a sequel that will never come). But the only real note of quality comes from Madelyn Cline, who brings genuine charm and comic timing to what begins as a stock ‘bratty bimbo’ role. She deserves better. Not least she deserves to play someone who isn’t ten years below her actual age.
In the meantime, please let this re-quel craze finally die. And when it does, put another one between its eyes, just to be sure.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is in UK cinemas from today. Run – I give it a week.
Whitlock&Pope 