Who knew?

What are we waiting for with the I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot?

Nostalgia. Is it overrated? Should we ever go back?

*Spoilers ahead for the original films.

While the original Scream (1996) and its immediate sequel are buried deep in my sicko soul, like Ghostface’s knife in my ribs, the opening gambit of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) never really stuck.

Like, I remember seeing it. Bits and pieces remain lodged, such as Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar biting the dust (as she would in Scream 2, too). For the most part, it was gone with the wind, so rewatching the first two films recently was wild.

Baby Anne Heche? Totally forgot she was in it. As did Scream scribe Kevin Williams, in fairness. Loosely adapting Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel, he loses sight of her promising red herring character, Melissa, who sloshes away aimlessly and doesn’t return for the sequel.

While I did recall the addition of pop star Brandy injecting some much-needed energy (and diversity) into the stupidly titled sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, I’d clearly blocked out a dreadlocked and dope-smoking Jack Black. I never caught the straight-to-video threequel or the TV show.

What I do clearly remember thinking, way back when, is that the opening gambit ain’t all that. Not terrible. Not dull. Just ok, and infinitely inferior to Scream.

Hooked?

A rewatch didn’t change that opinion. Opening with a very The Lost Boys-recalling swoop across the water to fishing outpost Southport’s winding road outta town, the prologue confused me all over, as it did in ‘97.

Who is this sadboy (David, played by Jonathan Quint) crying on the cliffs a year before the film truly kicks off? The long delay in filling in why he’s important, even though we never see him again, is piss-weak compared to, “Dude, they killed Drew Barrymore.”

What does work, ironically, is just how unusually shitty the core crew is. Jennifer Love Hewitt’s college-bound Julie is nice enough, next to Freddie Prinze Jr’s goofy fisherman Ray. He fell for co-star Gellar as snippy prom queen and wannabe actor Helen, who’s dating douchey jock Barry (Ryan Phillippe), the worst.

But Julie’s stand-up qualities soon sink without a trace. I’d forgotten just how rotten their response is, after hitting Muse Watson’s slicker-shrouded fisherman Ben after a boozy July 4^th blowout on a moonlit beach. Sure, if you untie that knotty intro, he killed David the year before, but they don’t know that yet.

Which leads to wild scenes when, finding Ben’s twisted body, it takes all of five minutes for them to white privilege “woe is me” their way, collectively, into ditching his body rather than face the consequences. It’s not like they just drive off, as suspiciously totalled as their wheels are. Nope, having already been seen on the road by Johnny Galecki’s geek Max, they inexplicably decide to drag Ben down to the docks and toss him into the sea, despite a handy cliff face being right there.

Even as their victim rouses, grasping Helen’s crown, boofhead Barry’s deep dive to retrieve it is simple erasing evidence they’ve been there, merrily leaving Ben to (not) drown. They are arseholes, and it’s very hard to root for their survival. So the exceedingly logic-light stalkerish slashing that follows is reasonably entertaining in a Final Destination way if you want them dead, like I did. But that’s not what director Jim Gillespie’s dopey film is doing, with very little psychological probing into their collective guilt when we jump one year later again.

Why does the killer take it out on an entirely innocent Max first?? It makes zero sense, until you read that his death was inserted after the fact, to raise the film’s stakes earlier, though I’d argue it entirely fails to do so. It’s also worth remembering that this was a rejected screenplay from Williams that got rushed into production off the back of Scream’s success.

It’s also perplexing why Ben waits exactly a year to enact his revenge on the fourth of July again. And while I get some level of him toying with his hit and runners, misty lipstick messages and all, the clean-up involved in revealing bloody bodies to freak them out, only to somehow vanish them without a trace almost instantaneously, two or three times, is pushing it. As is giving Gellar’s Helen a much better haircut, because why?

The big tease of Barry’s balcony offing and the genuine panic of Helen trapped in the back of a cop car reels you in. As does a well-staged department store sequence featuring the brutal slaying of Helen’s snooty big sister Elsa (Bridgette Wilson), a genuinely tense pulley lift escape and spooky loft mannequins, which have given me the willies since the Autons of my early Doctor Who-watching days.

But there’s a sluggishness to I Know What You Did Last Summer’s torturous backstory that appears to be called out by Jullie herself, via her infamous spin and cry of “What are you waiting for?” Combined with a disappointingly low body count and hardly any blood, it leads to frustration when only half the gang gets gutted.

Off the hook

I won’t waste too much time on fresh-from-mangling-Judge Dredd director Danny Cannon’s too dumb to function sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which entirely avoids addressing the previous film’s jump scare finale, as does the new outing.

Jumping forward yet another year, whatever that erroneous title might suggest, it starts strong enough before losing the Trey Callaway-penned plot. There’s a notable uptick in energy in the early university-set scenes. Finally, we see a fully wigged-out Julie, almost flunking and only narrowly avoiding gutting her wardrobe-raiding roomie Karla (Brandy, having the best time).

Julie and Ray are estranged, finally reckoning with their collective guilt and the fact that she accused him of being the killer. Not that this soul-searching lasts, with our final girl badgered into inviting her badly drawn beau into the not at all suss Bahamas trip they ‘win’ when Karla incorrectly identifies the capital of Brazil in a cold call competition. Again, Scream’s cold open this is not.

I’m not sure why Ben, on his annual psychotic break, goes to such lengths to get them to a spendy island, even if it is off-season. Don’t Look Now this is also not. And how, exactly, does he know where and when to ambush Ray on his way to join Julie and co? Why does he kill Ray’s mate Dave (soon-to-be Oscar-nominated, but not for this, John Hawkes)? Who cares?? Not Callaway!

Ben’s off-roading of Ray immediately removes the simmering tension between him and Julie, undermining what little the film has going for it. Subbing in Matthew Settle’s blah Will instead ensures even his eventual textbook horror movie villainous reveal is boring. Karla’s cocky squeeze Tyrell (Mekhi Phifer) is more welcome, with the couple way more interesting than the undynamic surviving duo.

But as soon as we get to the island, everything gets unbearably silly, played far too broadly comic via whatever Black is doing and the camp sneering of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine villain Jeffrey Combs as imperious manager Mr Brooks. The least said about a whiffy voodoo subplot involving Bill Cobbs, the better.

Sure, the body count increases, but I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is even less focused, almost entirely targeting random hotel employees. What exactly is Ben’s beef with working-class people trying to earn a living?

Of the new core, only Tyrell gets spiked, with Ben managing to kill an equal amount of his own family members before all’s said and gunned down.

Here we gouge again

All of this is a very long-winded way to say I didn’t really care about the franchise and had expectations as low as Ben’s watery non-sticking grave going into I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025). But I had a good time.

I’m a firm believer that horror doesn’t have to be ‘elevated,’ whatever that snooty tag implies. Trashy pulp can be enjoyed in the moment and promptly forgotten, with room enough for dumb scares and psychologically scarring ones that continue to niggle at our deep-seated fears decades on.

Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) from a screenplay she co-wrote with Sam Lansky, I Know What You Did Last Summer is both silly and smarter than the originals, reasonably successfully fusing legacy elements with the new kids on the Southport block, who aren’t necessarily more likable, but have their own thing going on.

Particularly in the TikTok-riddled slay-ings spouted by Glass Onion actor Madelyn Cline’s incurably online Danica, who’s delulu in an endearingly daffy way. It opens on her 4th of July engagement party to Philippe-recalling boorish jock Teddy (Tyriq Withers).

The Studio star Chase Sui Wonders’ bisexual Ava is back in town for the do and has history with Doctor Who incel villain Jonah Hauer-King’s gentle soul Milo, too. They also reconnect with Tiny Beautiful Things actor Sarah Pidgeon’s Stevie, a mopey former friend the gang cast adrift.

In another nod to the original, it’s all the jock’s fault again. Heading up the hills for a better view of the fireworks, Teddy goofs around drunk in the middle of the same bendy road, accidentally forcing a swerving car through the barriers. As it teeters on the edge, this time round, the gang attempts to help rather than immediately opt for violence. But the car plummets over the edge all the same.

Admittedly, this is a much weaker set-up than the original, with only one person culpable. Still, the new slicker-sporter, who at least quips about how unfeasibly sweaty this get-up is for a murder rampage conducted in the height of summer, doesn’t care.

After the official year-long wait, cue more menacingly scribbled notes. But Danica’s so unbothered by what went down in this latest road not-kill incident that she happily hosts her second 4^th of July engagement party, initiating the accompanying legacy rule that someone entirely unrelated to the incident will be gutted first.

As the trailer has extensively played, it’s Danica’s replacement fiancé, Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), who gets harpooned in the requel’s best kill, as she enjoys a suspiciously blood-red bath bomb with a mindfulness app on.

Everything old is new

While the subsequent kills in I Know What You Did Last Summer, unflashily lensed by cinematographer Elisha Christian, could and should have been more inventive from here, the repurposing of one key setting for a rematch chase is welcome. It has something to say about how the shape of small towns has changed, though perhaps I’m reading a bit too much into that.

There’s also an update on Jamie Kennedy’s rules-knowing Randy from Scream in the shape of Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel), a podcaster (of course) obsessed with the ’97 killings who hooks up with a returning Ava in an airport loo en route to recording her latest episode. With nowhere near enough screentime, there’s still fun to be had in her clueless sleuthing, priorities between storytelling and survival somewhat skewwhiff.

Again, it’s a reckoning with how a town with this history would, of course, have to put up with phalanxes of dark tourism. It’s as much why Teddy’s real estate mogul dad covers up his son’s fuck up as it is protecting him, keeping the cops in his pocket and a Jaws-recalling lid on hysteria. There’s even a sly dig at how unwilling the cops are to get involved in saving young women’s lives anyway.

Ava hightails it outta town, not to get the hell away, but instead hoping to recruit Hewitt’s now-lecturer Julie (well done on not flunking out) to the cause of keeping them alive. But Julie refuses to come home and fight for them, and good on her. Boundaries are healthy.

Prinze Jr’s Ray’s is also back, having swapped fishing for running a bar down by the docks. Divorced from Julie, he’s taken Stevie under his wing, bringing a careworn charm to the returning role, silver hair included. He also cautions the new lot against running away to the Bahamas, in the film’s wittiest aside, one of two nods to the first sequel, though the other’s too spoilery to mention here.

While the noobs are amusing enough, for better or worse, this is truly the legacy character’s film, heavily indebted to the ‘97 version. Awash with references from an old float rotting away in a cemetery storage shed, to a sassy dream sequence that elicited audible gasps in the screening I attended, it’s very much playing to the original crowd.

A little bit of nostalgia never hurt anyone, and I Know What You Did Last Summer has just enough investment in its cool kids to hook into a new generation.

Elsewhere

I whipped up guides to the upcoming Melbourne International Film Festival for Flicks and Time Out.

For the ABC, I shared why I adore sci-fi show Foundation.

At ScreenHub I review 28 Years Later and Jurassic World: Rebirth.

On stage, I review MTC’s Mother Play for Time Out, and for ArtsHub, I interview Bangarra artistic director Frances Rings about what it takes to lead a creative company.

And here are my thoughts on James Gunn’s Superman spin, plus rom-com A Nice Indian Boy.