SK: So, here we are. After a moderately successful reboot of the Scream franchise in 2022, we’re now seeing Hollywood have another crack with I Know What You Did Last Summer, directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. There’s a certain irony here. The first IKWYDLS came out quickly on the heels of the wildly popular Scream, and, like that film, was penned by 90s Hollywood wunderkind Kevin Williamson. But while Scream was laser sharp,  IKWYDLS was haphazard and adapted from a 70s young adult fiction book which was not a slasher (the author Lois Duncan was reputedly dismayed that her work was turned into a horror film just to sell tickets).

The result was a film that was mid-as-fuck. And despite heartthrobs like Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hewitt briefly stepping away from popular TV roles, it wholly lacked the qualities that made Scream a huge success. So, John, we’re now seeing remakes of films that maybe should not have been made in the first place. The snake is eating itself. By my calculations, based on this film, human beings have max 20 more years to live. What were your thoughts?

JM: Look, I understand why they did it. Even though the first IKWYDLS is, as you say, mid-as-fuck, it somehow became a bit of an icon. With no meaningful violence or sex (the qualities that had defined the early waves of slasher movies), and no real scares whatsoever, it really epitomises the anodyne culture of the early 2000s. Purely anecdotally, I remember IKWYDLS being on the TV all the time when I was a kid, but I don’t remember the infinitely superior Scream being shown at all (maybe Scream was more expensive).

The new IKWYDLS has the exact same premise as the original movie. A bunch of teens cause a car accident on a coastal road and leave their victim for dead. A year later, someone in a fishing slicker starts killing them one by one. Despite being identical in most respects to the original, the film is actually one of those sequel-reboots in the vein of the new Scream and Halloween, with members of the original cast returning, including Jennifer Love Hewitt.

We probably didn’t need to come back to this franchise or this era of slasher movies. But people seem primed for it. The audience at our screening were hooting and hollering like they were at a Trump rally. Was it justified?

SK: Define “justified.” To Hollywood, ‘justified’ means that the film can definitely recoup its production, marketing and distribution costs. Original properties are not doing that. Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 was an original concept and it flopped hard. The top 10 box office films currently are — with the exception of Sinners and F1: The Movie — sequels, reboots, reheats, live-action adaptions. Even F1 is, you know, “Sport: The Movie.” So, the lesson is, you need a pre-existing audience. But who the hell is the pre-existing audience for I Know? People who were young and horny in 1997? We’re so hooked on nostalgia and recreation, on chasing feelings, that we can’t remember whether we’re fans. It’s funny though; like Final Destination: Bloodlines, there’s a certain Generation Z disposability to these new entries. They seem like they’re made for Netflix. They have the quality of impermanence. The original looks very cinematic in hindsight. But sorry, we’ve still not talked about this film. Shall we try? Tell me two good things about it.

JM: Well, the set-up is pretty good. Just like the original, the fateful accident on the impossibly dangerous coastal road is easily the best part of the movie. I guess that’s one thing that was slightly unique about the first IKWYDLS, which kinda persists in the sequel (although in a much weaker form) – the characters are all meant to be bad, selfish people. They totally deserve everything that’s coming to them. The film could really have leant into this angle more and made some kind of easy comment about how completely desensitised to the suffering of others we’ve all become.

Beyond the opening – well, I thought the first kill with the speargun was pretty cool, although I actually can’t remember any of the others, which presumably means they weren’t anywhere near as impressive.

So that’s the good stuff, from my perspective. What are two things you disliked, despised, or even loathed about this movie?

SK: I don’t love or loathe anything in this movie really, because it doesn’t evoke a whole lot. Chase Sui Wonders, who plays the film’s female protagonist (i.e. the girl most likely in the slasher to survive), has star power and overall, I enjoyed her performance. But even here, the filmmaking seems lazy. They subvert the archetypal slasher heroine – typically a virgin – and make her bisexual and into choking. Does that get the film anywhere? Not really. Madelyn Cline is also quite good as Danica Richards, who’s perennially engaged, married or widowed to various substandard guys, who mercifully don’t last too long. If anything, the weakest performances come from Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.; there’s no reason they should be here. They look old and disinterested. I don’t want them in my slasher. And (sorry, I know I’m going on about this), you know, slasher films in the 1990s did not have actors from the 1970s reprising old bland roles to the cheers of people in the audience. I know we’re all waiting for the polar ice caps to melt to signal the end of days, but I felt a real chill when the audience cheered to Freddie Prinze Jr. showing up 30 minutes in, reprising his unforgettable role as “Ray Bronson.” I’d start stockpiling cans and munitions if I were you.

JM: Slashers should be an evergreen genre, but we haven’t had a particularly good one in a long time. Too many of them feel like they’re pitched at jaded millennials and older, rather than the teens who should be their natural audience. When was the last time we had a good moral panic about a slasher film corrupting the youth?

I agree that the performances in this film are generally pretty good. The film is actually pretty aggressively fine all the way through. The whodunnit aspect does maintain some interest, although about two-thirds of the way through it becomes apparent that there are no breadcrumbs for the audience to follow in order to discover the killer’s identity. In fact, the killer might as well have been selected at random by the screenwriters.

To be honest, I don’t have any strong feelings at all about this movie. I didn’t enjoy it, but it wasn’t especially unpleasant either. All those scenes at the marina did sort of make me want to go out on a boat sometime. 5/10

SK: Big time. Let’s go fishing. 5/10

 

I Know What You Did Last Summer is currently playing in cinemas.