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After 30<\/span>\u00a0years, fans can breathe a\u00a0sigh of relief \u2013 Julie James and Ray Bronson are back! Now, \u200b\u201c<\/span>Who are Julie James and Ray Bronson\u2026and what fans?\u201d I\u00a0hear you ask. These are minor quibbles in the bigger picture: for some reason they\u2019ve put together a\u00a0legacy sequel to Jim Gillespie\u2019s 1997<\/span> slasher underdog,\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to grasp why\u00a0<\/span>this\u00a0<\/i>version of\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer<\/i> was made \u2013 the bubble for horror legacy sequels has effectively burst after endless, largely bad iterations. Had this been greenlit six months later, it would have likely been a\u00a0hard reboot; instead, we get an odd, ungainly hybrid with an identity crisis. As in the original, here a\u00a0new group of hot young people accidentally kill a\u00a0man in a\u00a0car accident on the Fourth of July and swear each other to secrecy. A\u00a0year later, a\u00a0masked fisherman rocks up in town wielding a\u00a0big hook to exact his revenge\u2026 but this time the group can turn to the original 90<\/span>s survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr), for\u00a0help.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It is a\u00a0strange, sporadically entertaining blend of far more ideas than you\u2019d expect from, well, an\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer\u00a0<\/i>legacy sequel. Director and writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson grapples with wellness culture, gentrification, institutional misogyny and the life altering effects of trauma, all the while executing some of the most loyal fan service I\u2019ve ever seen to two films from the late 90<\/span>s and early 00<\/span>s that not many people remember, let alone care about. Even as someone who adores the original film (to the point that one side character\u2019s shared surname with the first film\u2019s director did not go unnoticed) it is still mind-boggling that this strange not-quite-reboot made it to screen. This is\u00a0<\/span>Avengers: Endgame\u00a0<\/i>for a\u00a0mostly unbeloved 90<\/span>s slasher \u2013 there is quite literally a\u00a0mid-credits scene with Jennifer Love Hewitt in Nick Fury drag teeing up a\u00a0sequel. The target audience is me, a\u00a0couple of my friends, and maybe 40<\/span> to 50<\/span> other people on planet Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n Since it makes so little sense to do a\u00a0slavish legacy sequel for\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer<\/i> of all properties, it gives Robinson extensive wiggle room to do whatever she wants.\u00a0<\/span>Scream<\/i>, its spoiled cousin, is a\u00a0roundly beloved franchise and was too important to screw up or fundamentally meddle with when they brought it back in 2022<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer<\/i> strikes out in far more compelling ways than that\u00a0<\/span>Scream\u00a0<\/i>sequel \u2013 which buckled under the weight of its ouroboric meta narrative \u2013 ever\u00a0did.<\/span><\/p>\n If\u00a0<\/span>I\u00a0Know What You Did Last Summer<\/i> has loftier ambitions than the average slasher, these are fatally cramped by the limitations of the IP<\/span> sandbox it\u2019s playing in. The film violently seesaws between paying homage to the original and carving its own path, with Robinson taking some big swings and misses several of them for purely technical reasons. The featherweight script (co-written with Sam Lansky) is too unserious to sell the film\u2019s absurd, intense finale, and the pair have a\u00a0strong affinity for tin-eared \u200b\u2018<\/span>girls rule, boys drool\u2019 feminism, peppering in baffling, entirely unironic lines about how the entire film\u2019s bloodbath could have been avoided \u200b\u201c<\/span>if men just went to therapy.\u201d This doesn\u2019t cohere with any of the characters\u2019 established personalities and creates tonal road bumps for the film. The direction leaves much to be desired too; when the film veers into horror territory, with frequent off-screen kills and often incoherent action, it offers little of the original\u2019s gripping tension.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n None of it really makes sense \u2013 both the plot when you think about it (a couple of scenes feel like active plot holes in light of the killer\u2019s identity) and the sheer fact this film got made. The original film is remembered for being a\u00a0refreshingly uncomplicated slasher about the era\u2019s biggest stars hooking up and getting hooked to death, so there\u2019s not much of a\u00a0tone or a\u00a0vibe to replicate. Yet Robinson, a\u00a0diehard fan, does her damndest, and the cast, in particular Gabbriette and Madelyn Cline, nicely evoke the original cast\u2019s charisma and preternatural good looks. The whole effort is admirable in a\u00a0surrealist way \u2013 there\u2019s one dream sequence that feels like you\u2019ve huffed paint \u2013 but this level of fealty to an IP<\/span> probably isn\u2019t healthy in the long\u00a0term.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n