I Know What You Did Last Summer

The second caveat I’d really like to cover is that it’s my personal belief that the horror genre is one of the most binary in terms of real value. I will say, I appreciate that I’m using a sliding scale to judge these movies. They aren’t either 10’s or 0’s all day long. So I’ll accept responsibility for that. But by and large, because horror supports a great many low budget entries, it feels like to me that there’s a sizable chasm between well made horror movies and utter refuse. Like I said, not everything fits on one pole or the other. But if you looked at the majority of titles in bulk, you’d find that what lingers in the middle is far less than the population on the low and high end of the spectrum. I’d also like to suggest that these two extremes are far from equal as well. If there’s any portion of the span more heavily populated, I would posit that the refuse wins out more often unfortunately. That’s not to say that every other genre is more balanced. This isn’t a comparison game. I’m simply notating that when it comes to horror, it seems rather easy to make something wretched than to actually succeed. And I would also implore that this has nothing to do with budget or casting all the time. Sure, Blair Witch Projects are few and far between. But they happen. I think it’s that invitation to the genre that is so open that anyone can potentially put together a horror movie with enough dedication, and if your submission is actually good, there’s a decent chance you can rise to the top. It’s still a lottery of sorts. I don’t think we are sitting on a lot of Paranormal Activities out there, outside of the NUMBER of sequels to the original in that specific stable of films, waiting in the wings to be discovered. But it feels like because the bar is a little different for horror films, it invites a broader audience to participate and not simply consume.

Ok, that’s quite a preface but I’d like to remind you of both points real quick before proceeding. First, I’m not the audience for these movies. I didn’t buy a ticket and I had no intention of seeing most of them. So my critique is as an outsider and I recognize that. Second, a good many horror movies are actually quite crap in general. To a greater degree, in my estimation, than other genres. So the fact that I’m exclusively watching horror movies I’ve not seen, several because I intentionally did not see them, means that when I crap on these movies, it’s as the unintended audience who is willfully watching a movie I actively avoided and that movie has a better than average chance of not being good. The reason I say all that is because I’m mostly about to shit all over this remake/reboot/re-whatever it technically is. I would also like to note that I have seen several movies this year I either avoided or was unaware of and genuinely enjoyed. So I do not have ridiculously high standards and I don’t arbitrarily crap on horror movies as a whole. When credit is due, I’m happy to call it out. I also try and go in with a good attitude, even if I knew it was a movie I didn’t intend to see. Ron has changed my mind several times on movies I had even already seen but not appreciated in the proper respects. So I’m also not completely static in my initial interpretations. There are movies I’m willing to give a second chance if I think a case has been made. And as I say that, if you believe there’s a second chance protest to be made for this film, you’re not going to convince me and you should probably stop reading now. I’m not entirely sure how or why you made it this far as is. I already said I’m going to really not be kind to this movie. So lets get into that part.

As always, I’ll try and mention whatever good I can about the movie so as to illustrate that I can see the good parts of a bad movie as well. Freddie Prinze Jr. was easily the standout in this movie for me. Jennifer Love Hewitt’s return as Julie was a welcomed sight as well. Even Sarah Michelle Gellar’s cameo was nicely done and actually added a thin layer of nuance that I really appreciated. To me, it showed that there really could have potentially been something here, maybe. While I wasn’t a huge FPJ guy in my younger days, I’ve really come to appreciate him and his contribution to entertainment in many capacities. He’s a very passionate actor with an amazing history growing up in the Hollywood machine and being a part of so many things, even before he ever began acting. Listening to him regale audiences with stories about his childhood and growing up around celebrities is very interesting. Seeing how dedicated he is to certain fandoms, specifically Star Wars and WWE, and the depths to which he invests himself and his efforts is remarkable. His longstanding, positive marriage to Sarah Michelle Gellar is equally notable and I think a testament to both of them. While I understood him to be a teen/20-something heartthrob in his heyday, I really enjoy him now as a whole celebrity and often enjoy watching clips or listening to him speak on any number of topics. I note him more than JLH in this film simply because he seemed to contribute a little more to the overall story. I didn’t time either of their on screen time but it seemed like Prinze Jr. just had more of a presence on screen than JLH did. I will say that she was a fantastic addition to the supporting cast though. I was very happy to see her join the production while the film was being made and I think her being a part of the project only made it better. Spoiler alert, which I don’t even really think I’m able to do that now since this one’s been out for a few months, Brandy’s cameo at the end was also a lot of fun. I don’t love that it implied they might return to this well one more time. I still believe even this entry was too much. But I get why they did it. Scream has had continued success over the years, even with a significant hiatus between some of the installments, and it’s still going. Not necessarily the juggernaut it once was, but it’s still garnering enough audience for them to keep making them. Being that Last Summer was a relative carbon copy when it came out, hoping to cash in on the craze that the first Scream created, it worked well enough to become it’s own little franchise. So dusting it off a few decades later to see if there’s any more cash in the tank makes sense as an idea. But it did not correlate to value on screen in my opinion.

A big part of Scream’s longevity is that the property is relatively portable whereas Last Summer simply is not. That’s definitive in the reveal of this movie. Ghostface is a legend. It’s a mantle that anyone can take up and begin killing and the reveal is the culmination of that iteration. It’s meta in nature so it allows itself some room to move around as well. It can look in on itself and comment on what it’s doing as part of the actual plot. So there’s some real ability to plug it into a lot of different scenarios over time and the notoriety of the legacy of those who have donned the mask and knife lives in infamy from story to story. It’s diluted in each installment a bit. Fatigue and the law of diminishing returns still plays a role. You can’t make infinite Scream movies and they’ll all be great. But the degradation each sequel incurs is manageable enough to to keep it alive. Last Summer does not benefit from this. The killer may be a measure of iconic but it’s bound to it’s own story. Scream proved that you could break away from Sidney and still tell a compelling story with other characters. They’ve not been prone to eliminate legacy characters to provide stability. It’s never fully functioned in solo iterations. So it’s far from a perfect vehicle on it’s own. But Last Summer’s killer does not have this same ability to traverse settings and maintain integrity on his own. He worked in the first and even second story. But there was a fair drop off in the sequel. I never even attempted the third film, which was straight to video. This film does eliminate that sequel from canon as it’s supposed to be a strict progression from the second film. They tried to work around this, to a degree. And I will say that I applaud the effort. In attempting to resurrect this franchise so many years later, there’s a lot of questions as to how you do that but the biggest one is always going to be “Why?” The real answer is always money. That’s a given. But I’m not a part of that equation. As the viewer, what’s my reason to see the film. It can’t just be nostalgia. If that was it, then I’ll go watch the first one and relive that. It was honestly ok at best in it’s own right. But the nostalgia adds enough cushion that it’s a fun watch. The time and space I would have consumed it brings back a time in life where nostalgia is prime. Having original cast returns bridges some of that answer with nostalgia. But again, we need a new audience to show up as well. So we can’t just rely on whoever might come back for that reason. Ultimately what we are hoping for is a compelling story. So I will give credit that they had significant hurdles with their antagonist that wouldn’t make a ton of sense. There was a personal connection to the victims in the first and second movies. Additionally, the original killer would be a seriously aged man at this point, in addition to being alive again. I don’t put anything past them. How many times have Michael, Freddy, Jason, Chucky, and others come back for some crazy reason? Ben Willis wouldn’t be a likely candidate to return, but the elements that made him uniquely the killer in these movies is hardly transferrable. Ben Willis was a fisherman, hence the killer’s motif in the original films. Continuing THIS story means the fisherman killer with a hook needs to come back. We can’t invent some new foe to wreak havoc in Southport and have it make sense. So resurrecting the hook was a tall order. And I’ll give them credit for making a reasonable attempt at it. But it did not work in the end. I’ll save my thoughts for the conclusion at the end of this.

Secondly in this film, I really have to call out the cast. In 1997 we were offered up four rising stars. JLH was a staple on party of five with a couple other smaller projects already done. SMG had Buffy already in motion leading up to the film. FPJ may not have been quite the household name yet, but he was far from unknown. Really, with your least well known player being Ryan Phillipe, who still had a number of television credits by 1997, they really did have a pretty relevant and well known cast at the time. They were age appropriate, good looking kids that fit the bill perfectly. Additionally, when you take in all the staples of how we generated notoriety in the 90’s, you would give much greater stock to those who had their faces all over magazines, of which these kids were definitely a part of that culture. Fast forward to 2025 and these faces are completely foreign to me. When I looked up the 5 main characters, I did see that one of the actresses was on a long running Netflix show of some note. I’ve not watched it personally, but I know it’s a multi-season hit show. Which I suppose is another problematic feature for the young actors of today. FOMO was a real thing when television was by appointment. Being a part of the group was important. So you didn’t miss Buffy or Party of Five. Programming was diverse but still limited. There were shows that everyone watched and stars were born just as frequently from hit TV shows as in Movies. The big screen always took precedent but you could start out on TV and make your way to films just as easily as storied film actors would eventually give in to TV offers to prolong a career after movie scripts stopped coming in the mail. I know I’m an old man now, so I’m not sure how the teen/20-something crowd determines celebrity these days, but even though I’m not in that particular loop, I’m still a viable audience for this movie and only the older faces have any familiarity. Having no connection to the younger audience and having them be as unknown as your standard horror fare doesn’t bolster much. The OG Last Summer had us rally around the principle cast because we already knew and loved them. They didn’t have to rely on building a bond because we didn’t want to see JLH get slashed and when SMG did meet her end, we were shocked and unhappy about it. How could you kill Buffy?!? It made those elements more notable and meaningful in a sense because we had a connection to the players in front of us. This movie definitely hurts for a more likable and meaningful cast in many ways.

Finally I have to deal with the ending. I’ve already droned on for much longer than I needed to so I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible. There are spoilers too. So we get to the end of the film and we have to be closing in on some form of resolution. It’s not a cliffhanger leading to a second installment already in the works. It’s a self contained project so there should be some measure of conclusion to what’s transpired already. With the cast dwindling, we are closing in on who the killer is. They do provide at least one or two alternate paths to cloud the pool of suspects enough that maybe you might not know who’s doing all of this. But then it’s the big reveal. It’s Stevie. The fifth wheel. She’s killing everyone because the guy they all were somewhat responsible for leaving to die was her boyfriend she met in rehab. So she’s sore about it and she’s going to kill everyone. A year later. The problem with this one is that not everyone lives in town. At least one girl has to fly back home. I know she does come home in this movie, but what if she doesn’t. Because that possibility exists, there’s flaws already. Also, it worked in the first one because they were high school kids. They killed a guy on graduation night and after the first year of college, it was prescribed that those who went away to school would be coming home. It’s not a given but it’s far more of a natural assumption or motivation than these 20-something working adults who are getting married. Really and truly, they were far too old to be as dumb as they were to cause the incident that sent the truck over the guard rail in the beginning of the movie. That was a hard enough pill to swallow in and of itself. But Stevie, who seemed reluctant to want to hang with her friends after the natural divergence that occurred after they all graduated, well in their past seemingly, joined back up with the group like she hadn’t immediately made it a big deal that they weren’t friends anymore. In that whole year, Stevie went out of her way to befriend Danica and get really close. Seems odd for someone harboring a crazy grudge you’d willfully start murdering people for. Especially in such a dramatic fashion. But whatever. So she’s the killer. We get this reveal and seeming resolution with 20 minutes left in the movie. So you know that’s not really the resolution. Here’s the twist. Ray, Freddie Prinze Jr. himself, is Stevie’s accomplice. He’s become half the killer. So it’s almost exactly like a Scream reveal except far shittier. Not only are you betraying one of the core elements of the story, but you’re asking me to essentially believe that he just went mad somehow. He owns his own bar. He’s been a productive member of the town for decades. But he’s secretly crazy and angry because the town has moved on from a short run of murders that happened almost 30 years ago. I know that seems weird. Sure, 6 people got murdered in that town in 1998. But for some reason, all the people just moved on from that. Oh and the big, evil, capitalist real estate guy who is the dad of one of the kids has scrubbed the internet of all the bad things so it really has been erased from memory. Because that’s a thing you can do. If I had a YouTube channel, this is where I’d do my ad for “Deleteme” as you can’t get a better plug for something like that. I was so angry at this “reveal”. It was incredibly dumb. But it only took a few more moments in the conclusion of the film to realize why that was the case. The whole theme of this movie is “Girl Bosses Rule!”

I’m going to do my best to avoid sounding misogynist because that’s not my intention. Honestly, I’m relatively ok with that kind of messaging often. I don’t like when it’s forced but I applaud the effort and champion the cause. I have no problem with strong female leads, even to the point of allowing them leeway enough into areas where it doesn’t make sense. My problem with any agenda is one that comes at the expense of others. If you want to take your female lead and elevate her as the champion, I’m 100% for it. Ripley was a total badass in the Alien franchise. Halloween is nothing without Jamie Lee Curtis. One of my favorite hidden gems I came across in the last few years was “You’re Next”. Erin is by far the BEST part of that movie and she is amazing. What this film suffers from is not elevating the female leads appropriately but denigrating the male ones. We don’t punch up and make the girls better, we punch down and show how weak men are. That’s not an accomplishment. The totality of the body count includes one woman. My assumption was that she was sacrificed so it wasn’t solely men that were killed by the females. I wouldn’t have even really probably cared or paid attention had the final moments of the movie not concluded with a casual conversation between Danica and Ava, both somehow survivors of the dual killers, even taking out Freddie Prinze Jr. in a final battle. It’s totally believable too. You’re not meant to know which deaths you credit to FPJ and which ones go to Stevie, which I think is also by design. But it’s odd that he’s able to presumably dispatch other men with significant ease and yet Ava ends up posing a real challenge to him, in close quarters, while he’s armed and prepared, in his own bar. But yeah, it makes sense that she’d win that fight. But all that aside, Ava declares how all this could have been avoided had men just go to therapy. Seems like an odd conclusion since Stevie was one half of the murderous fisherman. But her culpability is negligible at this point I suppose. Girls rule! That’s the conclusion of the film. It was the final nail I needed in the coffin. Celebrate your female survivors all you like. Champion their quick thinking and defensive ability to outlast some maniacal killers. Do whatever you need to so that we are left cheering for the final girls who made it to the end of the film. But pointing out the weakness of the men over the women just cheapens, if not steals away, whatever victory you’ve purported. It’s an unnecessary dig on men. And I say that not caring about this movie at all. You could imply I’m just another weak willed man who is crying foul because all the boys died. Kill them all, I don’t care. But if you’ve stacked the deck so the undeserving females survive and then pretend they are worthy of the honor, that’s a party foul. I’m not saying Stevie couldn’t surprise any of her much larger male counterparts and take them out. But in a one to one fair fight, she doesn’t win against Teddy. It was the fact that he was dumb enough to leave the killer lying on the floor and walk away. That’s the unbelievable part, even for his character. He’s just been nearly mortally wounded and has overtaken the killer. He doesn’t unmask him. He doesn’t finish the job. The only reason you do that is to preserve Stevie’s reveal. The whole thing leaves a big mark on the film and completely undoes what they intended to do. Erin kicked everyone’s ass by the end of You’re Next and I was here for it all day long. She took out some serious bad dudes and it was AWESOME! She puts Ava and Danica to shame in so many ways. But this movie never really tried hard to be much of anything from start to finish. So I’m not surprised.

Clearly I ended up with a lot more thoughts about this movie than I intended. And I didn’t even go into everything. I don’t think this movie had a clear path to real success at any point. It wasn’t destined to fail. But I think they didn’t take the right turns they needed to for it to really be a worthy outing of a franchise who died years ago, really. I don’t even know if it made money or not. I suppose I hope it did so it was worthwhile but at the same time, I don’t think it’s deserving of being successful because of the intentional ways I think they really ruined the movie. It doesn’t ruin the originals for me. I never held them in high enough regard for them to be on any kind of pedestal as it was. But Ray is still a good guy in my book. I’m retconning this entry and preserving his integrity. Julie is still a badass on her own. I’m fine championing her as not just a lucky survivor but one who earned her stripes as a final girl through two installments of this series. That’s notable. I would watch this movie again before I’d watch 28 Years Later so I guess that’s saying something. So maybe this deserves a 2.75. I’m not giving it a 3. I thought about it but I can’t be that generous. It wasn’t deserving of a 3. So I’ll leave it at that and hope that I can actually find something to turn this trend around for tomorrow. I need to go watch You’re Next again and be reminded of what a real strong female lead actually looks like now. So I’ll catch you on the flip side.