In 1996, “Scream” hit the theaters and resuscitated the horror franchise at the box office. Along with that film’s success came a series of “Scream” clones that included flicks such as “Urban Legend”, “The Faculty”, “Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later”, etc.
The biggest clone of them all was “I Know What You Did Last Summer” in 1997. They followed the “Scream” notebook to a tee. They grabbed a young actress from television (Jennifer Love Hewitt) to star in the movie, she was surrounded by a good looking bunch of up-and-comers within the industry, and the screenplay was even written by Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter of “Scream”.
The movie was already followed by a sequel in 1998, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer”. The sequel was an abomination and it effectively killed any future plans aside from an unrelated third film that went straight-to-video.
Well, now the series is back with a new legacy sequel starring a new cast that gets a little help from those who came before.
A new group of young people are targeted by a killer who knows their secret.
In the latest “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, a new group of young, rich, and beautiful people are involved in an accident on July 4 and make a pact not to tell anyone else what happened.
The next year, the group finds themselves being stalked by a new Fisherman killer after receiving the ominous note, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. The group is also joined by both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., the only two survivors of the 1997 massacre due to how similar the new events are to the past.
Speaking of which, that is one of the primary problems I have with the new film. Like other legacy sequels, it does stay to the tried-and-true formula it followed 28 years ago, but unlike other legacy sequels, it doesn’t really add anything new to the proceedings to justify its existence.
The new gang is assisted by Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Ray, a survivor from the original film.
The movie is a paint-by-numbers slasher flick that can’t get out of its own way. Now, that’s not to say that there is nothing here that might entertain hardcore fans of the slasher subgenre if they’re hard up for a new flick.
The cast is good for the most part even though I found that I didn’t really care for them as much as I did the original cast. Also, there are a couple of kills that are pretty good, but on the flipside of that, the other kills are pretty standard and boring.
Speaking of the original cast members, Prinze Jr. has more to do here than Hewitt. In fact, had they not brought Hewitt back at all, the movie probably wouldn’t have suffered from her lack of involvement.
I can say, before I get out of here, that there is a pretty unique twist for this legacy sequel. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to the twist and the overall story is pretty average.
Unless you’re a hardcore slasher fan, I can easily say that you can skip this latest entry in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” series.
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