I Know What You Did Last Summer review – fun 90s slasher revival hooks us back in | Horror films

Rushed into manufacturing after the shock success of 1996’s Scream, I Know What You Did Final Summer time has perpetually lived, and suffered, in the identical bracket. Certain it’s one other slasher with one other forged of unblemished faces and certain it’s additionally written by Kevin Williamson however it’s all the time been a far easier, straighter, sillier movie. Scream was attempting to reinvent the wheel whereas I Know What You Did Final Summer time was simply attempting to maintain it going.As a franchise, it then rapidly grew to become the very factor Williamson was poking enjoyable at within the first place with a rubbishy Bahamas-set sequel (I Nonetheless Know What You Did Final Summer time!) and, on the time, an inevitable, tossed off, straight-to-video follow-up (I’ll At all times Know What You Did Final Summer time!). Individuals rapidly gave up caring what anybody had been as much as throughout any summer season on report and because the subgenre died, it correctly adopted. However as Hollywood continues to fixate on millennial nostalgia, historical past is repeating itself as a revival of Scream (with two new movies each hitting greater than anticipated and a 3rd on the best way) is now being adopted by a return for the fisherman, nonetheless thrashing away within the shadow of Ghostface, grunting dumbly whereas his predecessor delivers a self-satisfied lecture on the state of style film-making (like Scream, there was additionally a limp TV resurrection that’s finest ignored).Expectations lowered, there’s sufficient hokey enjoyable available right here, the acquainted method – youngsters do a nasty factor, somebody tortures them for it, with a normal 2020s uplift – new forged meets previous forged. It means a return for 90s heartthrobs Jennifer Love Hewitt (who’s been cashing in with a task on TV’s absurd procedural 9-1-1) and Freddie Prinze Jr (who’s been showing in movies you positively haven’t seen), bringing again one-note characters that have been by no means extra then chess items however doing it effectively (they share a stable one-on-one scene that’s extra substantial than something but given to the returning Scream leads). Like Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode who grew to become an alcoholic headmistress in Halloween H20 (a far superior sequel than something in David Gordon Inexperienced’s aggressively silly trilogy), LoveHewitt’s Julie James is now working in training (a professor!) and he or she’s dragged again to her residence city of Southport when a bunch of twentysomethings obtain a well-recognized observe, a 12 months on from a preventable accident.The sharp younger forged, led by Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies standout Chase Sui Wonders, Glass Onion’s Madelyn Cline and Stereophonic’s Tony nominee Sarah Pidgeon, are all stronger than the characters they’ve been given, their dynamic made much less efficient with out the tragedy of highschool innocence ending and with an unwise try and reconfigure the opening accident. In attempting to upend expectations, writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who made one among Netflix’s sharpest and funniest teen comedies Do Revenge) messes with the beats a bit an excessive amount of and by no means actually finds a technique to well justify why the chums wouldn’t have fessed up at first. However what Robinson does perceive is that the unique two movies have been each slickly made studio horrors underlined by an actual sincerity and her redo is each ravishingly shiny (it seems like an actual film in contrast to 2022’s Scream which appeared like a Netflix film) and brought nearly critically sufficient with out resorting to straightforward wink-wink smugness. When the script, co-written by journalist and writer Sam Lansky, does attempt to inject humour, it’s principally of a restricted LA model, referencing guided meditations and astrology however not doing a lot with it (I used to be genuinely shocked that vaping wasn’t additionally used as a supply of comedy). It’s not annoying sufficient to distract however it’s by no means fairly as humorous because it might be.Whereas the primary movie did obtain some genuinely jolting set items (Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ultimate chase scene stays a seat-edge highpoint), there’s an absence of equal suspense with an uptick in gore used as an alternative. The loss of life scenes are definitely gnarly however there’s a rhythm that’s barely out of step and Robinson is much extra comfy with the soapy thriller of all of it, keenly conscious of the franchise’s origins in highschool paperback storytelling (the primary was primarily based on a 70s younger grownup novel) and there’s a propulsive snap to the Scooby Doo plotting (a personality even references the present at one level). So whereas the double-bluff finale would possibly lack pressure (each sequences happening within the daylight is an actual atmosphere-killer), the gleefully absurd reveals virtually make up for it. There’s one thing charmingly deranged about this type of hyper-specific fan service, interesting to a choose few with the brash confidence that everybody is aware of precisely what you’re speaking about. There’s not solely a shock dream sequence cameo however a mid-credits sequence that’s one of many battiest fanfic indulgences I’ve seen exterior of a Marvel film (am I, a 90s teen who grew up on these motion pictures, being ruthlessly, and efficiently, focused?).Early buzz has urged {that a} youthful viewers doesn’t actually know what occurred final summer season and an older viewers doesn’t actually care and so it’s potential that this may stay on principally as a popular culture curio. However at a time of nostalgia overload (Clueless, Legally Blonde and City Legend are subsequent), Robinson finds a technique to make her try not precisely crucial however unpretentiously pleasurable sufficient for that to not actually matter. There won’t be a subsequent summer season however this makes for an entertaining final hurrah.