Seen it. Stop. Not only have we seen I Know What You Did Last Summer; it wasn’t terribly good the first time. It was, however, last summer. Apparently my generation is so desperate for nostalgia, it brought back Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Sarah Michelle Gellar for this remake (?) sequel (?) This is definitely a sequel, but, usually sequels have different titles. Usually. How many years are we gonna keep remembering the last one?
Oh, here’s a take: suppose the killer in these films has that thing from Memento where he can’t make new memories, so he keeps trying to punish kids for the previous summer even though he’s running out of them.
Sorry, that sentence -while hardly an original take- is cleverer than anything this film had to offer. But offer it did, so I’m here to comment.
Hmmm, so what happens in this iteration? Well, a bunch of kids are being drunk idiots at night on a cliffside road when their antics cause a driver to swerve and plummet off the cliff to, presumably, his death. Yes, the kids were being dicks. Yes, their antics were not clean, but I’m also thinkin’ the driver was a little out of control and the kids did try to save the guy while he teetered before going over the cliff. Punishable? Yes. Mitigating factors? I think so.
But that isn’t how this works.
A year passes; the kids stay silent. Understandable. They didn’t intend for a guy to die. I’m not saying their actions were commendable, but they were understandable. Honestly? To distinguish these jerks, I have to go to Wikipedia, cuz all these pretty and mildly amoral twentysomethings look exactly the same to me. Oh, I see one of them, Danica, has a new fiancée. And at her bridal shower, she gets an anonymous note reading, “I know what you did last summer.” And then a guy in a black fisherman’s outfit proceeds to kill her fiancée with a giant fishing hook.
He wasn’t even there!
Geez. How fair is that? If you’re gonna take revenge, you should really aim for the deserving party, ya know? Meanwhile, a slimy podcaster shows up to document this bullshit, and she’s the next to die! Dude. I can see you’re no longer in yellow. So, hey, maybe we can tone down the Gorton’s Fisherman jokes. Although, you know, did the Gorton’s Fisherman get a makeover? Did he get invited to the Met Gala? Never mind. Point is, you’re now 0-for-2, jackass. And it makes me think you’re not really in it for the revenge; you just like to kill.
What the Hell lesson is that?
What is the fiancée or the podcaster supposed to learn from that?! “Try not to associate with anyone who has a dicey past?” That’s not much of a lesson, and it probably describes 
everybody in the world.
When this film truly started floundering -and Hell yes I said that on porpoise- they trotted out Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. so we could remember other people who were mildly famous once. They even trotted out Sarah Michelle Gellar for a dream sequence even though her character dies in the original. Fun or desperate? You decide.
I’d downgrade this piece-of-crap movie more, but I was on my phone during most of it and it made ideal background noise. And, believe me, I didn’t miss a single thing. And you know what I did last summer? Avoided this in theaters; that’s why you’re getting this review now.
There once were some adult-aged teens
Who had some unfortunate post-party scenes
They played in the street
A guy died, then discrete
They promptly went back to their screens
Rated R, 111 Minutes
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Writer: Sam Lansky, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Leah McKendrick
Genre: Did it get any better this time around?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The slasher nostalgic
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “It wasn’t very good the first time around”
