Signs of life? While sequels, kids movies, and comic book franchises continue to flow in and out of theaters, keeping the lights on with 40 showtimes a day for How to Train Your Dragon, the only “adult” option left is the horror movie. If there are film studies in 100, or even 50 years, the 2020s will be remembered as the decade of horror, just as the 1940s are known for noir and the 1950s for melodrama; I’ll be surprised if a horror movie doesn’t win big at the Oscars by 2030. Right before the pandemic, Ari Aster’s feature debut Hereditary was a huge hit and popularized the term “elevated horror;” Jordan Peele’s 2017 Get Out “proved” the genre could be topical and politically relevant. Critics, executives, and the aging Hollywood firmament still regard horror with the same contempt as pornography, but as those stars slowly fall one by one, there are signs of life: Demi Moore’s Best Actress nomination for The Substance this year, which she probably lost because The Substance was gory, gaudy, and proudly ignorant of real life in Los Angeles (not that I cared, but everyone I know in Los Angeles did).
“Elevated” or not, horror’s the only corner of the cinema OFF LIMITS for children, the only corner for adults. It’s a damning indictment of the level of general intelligence in the population that The Monkey, The Front Room, and AfrAId are all “we” have to choose from—but asking the question “What are we doing?” makes no sense because there is no we—unless you’ve been eating paint chips and scrolling on your phone for 16 hours a day, you didn’t kill the theatrical drama or comedy. But, like me, you’re still encouraging horror’s reign over the 2020s. This week’s case is I Know What You Did Last Summer, a semi-sequel, semi-reboot to the 1997 film of the same name; originally written by Scream author Kevin Williamson, I Know What You Did Last Summer was a quickie Scream rip-off that nonetheless did well; a sequel starring Brandy, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, was released in 1998. I vividly remember seeing a TV spot for the latter, the first that I remember with any clarity.
These movies were never that good, far from the epochal Scream series, with low-rent stars and a far less intriguing premise. Same goes for the sequel-boot: five high school seniors watch a car plunge over a cliff. They tell no one, but a year later, they start getting notes: “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.” But in 2024 (last summer), they didn’t commit manslaughter; they didn’t accidentally run anyone over like in the 1990s. You’re playing around on a dark road at night and you startle a car into accidentally driving off of a cliff—okay… just leave… no one knows you were there… so who could the killer be?
The one with the hook and the black bucket hat is one of them, unchained and overrun with manic guilt—the dead man was her friend in rehab—but she’s quickly dispatched by OG star Freddie Prinze Jr., turned baddie and again quickly dispatched by stars Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders. In an ending shot last month (!), Cline’s character survives and clarifies that, despite being shot twice in the chest and falling off a boat into the ocean, killer Stevie “is alive.” So will the sequel be called I Still Know What You Did Last Summer? Are we going to be trying any other seasons out or what? My friend Katherine hated this remake, but I had a fine time; like I said, this is a second- or third-tier series, blasphemy isn’t possible. But her main complaint was on point: “No one is allowed to be hot anymore in movies… WHY was SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR the hottest person in this movie?”
It’s true, especially when you look at the cast of the 1997 original: Gellar, Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Philippe. And the sequel had Brandy! The sequel to this one will probably have Brandy, too, given her post-credits scene with Hewitt here. Great, let them lead the next one, fuck these kids, they’re all too shiny and British.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits