I Know What You Did Last Summer Parent Guide

An innocent night’s fun watching the 4^th of July fireworks from a scenic bend in the highway quickly sours when a car swerves around the tight-knit group and through a safety guardrail, crashing into the rocks a hundred feet below. While the obvious next step would be to call the police, the five friends swear never to tell anybody what happened. Teddy (Tyriq Withers) comes from a very wealthy family, and his dad Grant (Billy Campbell) has the town in his pocket, so the whole incident gets brushed under the rug.

Now, one year later, the friends are back together. Uncomfortable with the cover-up, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) has been out of touch since last summer – and she’s starting to wish she’d stayed that way. As for Danica (Madelyn Cline), at her wedding shower she receives a rather unusual card with the words “I know what you did last summer”. Then her fiancé is brutally murdered in their living room, and a threatening message written in his blood on the walls.

It’s clear that someone is out for revenge, but who could it be? There were no witnesses, and besides, this isn’t the first time this has happened in Southport. While they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, Ava and Danica learn about their town’s dark past, and the series of slayings which rocked it nearly 30 years ago…

If you were as foolish as these kids and wanted to play a drinking game, all you’d need to do is take a shot every time a character says “1997”. By the end of the first act, you’ll already be in the hospital with severe alcohol poisoning. And you’d be happy to be there, because then you wouldn’t have to sit through the rest of the movie. When it isn’t directly talking about the preceding film, it’s lazily rehashing it. I’m not sure if that’s going to appeal to fans, but as someone who never really liked the first one, it sure doesn’t appeal to me. It’s like being waterboarded in someone else’s weird nostalgia for two hours.

As you’d expect, this horror flick is quite violent. Most of the characters are bloodily murdered like they’re some kind of chunky organic fuel needed to keep this movie trucking along. There are a few non-nude scenes of a sexual nature, frequent drinking, and no fewer than 50 f-bombs throughout the 111 minute runtime. In short, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a slasher flick. It never steps a toe outside of the genre tropes or the audience expectations, and for my money, doesn’t even wade into being entertaining.

About author

Keith Hawkes

Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.