Studio:   Screen Gems
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Writer:   Sam Lansky, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Leah McKendrick
Producer: Neal H. Moritz
Stars:    Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt

Review Score:

Summary:

A mysterious killer stalks five friends one year after they hid their involvement in a young man’s accidental death.

Synopsis:

A few years after college, Ava Brucks returns to her hometown of Southport, North Carolina, to attend an engagement party for her best friends Danica Richards and Teddy Spencer. At the party, Ava reunites with her high-school boyfriend Milo Griffin. After the party, Ava, Danica, Teddy, and Milo notice that one of the catering workers is Stevie Ward, their former friend who became estranged following family problems and her dad’s disappearance.

Stevie accepts an invitation to join the four friends at Reaper’s Curve to watch Fourth of July fireworks. Carelessness that includes smoking pot and Teddy playing Chicken along the dark road causes a passing vehicle to swerve through a guardrail and crash at the bottom of a waterside cliff. Ava insists on taking action in case the driver, later revealed to be a young man named Sam Cooper, is still alive. However, Stevie’s fear of possible legal repercussions and Teddy’s insistence that his wealthy father Grant, a prominent investor in Southport, can cover up their involvement helps persuade everyone to leave the scene and agree to never tell anyone what happened.

One year later, Ava comes back to Southport. Milo picks up Ava from the airport. He also gives a ride to Tyler, whom Ava met on her flight and subsequently hooked up with in a bathroom, and who traveled to Southport for her true crime podcast to record an episode about the massacre that took place there in 1997.

Ava and Milo attend a bridal shower for Danica, who broke up with Teddy in the aftermath of the incident and is now preparing to marry a man named Wyatt. Ava is surprised to learn Danica and Stevie rekindled their former friendship and remain close.

While opening gifts, Danica finds an anonymous card with the handwritten message “I know what you did last summer,” which she later shows to her friends. Thinking Teddy sent the note, Ava, Stevie, and Milo confront Danica’s former fiancé aboard the boat where he now lives, but Teddy denies being involved.

That night, someone disguised as a hook-handed fisherman kills Danica’s new fiancé Wyatt with a harpoon. Above Wyatt’s body, Danica sees “You can’t erase the past” written in blood.

The next day, Ava, Danica, Stevie, Teddy, and Milo meet to discuss the killer’s possible identity and who else might know about their involvement in Sam Cooper’s death. Two people mentioned as suspects are Hannah Decker, the woman Stevie was working with on the night of Sam’s death, and Tyler, the podcaster Ava met on the airplane.

Ava meets with Tyler to look into possible connections between what’s happening now and what happened decades ago. After revealing on her podcast that Teddy’s father Grant used his property development business to hide Southport’s tragic history and restore real estate prices, Tyler takes Ava to the location where Helen Shivers was murdered by the original fisherman killer in 1997. Tyler mentions that Julie James, who is now a professor at Hoffman University, is one of only two people who survived that massacre.

The new fisherman suddenly attacks both women. The fisherman kills Tyler but, in response to an earlier phone call, Stevie arrives in time to help Ava escape.

With Chief Roberts of the police unwilling to provide much help due to Grant Spencer’s insistence that the murders be downplayed, Ava tracks down Julie James. Connecting the new killer to Sam’s death one year ago, Julie’s advice to Ava is to learn the killer’s identity and get them before they get her.

At a town hall meeting for concerned residents, Grant Spencer and Chief Roberts claim Tyler’s death was a suicide as they continue insisting the recent deaths are unrelated as well as unconnected to the previous killing spree. Ray Bronson, Stevie’s protective boss who also survived the 1997 massacre and went on to become Julie’s disgruntled ex-husband, angrily interrupts to refute Grant’s revisionist history.

Ava, Danica, Stevie, Teddy, and Milo talk to Ray after the town hall. To find out who the killer is, Ray suggests first learning who owned the vehicle Sam Cooper was driving when it went off the cliff. Ava, Stevie, and Milo ultimately learn the owner was Southport Trinity Church’s pastor, Judah Gillespie.

Danica and Teddy search a cemetery for additional clues. Discovering fresh flowers on Sam Cooper’s grave, Danica and Teddy ask a groundskeeper to check security camera footage to see who left them, but the disguised fisherman kills him. The fisherman also attacks Danica until Teddy rescues her.

Ray has a contentious visit with his ex-wife Julie. Ray expresses anger that Julie advised Ava to endanger herself by going after the killer.

Ava, Danica, Stevie, Teddy, and Milo regroup at Danica’s house. Ava and Milo start getting intimate in a private moment, but Milo becomes uncomfortable when Ava asks him to “punish” her during sex. After Milo goes outside alone to collect himself, the fisherman strangles him to death. The killer then drives away in Milo’s car to make Ava think he left.

Danica and Ava go to Pastor Judah’s church. During a conversation with Hannah, the woman Stevie was working with at Danica’s engagement party, Ava learns a member of the church’s congregation died in a car accident the previous year. In the pastor’s office, Danica finds additional evidence linking Sam Cooper to Pastor Judah.

Based on the pastor’s unusual behavior as well as his connection to Sam, Ava and Danica go to the police station to report Judah as a suspect. Chief Roberts instead reports the girls to Grant Spencer, who recommends keeping Ava and Danica locked in an interrogation room to prevent further interference from them.

The fisherman slaughters Teddy at the Spencer home. The fisherman then kills Grant as he cradles his dying son.

While asleep at the police station, Danica has a haunting dream of 1997 massacre victim Helen Shivers. When Danica wakes, she and Ava are released due to commotion outside over the discovery of Teddy and Grant’s mutilated bodies hanging in public at the marina. Ava is additionally horrified upon finding Milo’s dead body in his abandoned car.

For their presumed safety, Stevie takes Ava and Danica out on a boat to get them on water where the killer can’t reach them. In the meantime, the police go to the church to arrest Pastor Judah, but they find him murdered with his eyes gouged out. An officer discovers a photograph indicating Stevie and Sam Cooper knew each other from Pastor Judah’s church.

The fisherman unmasks as Stevie as she attacks Ava and Danica aboard the boat. Stevie explains how Sam helped her recover after her family went broke and her father left while also returning from rehab and losing her high-school friends. Afraid she might relapse, Sam took Judah’s car to pick up Stevie the night he died. Stevie didn’t know Sam was behind the wheel until his body washed up later. Pastor Judah took Grant Spencer’s hush money in exchange for his silence, which is why Stevie killed him. She also killed Ava and Danica’s romantic interests as revenge for having her love taken from her.

Ray races to the boat and boards under the pretense of protecting Ava and Danica from Stevie. Stevie slashes at Danica with a hook and throws her in the water. Ray seemingly fires a gunshot at Stevie, who also falls overboard.

Ava leaves a voicemail for Julie to tell her what happened. Ava adds that she doesn’t understand how Stevie did everything she did while acting alone. Her suspicions raised, Julie becomes additionally concerned when she connects her troubled ex-husband Ray as a protective father figure to Stevie.

While recovering at Ray’s bar, a fresh slash scar on Ray’s arm causes Ava to realize he was Stevie’s partner in crime. A confrontation and chase ensue between Ava and Ray.

Julie arrives to stop Ray from killing Ava. Ray expresses frustrated anger over the trauma from their past and how the town tried to erase it. Julie tells Ray he needs to let go and move on like she did. Ray counters by revealing he plans to frame Julie for the new murders. Before he can kill Julie, however, Ava shoots Ray through his chest with a harpoon.

Danica washes up on a beach still alive. After recovering, she and Ava leave the hospital together with a stronger friendship. Ava later reveals Stevie survived and is now at large.

Julie’s former college roommate Karla Wilson hears the news about Julie’s involvement in the new killing spree on TV. Julie visits Karla to show her she received an anonymous note that said “it isn’t over” along with a photograph of them from college with an X over Karla’s face. Julie and Karla vow to get in front of the threat by going after whoever sent it.

Review:

Your mission, should you choose to accept a viewing of the same-named “I Know What You Did Last Summer” legacy sequel, is to find an outright objectively likable person somewhere among the cast of characters. Specifically someone who, not even once, isn’t unjustifiably rude, undeservedly angry, dismissive, condescending, or motivated by their own self-serving interests.

By nature of the familiar premise, which again involves casually careless behavior contributing to an accidental death and subsequent coverup, the five friends at the story’s center already come with blame-denying entitlement that puts them behind the sympathy 8-ball to begin with. But it’s the minor details building up to major defects that make them, and also the secondary players all throughout the apparently corrupt town of Southport, more “they kind of had that coming” than “they don’t deserve that” personalities.

Ava comes closest to putting a hint of a halo over her head. She seems to be the movie’s main throughline, appearing solo in the film’s first scene and racking up what feels like the most minutes onscreen. Unfortunately for Chase Sui Wonders, the actor playing her, Madelyn Cline netted the better contract because Cline is billed first as Ava’s BFF Danica despite her playing a slightly less prominent part.

Having moved elsewhere after college, Ava is back in Southport to celebrate Danica’s engagement to their longtime friend Teddy. Partly preoccupied with how she’ll look to her former flame Milo, there’s nothing particularly problematic about the initial introduction depicting Ava puffing on an old joint during her “what dress fits best” montage, which of course includes a tender timeout to wistfully sigh at a photo of her as a child with her deceased mother. It’s not until one year later, when Ava’s next return to town includes spontaneously hooking up with a stranger in an airport bathroom, that the good-girl-next-door vibe suddenly jumps out a window. That’s not so much subverting a stereotype as inverting it.

Before jumping too far ahead, back to the party. While Danica tells Ava about the expensive empath who has been giving her life advice, Teddy and Milo exchange notes about the latter’s “fancy political job” and the former’s “family real estate empire.” If Milo didn’t also have a single earring in one ear, or if neither of them used the word “bro,” maybe it’d be easier to overlook how safe these two are at the top of the privilege pyramid that keeps party guests swimming in champagne while everyone’s estranged friend Stevie collects dirty glasses as one of the drink caterers.

Feeling a little guilty about letting her slip out of their social circle after some bad business went down with her family, Ava, Danica, Teddy, and Milo invite Stevie to join them for a toke during a reckless ride to a dark road where they park haphazardly and Teddy plays Chicken with oncoming traffic. It doesn’t take long for a swerving car to crash through a guardrail, then onto some waterside rocks at the bottom of a steep cliff. It takes even less time for Ava to be the loudest voice for doing something responsible about the unfortunate soul who possibly just fell to a gruesome death. Stevie fears legal repercussions since she can’t afford a lawyer like everyone else can. Teddy calls the police, but later enlists his wealthy father to hide their involvement. Danica declines to drive to the police station, and takes everyone back to her place instead. Viewers naturally know this group isn’t going to get away with what they did, but based on the behavior seen so far, are we supposed to want them to?

Skullduggery is a necessary evil in this setup though, so viewers are asked to let the light villainy slide and regroup in 12 months, when we learn Danica now has a new fiancé, and Ava’s return for a bridal shower coincides with a killing spree that starts with an “I know what you did last summer” note and a hook-handed fisherman gutting Danica’s new beau. While the five friends get roped into the mystery of who wants to murder them, we also discover the chief of police is part of a political conspiracy to bury Southport’s horrible history, the local pastor has some surprising skeletons in his closest, and even Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s returning characters have disgruntled bones to pick with anyone who dares look at them cross-eyed.

Horror has long since hit a saturation point where a refreshed “I Know What You Did Last Summer” ought to cleverly deconstruct or playfully parody late ‘90s/early 2000s slashers just like the original “Scream” did to the decades that came before it. The movie has its moments, and can be considered innocuously entertaining in an “I’ll catch it on TV” way. Still, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” settles for being a formula follower arriving a quarter-century after the subgenre hit its peak instead of being inventively original in any quantifiable way.

Besides some oddly timed jokes that conflict with a predominantly serious tone, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” could choke King Kong with the amount of cliches it contains. For the love of Crom, if I never see another whodunit where the surprise reveal is that there are actually TWO killers, it’ll be too soon. Ditto the recycled shot of someone unmasking the killer, the camera deliberately not showing that person’s identity, then the dying victim gurgling a surprised “you!” with their last breath.

Hopping to the other side of the aisle to defend the film against its faults, although it’s woven from a prefabricated pattern, at least “I Know What You Did Last Summer” understands how to structure this style of slasher. Each time a potential clue hits the floor, the pace keeps right on moving so viewers don’t spend too much time sleuthing or end up too far ahead. And the upside of everyone in Southport acting like an a-hole is that anyone has the correct shade of red to be a herring.

Honestly, it's hard to imagine a better way for the film to stuff in the four faces returning from the first two films in a manner more believable than how “I Know What You Did Last Summer” chooses to somewhat sloppily shove in fan service (I’m looking at you, jailhouse dream sequence). Some of the ways this movie adds to the lore are going to cause chaos with any future revisits of the first and second movies. Considering real-world restrictions as well as creative ones, however, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” might not be the legacy sequel many fans wanted, but it might be the best to be expected from a franchise that was always middling in the first place.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 50