I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) is a pop slasher astroturfing shill for the therapy industry. But it’s really about boobs.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is bookended on two consecutive Fourth of July holidays, and is set in a coastal town, released in theaters the same summer as the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg). If that connection sounds like an overreach, trust me I felt it. Crowdpleaser horror. And the night exterior scene on Reaper’s Curve uses the fireworks in its sound design as suspenseful jumpscare adjacent like that Chinese kid in Boogie Nights. Also during that scene the muscle prep dude playing chicken with traffic because he smoked a joint is so very teenager.
Reaper’s Curve for the first time got me thinking of The Fisherman as like the grim reaper. But that’s wrong. The Fisherman is trauma manifested in a corporeal vessel. And to indulge my cheesiest of impulses I’d like to think of the harbor town of Southport, NC as a place where the teens-twentysomethings harbor their overwhelming guilt. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a subgenre I would coin as Dawson’s Creek horror. It’s about privileged pretty WASPy kids. The group is composed of half altruistic ambitious hardworking kids and the other half spoiled nepo jerks. Good mix.
But this reboot adds a new dimension: resentment-based class conflict. Throw in some divorces, break-ups, and wealth envy and the ammo is there for them all to blame and attack each other. Skewer some church and state. Also new (or a desperate attempt to seem to be) is throwing in Gabbriette as a sexy it girl—so basically playing herself. Toss in some quasi dangerous sex and kinkbaiting and the genre formula is complete. For the first half of the movie DANICA only wears bikini tops, and her boobs aren’t gratuitous because its franchise requisite. The TEDDY actor seeming to be doing a Channing Tatum impersonation had me puzzled initially but I just went with it.
Visually my favorite touch is the red bath bomb. And there’s a certain aftermath that’s strung up in a way you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say all that and the town hall meeting have got me back to thinking this has gotta be some kind of intentional Jaws homage. I thought this movie was great. Slick, fun, teen soapy, effectively designed Hyannis giallo.
But sometimes it lays things on a little too on the nose. Like second screen pandering. And there’s a suggestive line at the end about a character surviving, which you think means potential return in a sequel. Then someone says it outright, spoonfeeding it for the audience. And then yet again the same exposition is an apparatus for a mid-credits sequence way too shoving advertising the sequel down our throats. Also I really wish they could’ve got Sarah Gellar back for this. Minor complaints that don’t detract for how much I seriously love this.
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA
Reaper’s Curve for the first time got me thinking of The Fisherman as like the grim reaper. But that’s wrong. The Fisherman is trauma manifested in a corporeal vessel. And to indulge my cheesiest of impulses I’d like to think of the harbor town of Southport, NC as a place where the teens-twentysomethings harbor their overwhelming guilt. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a subgenre I would coin as Dawson’s Creek horror. It’s about privileged pretty WASPy kids. The group is composed of half altruistic ambitious hardworking kids and the other half spoiled nepo jerks. Good mix.
But this reboot adds a new dimension: resentment-based class conflict. Throw in some divorces, break-ups, and wealth envy and the ammo is there for them all to blame and attack each other. Skewer some church and state. Also new (or a desperate attempt to seem to be) is throwing in Gabbriette as a sexy it girl—so basically playing herself. Toss in some quasi dangerous sex and kinkbaiting and the genre formula is complete. For the first half of the movie DANICA only wears bikini tops, and her boobs aren’t gratuitous because its franchise requisite. The TEDDY actor seeming to be doing a Channing Tatum impersonation had me puzzled initially but I just went with it.
Visually my favorite touch is the red bath bomb. And there’s a certain aftermath that’s strung up in a way you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say all that and the town hall meeting have got me back to thinking this has gotta be some kind of intentional Jaws homage. I thought this movie was great. Slick, fun, teen soapy, effectively designed Hyannis giallo.
But sometimes it lays things on a little too on the nose. Like second screen pandering. And there’s a suggestive line at the end about a character surviving, which you think means potential return in a sequel. Then someone says it outright, spoonfeeding it for the audience. And then yet again the same exposition is an apparatus for a mid-credits sequence way too shoving advertising the sequel down our throats. Also I really wish they could’ve got Sarah Gellar back for this. Minor complaints that don’t detract for how much I seriously love this.
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA
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