‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’s’ Greatest Strength is its Patience
Slasher movies really only need to satisfy one base requirement. While I consider myself among those whose appreciation for the slasher form goes beyond body counts—they are art—I am also a realist. In the purest form, part of the reason I and so many others sign up in the first place is to see a masked killer slaughter goofy coeds in increasingly goofy ways. We want to see Jason Voorhees harpoon Friday the 13th: Part 3’s best character and Michael Myers blow Bradford English’s head up in the laundry room. That’s where the money is, baby. Mostly. Hot off the success of Scream, writer Kevin William’s previously written adaptation of Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer was fast-tracked. The film’s release in October 1997 was met with a critical shrug, often compared to a lesser man’s, well, Scream. Not so. Sure, the film has a legacy now, though its most important quality might be its sheer, uncompromising patience.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is getting the legacy sequel treatment courtesy of filmmaker Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and it looks like a ton of fun. It also looks to discard the key value that renders I Know What You Did Last Summer so distinct almost 30 years later—it’s a slasher in name only. Yes, there’s that famous Sarah Michelle Gellar chase, and yeah, Big Bang alum Johnny Galecki is killed pretty quickly. Otherwise, there’s very little bloodshed, most of it contained in the final third of the film. Really, the “slashing” starts with just 28 minutes remaining in the entire film. That’s when Ryan Phillipe’s Barry is killed. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen? She almost made it. She dies with just 14 minutes left in the film.
It may not seem like a lot, but in a subgenre that prides itself on racking up as many kills as quickly as possible, it’s incredible that one of the contemporary classics barely spills any blood at all. As joked about earlier in the film, I Know What You Did Last Summer really is just a glossed-up episode of Murder She Wrote for most of its runtime, and I mean that in the most endearing terms possible. Character and mystery are at the forefront, and it’s only in the final stretch that the slasher film underneath it all is let off the hook.
Compare it to its successor, I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. The body count is nearly doubled. The Bahamas resort Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is conned into visiting is a revolving door of practically nameless custodians, bartenders, and guests who exist solely to pad the kill count. The real classics of the genre—e.g. Psycho, Black Christmas, Halloween—were similarly patient, but they belong to another era altogether. By the time Friday the 13th and Halloween II rolled around, it was a numbers game—enjoyment quantified by gore. Halloween (1978) has five kills, one of which is off-screen. Halloween (2018) has a staggering 17.
Even Scream, Kevin Williamson’s genre-changing masterpiece, adhered to those modern demands. There are seven graphic on-screen deaths there, all interspersed throughout. Scream 2 has 10, gamely raising the stakes with bigger set pieces are more gore. That’s the pattern, after all, yet I Know What You Did Last Summer bucked convention. Even Galecki’s death was a late addition following an allegedly disastrous test screening, added only to satiate audience bloodlust and demonstrate the threat of the fisherman killer.
Now, that kind of restraint won’t work for everyone. There’s a subgenre of a subgenre with slashers who not only embrace carnage, but internalize it. The Terrifier series, the ever-expanding Twisted Childhood Universe, and even the subsequent two Scream sequels have delighted in killing as many characters as quickly as possible. Take a movie apart frame by frame, however, and it’s all too easy to see how that kind of rhythm might work for thrills, but decidedly less so for character. Dylan Minnette’s Wes Hicks features in Scream’s (2022) most suspenseful sequence, though he has less than five total minutes of screentime before he’s killed.
Contrast that with the sheer, staggering change endured by I Know What You Did Last Summer’s core quartet. Julie James goes from bright student to hazy recluse to fierce fighter. Barry and Helen have one of the sweetest love stories in the slasher subgenre. They’re together, then apart, and slowly rekindle as the threat mounts and Barry steps up to earnestly keep Helen safe. That’s why their deaths in particular still sting. They live past the hour mark, and they make an impact as people, not victims, first.
The patience is ripe with tense possibilities, and Jim Gillespie takes glorious advantage of it all. Barry’s gym accident is remarkably subversive when you really think about it. Any other movie would have killed him. And when the fisherman breaks into Helen’s house, following her in the background as she gets ready for bed? It’s brilliant stuff, really, and it toys with the audience as much as it does the characters. Sure, we know he’s going to strike eventually, but there’s power in waiting for the when. It’s a flavor too few modern slasher movies have.
Understandably so, of course. With Netflix directives about background viewers and audiences having access to more Miranda Priestly-voice stuff than ever before, that kind of patience is, ironically enough, a death sentence. A straight-to-streaming slasher whose core kills don’t happen until the very end? Something tells me most viewers would turn it off long before then.
Here’s hoping Robinson’s sequel can capture some of that same Jessica Fletcher meets Dawson’s Creek charm. In the meantime, give the original I Know What You Did Last Summer another go. Pay attention to its patience and restraint, and then join me in the choir of slasher fans pleading for more character-driven killer flicks just like it.
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