summer classics club: marge, you hide in the abandoned amusement park

i couldn't decide what i wanted to write for this month's edition of three stars fine, a feeling which can largely be ascribed to the fact that the movie longlegs (2024) and also my cat's sudden and intense conspiracy to die* right before we went on holiday had left me spiritually unkempt and incapable of making rational choices, and also i haven't seen anything decent lately, and also it's august so who cares. i briefly thought that it might finally be time to string together some coherent political messages on the movie the boy (2016) and also the boy 2: yes we said his name was brahms (2020), as i have indeed been threatening to do ever since i started writing this substack, and then i thought it might be useful to decide how i actually feel about the terrifier franchise, and then i thought fuck it no one wants to read that, so here's i know what you did last summer (1997) instead.

*the cat is fine now.

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i have had reason before now to describe the movie i know what you did last summer as an integral part of the pantheon of event-free summer blockbusters for pussies; a vaunted list of do-nothing horror media that also includes movies like when a stranger calls (2006), the faculty (1998) and the 2008 remake of the movie prom night (a film which somehow manages to be even more mind-bogglingly listless than its listless 80s source material, which if nothing else at least includes a baffling disco sequence). in terms of bloodless date movies for children, i know what you did last summer is more or less the i ching, the sum of all wisdom, the answer to any question, and it is particularly interesting to me for two central reasons. firstly, it is largely credited with revitalising the slasher genre for the 1990s, a fact which is in some sense probably analogous with its total lack of blood and guts, this being the 90s and every producer (i am assuming) being hard in the grips of one kind of moral panic or another about the state of kids today, whilst also wanting to take their money. i have always very much operated under the assumption that every producer involved in the evolution of 90s horror looked exactly like ben stiller in that movie reality bites (1994), where he works for an outfit called in your face tv and butchers winona ryder's heartfelt real issues documentary about how all her friends are depressed by filling it with a load of references to pizza. i am not a film historian.

secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, this movie was written by the same guy who wrote the movie scream (1996), which is bewildering but actually also kind of obvious when you think about it. where scream is, of course, a fairly sophisticated deconstruction of the slasher genre, i know what you did last summer has exactly the same sense of genre savvy but plays it completely straight. its comparatively mediocre impact is, in my opinion, less to do with this than with the aforementioned decision to cut away almost any time anything interesting happens. it's not quite up there with the andy muschietti school of juxtaposing every scare with a big laugh, thereby functionally creating a film where any and all kills might as well be soundtracked by an airhorn and fart machine, but it is nonetheless kind of incredible to watch a movie where so little happens, even despite the constant and dizzying assurances that maybe something will. i guess it's the hope that kills you.

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i know what you did last summer is, as you certainly already know, a movie about a collection of teenaged problem drinkers who mow down a pedestrian on the fourth of july and are subsequently hounded all round the north carolina backwoods by a hook-wielding maniac who mails them threatening letters about that being a fairly crappy thing for them to have done. the moral implications of our teen heroes' initial choice not only to leave the pedestrian for dead but also functionally try to drown him when it briefly seems like he might be ok is not examined with the kind of fulsome detail one might have hoped for, but in fairness there is really quite a lot going on. suffice it to say, i think this movie's general moral stance errs towards the side of "doing a murder but feeling a bit bad about it" trumping "vigilante justice with a fishhook" in the justification stakes, and i'm not invested enough to come down one way or the other on that score. it was 1997 at the end of the day.

speaking of which, however, it being the 1990s means that in the grand tradition of literally any horror movie from this period, our tight-knit group of teenaged heroes all appear to have been friends since school but also to fucking hate one another. there is, i will say, something fascinating about the symbiosis of this trope and the slasher genre in particular, dating back as it seemingly does at least as far as laurie strode hanging out exclusively with utter bastards who accuse her of being a schizophrenic virgin and running neatly through to that scene in the movie scream where our central gang of ragtag besties sit around a fountain together saying things like randy you're a cunt and i'm going to murder you in public. there is, i'm sure, a moral aspect to all of this - the conflation, somehow, of the teenaged tearaway and their inevitable brutal dispatch, the tacit idea that being hacked up by a man who goes by the name of daddy badlegs or jason hooks-and-crowbars has somehow been earned on account of their own essential cruelty and thoughtlessness. yes it's sad that the sexy teens were murdered by a man wearing a mask made of monkey skin, but also they were extremely rude to other members of their peer group so actually it's impossible to say whether anything that happened here is bad or not. hollywood of the 80s, 90s and 00s simply did not believe that teenagers had fundamental reserves of empathy and respect for one another, let alone for society at large, which is why in any slasher movie you care to name, you will find them calling each other fugly sluts before someone known to the public as fruity knifecakes or mr bricks comes to kill them while they sleep.

anyway.

the point of the movie i know what you did last summer is guilt, and also wasted potential, and also the importance of throwing out your junk mail. jennifer love hewitt and sarah michelle gellar both give solid-to-great performances, although sarah michelle gellar is of course the mvp, doing that very entertaining thing she always does in horror properties which are not buffy of running as if her legs have never been introduced to one other so we know she's a useless girl. freddie prinze jr is also there, delivering his lines with all the charm and boundless motivation you would expect to see from someone whose primary employment perk is a fresh set of tank tops. i am a human being and therefore enjoy freddie prinze jr very much, and also there was a time in my life where i knew the script of the live action scooby doo movie off by heart, but this movie is neither his finest hour nor in any real sense his hour at all, given that the majority of his role requires him to stand there and be like, oh, and i guess not walk into the furniture. ryan phillippe is also there making matthew lillard's agent's job much easier by constantly making you wish you were looking at matthew lillard instead, but as that's a feeling i'm more or less always feeling anyway, i can only award a half-credit.

the movie progresses exactly as movies of this type are wont to do, except with such a low kill-to-gore ratio that you frequently have to rewind to check that someone has actually been successfully offed. at one point, sarah michelle gellar has to watch ryan phillippe's character barry being killed in the balcony of a theatre, and the responding police officer is so comedically unwilling to take her seriously that he not only says what are you talking about several times but also starts saying who's barry, like she is not only wasting police time but has also invented a boyfriend in the process. the general level of police apathy in this movie is about on par with any other example of the genre, in that it's all very chief wiggum being like you just torched a building downtown and you're worried you'll do it again? ok well i'll just type that up on my invisible typewriter. later on, sarah michelle gellar herself is pursued to her death via her family's i think sporting goods store/general store (it is very hard to tell what's going on) by the killer and it's like if i were the health and safety guy involved in the organisation of this public-facing establishment for consumers i would simply ensure the grand sum of my emergency exits did not consist of one elevator shaft made entirely of knives. but that’s not really important.

everything comes to a head on board a boat, where jennifer love hewitt and freddie prinze jr are permitted to survive, because of being brunettes, and it is posited that actually it was ok that they tried to drown a guy they mowed down in a hit and run, because he wasn't dead after all and only went crazy in pursuit of revenge, which can hardly be blamed on them. 

there is, of course a sequel, entitled i still know what you did last summer (1998), which i think i have seen, but much in the same way that i have also seen bring it on 2: bring it on again (2004) and also, i guess, it chapter 2 (2019), the less said about the better, so i'll stop.