New 'IKWYDLS' is no scream
Sony
If the 2025 “I Know What You Did Last Summer” proves anything, it’s that you can be totally emotionally disengaged with a movie and also want to boo at the end.
If it proves anything else, it’s right there in the dialogue: “Nostalgia’s overrated,” says a character whose identity I guess is a spoiler but if you care enough to read this then you can probably guess who it was. (A friendly and relevant reminder that this review is written by someone who wrote multiple books about the ‘90s.) It is pretty funny, actually, that anyone thought there was enough enduring fondness for the perfectly-decent-but-let’s-not-get-carried-away 1997 original (which spawned the 1998 sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and 2006’s supposedly existing “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer”) to reboot the, uh, franchise, especially featuring characters who are out of high school and have less excuse to be so dumb.
This time Ava (Chase Sui Wonders of “The Studio” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies”), Danica (Madelyn Cline of “Outer Banks”), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King of “The Little Mermaid”), Teddy (Tyriq Withers of “Him”) and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon of “The Friend”) face a murderous fisherman one year after a tragic accident, though director/co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (“Do Revenge,” “Someone Great”) changes the circumstances from the original in a way that reduces the carelessness and guilt instead of amplifying it. The motivations that slowly emerge are weak and only further exacerbate the movie’s commitment to forgettable characters, uninspired kills, and even a couple bad jokes.
This is a script where the characters are pop culture savvy enough to reference Nicole Kidman’s pre-screening ads at AMC theaters but not one where they know that their town’s previous tragedy was turned into a movie (whose events, of course, have been covered in a podcast within the film). A little more self-awareness would go a long way, though then it would make this installment even more conspicuously envy the way that “Scream” acknowledges itself and its past while mowing down a new roster of actors not yet successful enough to say no.
It would be crass and cheap to say that the new “IKWYDLS” gives nostalgia the hook. More unnecessary than terrible, what the movie actually does is roll its eyes at putting in effort, leading only to numbness and landing a long way from entertainment.
C-
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