Movie: I Know What You Did Last Summer

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

History Repeats Itself

Plot Overview

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” echoes an earlier (1997) incarnation. High school friends return from college to South­port, NC, to celebrate the engagement of Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline) to Teddy Spencer (Tyriq Withers.) It being the 4th of July this 2025, the couple decides to drive to the top of a hill to watch the fire­works along with their friends Ava Brucks (Chase Sui Wonders) and Ava's one time crush Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King.) Joining them is townie Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon) who asked to come along. They stop prematurely on treach­erous Reaper's Curve where a drunken Teddy gets out to horse around in the road resulting in a speeding car swerving,F losing control, and going through the guard­rail and over the cliff. They call it in anonymously, and Teddy talks them into leaving the scene. There are no other witnesses, and his politician father Grant (Billy Camp­bell) will cover it up regardless.

A year passes. Danica has broken up with Teddy and is having a wed­ding shower for her­self and her new intended Wyatt (Joshua Orpin.) There she opens a cryptic note that says last summer's incident is known. Shortly there­after Wyatt is killed and bodies keep piling up. The police treat these as isolated incidents not wanting to spook the tourist trade as happened before. The remaining friends investigate with the aid of Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) a survivor of the earlier killing spree, who's now a teacher at nearby Hoff­man University. They also invite podcaster Tyler Trevino (Gabbriette Bechtel) who deals with true crime. The advice they're given is, “Who­ever's doing this it's personal to them.” There being so many victims, they surmise the perp must have an accomplice as well. I daresay if we wait till the credits roll, we might even see some copy­cats. It's a downright bloody mess.

Ideology

In their specu­lation about mental cases, the teacher offers that, “Trauma changes the brain in mysterious and complex ways.” In my reviewing of horror films, I found myself having bad dreams the night after watching any were­wolf movie. It came from an earlier experience of being chased down from the hills above Boulder, Colorado, by a pack of wild dogs. So I stopped watching were­wolf movies. This from applying, (1Cor. 9:24-25) “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.” Temperance is moderation in thought, feeling and action. If I'm addled by a certain kind of movie, I just won't go to it, though I might go to others that don't affect me so. Slasher movies are okay. Or they were. Then they modernized the Bible.

The KJV of 1611 enjoined temperance in, Acts 24:25, 1Cor. 9:25, Gal. 5:23, Titus 1:7-8, Titus 2:2, and 2Peter 1:5-6. When the KJV was (needlessly in my opinion) updated by the ASV in 1900, temperance was left in. In his diary at about the turn of the 20th century, Orthodox Saint John of Kronstadt enjoined temperance. Temperance is part of the Catholic catechism as well. Never­the­less, it has been reinter­preted by many modern Bible translators as self-control so as not to confuse the common man who since Prohibition in the 1920s has come to regard temperance as applicable only to drink. My Concise Thesaurus has “sober adj. temperate. A person who is sober is not drunk. A temperate person exercises moderation and self-restraint and for that reason is unlikely to drink to excess.” (170) Modern Protestant Bibles such as RSV (1952), and later NKJV, ESV & NIV now read “self-control” where they used to read “temperance.” Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a March, 2024 interview extolled President Biden, saying: “We have American manufacturing coming back home, all because of Biden's wisdom, because of his temperance, his capacity to lead in a bipartisan manner—” Bipartisan leader­ship is by nature temperate. The Jubilee 2000 Bible still uses temperance. It's valid for more than drink.

According to Porter G. Perrin, Index to English: The Meaning of Words 3b. Synonyms. A synonym is a word of nearly the same meaning as another. … There are very few pairs of inter­change­able words. (192) And according to Fowler, “Synonyms, in the narrowest sense, are separate words whose meaning, both denotation & connotation, is so fully identical that one can always be substituted for the other with­out change in the effect of the sentence in which it is done. Whether any such perfect synonyms exist is doubtful.” According to Professor George P. Marsh in an 1859 post­graduate lecture on the English Bible of 1611: “Words and ideas are so inseparably connected, they become in a sense con­natural, that we cannot change the one without modifying the other. … A new translation of the Bible, there­fore, or an essential modification of the existing [KJV] version, is substantially a new book, a new Bible, another revelation.” (454)

This slasher movie under review features a shadowy personage decked out in: fisher­man slicker, sou'wester hat, and rubber boots, killing people with: spear, hook, knife or rope. It's personal and he/she gets off on prolonging the torture, which takes exquisite self-control. The apostle Paul stated that, (Gal. 5:22-23) “the fruit of the Spirit is … temperance: against such there is no law.” That may well be, but there certainly are laws against self-control in murder w/torture. I just find it hard to watch a movie on Friday night, which capitalizes on a murderer's self-controlled torture and then to join a group recital of a litany of spiritual fruits on Sunday morning extolling self-control as innocent. I prefer the old fashioned religion wherein I just have to moderate my movie viewing and let horror movies do what they do best.

Production Values

“” (2025) was directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. It was written by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick. It stars Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders and Jonah Hauer-King. Also featured are Georgia Flood, Nick Hard­castle, Simone Annan, Luke Van Os, Isaiah Mustafa, Leah McKendrick, and Paul Lacovara. We see pretty good acting in standard roles.

MPA rated it R for bloody horror violence, language throughout, some sexual content and brief drug use. The plot is almost irrelevant being merely an occasion to introduce violence, and the long list of characters is more suited to the socially astute ladies to follow than for us dense men. Runtime is 1 hour 51 minutes.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

The community gathers at South­port Trinity Church for prayer to sustain them and stop the killing. One can hardly blame them.

It was a pretty good teenage slasher film if that's what you're into. The character inter­actions were complex, so good luck sorting it out. One pretty much knows what she's getting into in this genre, and it delivers according to expectations.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.

Works Cited

Unless otherwise noted scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Biden, Joe. Quoted from Jack Birle's article, “Gavin Newsom calls Biden's age a ‘gift’ rather than a liability.” In The Washington Examiner. Web.

Fowler, H.W., A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. USA: Oxford UP. 1946. Print.

Marsh, George P. “Disturbance of Formulas.”
       Lectures on the English Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
       ——available to read or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.

Perrin, Porter G. Index to English. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1939. Print.

The Right Word II. A Concise Thesaurus. Based on the New American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983. Print.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch. My Life in Christ. or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and Peace in God: Extracts from the diary of St. John of Kronstadt (Arch­priest John Iliytch Sergieff). Trans­lated with the author's sanction, from the Fourth and Supplemental Edition by E.E. Goulaeff. St. Peters­burg. Jordans­ville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 2000. Print.