I Know What You Did Last Summer: A coming-of-age, teen slasher

Jake Yates-Hart 16 October 2021

We might well be into Autumn now, but there’s no better time to discuss I Know What You Did Last Summer, a 1997 horror movie about a group of teenagers stalked by a mysterious assailant. As a lover of 90’s media - and the horror genre in general - this teen-slasher, which has been rebooted as an Amazon Prime series, holds a special place in my heart.

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures

At first glance, Last Summer acts as a straight up horror movie, with all of the clichés it implies: There’s a creepy assailant slaughtering victims, a heart-racing chase scene, and some questionable decisions made by our main characters. However, with a script penned by Kevin Williamson (Scream), this teen-slasher contains some nuance in its characters that elevates the quality of the story, and it makes it all the more enjoyable (and stressful!) to watch.

Loosely based on Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel of the same name, Last Summer follows four best friends - Julie, Ray, Barry and Helen - one year after their summer of hijinks ended with an accidental hit-and-run. They agreed to hide the body and go their separate ways. Having read the novel, the differences between the two stories are quite glaring - and not always in the best way. But overall, Williamson does a great job of adapting the novel’s core messages.

Last Summer surprisingly works as a coming-of-age story (albeit with a lot more blood) about how the friends that were so important to us growing up, can eventually become complete strangers. The themes surrounding guilt, and how one traumatic event can completely turn someone’s life upside down are explored really well and backed up by some top-notch performances from a quartet of iconic 90’s actors.

The movie’s first act is much more dedicated to the source material, as Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) receives a threatening letter and seeks out her former friends to discover the culprit. However, what the film does better than the novel is keeping the characters together for longer periods of time in order to better develop their arch and emphasise how one crucial moment can completely undo significant relationships.

The best demonstration of this is in a scene between Julie and Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar), where Helen admits she misses her best friend. But Julie is unable to reciprocate the same sentiment, betrayed by Helen’s involvement in the pact to hide the body. It’s difficult to watch; it’s a breakup scene between lifelong friends, made all the more heart wrenching by Hewitt’s and Gellar’s performances.

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Last Summer is impressive stylistically, which ultimately helps navigate the first two acts from mystery thriller to a scary slasher. From the opening swooping shots of dark water crashing against the rocks, to the overhead angle which demonstrated how close one of our victims was to safety before ultimately getting the chop, the cinematography helps maintain an air of mystery and foreboding.

Despite Williamson’s successes in translating the atmosphere of the novel to the film, I’m often left conflicted with the decision to make Last Summer a slasher. Because - surprise! The novel didn’t focus on a serial killer. The person sending threatening messages was a grieving sibling of the hit-and-run victim. Removing this aspect in the adaptation takes away the important grey-area elements which made the original narrative so intriguing.

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Additionally, having the movie switch genres midway through meant the story became less complex, and therefore less interesting. Julie goes from our strong-willed protagonist to a shrieking damsel-in-distress; a fantastic chase scene ends with a brutal murder in an alleyway; and the epilogue is a cliché-filled mess that disregards a lot of the aspects that made the film work in the first place.

So far, it’s unclear if Amazon Prime’s take on Last Summer was influenced by Duncan’s novel, but if it is, I hope the series will succeed in ways that Williamson’s adaptation failed; by not only remembering that the characters are smart, but that the audience still cares about nuance, even in a horror movie.