Nostalgia claims a new victim

At the time of its release in 1997, I know what you did last summer It was understood as the functional reverse of Scream. An exercise in credibility by the screenwriter-ideologist of both, Kevin Williamson, who perhaps wanted to demonstrate that he knew how to tell a horror story without using winks or metalinguistic twists, adapting a Louis Duncan novel about a group of young people who lose their innocence the night they run over a stranger and from the future... although, evidently, this sin will not allow them to get away with it so easily. Williamson is not participating in the sequel-revival of the franchise that is now hitting the screens, and which is left in the hands of Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, director and co-writer, who did want to resort to referentiality to idealize the original film as the classic that never was.

But, beyond self-conscious nostalgia, there is a detail that indicates a deep understanding of the material being treated: the little flowers that the characters dedicate to their beauty, and to that of the protagonists of the first film. That was what it was about, deep down. I know what you did last summer (and much of horror cinema): of putting sexy people in danger for fun. And by mirroring the young cast with the mature present of their predecessors, the film reveals that the real horror isn't in any sharp hook, but in the coldheartedness with which Hollywood forgets and replaces the bodies it promised the star.