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I Know What You Did Last Summer is an Independence Day Classic
In case you’ve forgotten, I’m here to remind you that I Know What You Did Last Summer is actually a holiday movie. Not only does the film take place over two July 4th weekends (one year apart), but it’s about as American as apple pie. And this October it celebrates it’s 20th anniversary.
That being said, now seems like the perfect time to explore the film and discuss why it’s such a classic.
First off, let’s look at the cast. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe in the 90s (1997 to be exact) were at the peak of the All-American Young Stars. They were simultaneously beautiful and familiar enough to represent someone you probably went to school with.
Their characters in the film are perfect American slasher archetypes – the innocent girl, the prince charming, the sexualized scream queen and the bad boy. And there’s also Johnny Galecki as a weird “friend-zoned and bitter about it” character who appears just often enough to remind you, “oh yeah, he’s in this movie”.
I Know What You Did Last Summer contains some of our favorite American pastimes such as fireworks, parades, urban legends and drunken debauchery. The drunken debauchery unfortunately leads to accidental murder, but, you know. Kids will be kids.
(The movie also contains one of my favorite jump-scares, the “oh, it’s just a coat rack” scare. I cannot fathom how that came up as an idea, but it’s incredibly cheesy and I love it.)
Now, holiday horror is in no way a new or rare concept, however, I Know What You Did Last Summer is one that takes its setting from the holiday, but it’s not carrying a patriotic message or focusing on a killer with a holiday-specific agenda. The dude just wants those reckless teens to pay for the destruction caused by their rowdy celebration.
Perhaps because it’s not as blatantly focused on the holiday as films like Halloween and Black Christmas, you often forget about the Independence Day theme until you watch it. It’s overshadowed by the fashion, the cast, character attitudes, soundtrack, several jump scares, and general slasher theme that make it a perfect time capsule of 90’s American film.
And while the whole daytime parade scene causes me to ask, “why do so many people in this town have the same outfit?” and “why are they wearing it on such a nice day?”, it’s one of the several reminders that the film is not only a classic, but an Independence Day classic. Our stalker slays by the light of fireworks, and kills in the face of celebration. After all, “this is his day”.
If you’re still debating the “classic” status of the film, consider this article about the supposed I Know What You Did Last Summer remake.
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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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