“Marred Mayhem”
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What You Need To Know:
The new I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER has some suspenseful moments laced with humor. It doesn’t always rely on obvious jump scares but adds suspense by sometimes faking out the viewer by denying expectations. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER has a light moral worldview where the main characters try to stop the mad killer and save lives. However, it’s marred by very strong violent mayhem and abundant foul language. Also, there’s a torrid bedroom scene between one young woman and her ex-fiancé, and passionate kissing between two young women in another scene.
Content:
Light moral worldview in that the main characters are trying to stop a killer before he kills them all but they are being targeted because they didn’t help save the driver of a car that went off a cliff although they did try to stop the car from going over the cliff, plus a lesbian kissing scene occurs between two young woman who met on a plane;
About 51 obscenities (including 34 “f” words) and 21 light exclamatory profanities (mostly OMG);
Some very strong and strong violence with some blood such as killer shoots young man twice with a harpoon gun and then finishes him off with a large meat hook, killer chases women in a one place and eventually kills one of the women with his meat hook and strings her up outside the building for all to see, a pastor is a suspect but he’s fund stabbed to death in the sanctuary with a large stained glass window looking to the outside, young man kidnapped and then killed, killer props up a corpse with a hook through the man’s chin, other stabbing deaths occur, drunken man challenges one car approaching, but his friend knocks him out of the way, another car swerves and crashes into a guardrail, young people try to prevent the car with the unconscious diver in it from falling over cliff but it does anyway and they barely get out of the way, and villain killed;
Partially depicted sex scene of an unmarried couple kissing passionately on a bed while starting to remove their clothes (woman eventually is stripped down to her bra but camera cuts away) and there’s passionate kissing between two young women in a scene who met on a plane;
Upper male nudity and woman appears in bra in a kissing scene;
Alcohol use and man gets drunk and does dangerous stunt in the middle of. a curvy road;
No smoking but there is a brief marijuana reference; and,
Young people fail to report a car that plunged over a seaside cliff, and a mysterious killer targets them for death.
More Detail:
The movie opens on July Fourth in a small coastal town in North Carolina called Southport. The rich father of a young blonde woman’s boyfriend is throwing a fancy engagement party for the couple, Danica and Teddy. Their closest friends are coming, including Milo, Ava and Hannah.
After the engagement party, Danica and Teddy are sitting around with Ava and Milo, who used to go out with Ava. They decide to drive to the cliffs overlooking the ocean to watch the town’s fireworks display. They even invite an old friend form high school, Stevie. They had a falling out with Stevie when her father lost his fortune.
They park the car on the side of the road to watch the fireworks, but Teddy is a little drunk. He starts standing out in the middle of the road, where he dares a car to run hit him. However, Milo tackles Teddy just in the nick of time.
While they’re standing in the road catching their breath, a small truck comes streaking around the curve and hits the guardrail after putting on the breaks. They try to grab the driver from the car, but the door won’t open. Then they try to stop the car from tumbling down the cliff, but they can’t, and the car plummets down to the beach below.
The cliff is too steep to run down to the beach and see if the driver’s still alive. They decide to drive to the police station to report the accident. However, while driving there, they vote against it, and Teddy agrees to tell his father about the accident so that he can use his influence to convince the police chief to hide their involvement.
Nearly one year later, Danica has dumped Teddy and become engaged to another young man, Wyatt. This time, they’re holding a bridal shower for Danica. During the opening of gifts, an anonymous note warns Danica, “I know what you did last summer.”
That night, Wyatt waits in the living room while Danica takes a bubble bath and listens to music on headphones. In the living room, Wyatt hears a sound outside. The lights around the pool come on and then shut off. Wyatt stares into the darken when, suddenly, a harpoon pierces his shoulder. Someone in a fisherman’s hat and slicker with heave boots fires anther harpoon into Wyatt’s stomach, then approaches his wounded body and stabs him with a large boat hook. Danica hears nothing, of course. When she comes into the living room, she finds Wyatt’s dead body propped up with a hook through his chin.
The mysterious killer starts targeting Ava and her friends. Ava decides to consult a college teacher, Julie James, who was part of a killing spree by someone wearing a fisherman’s slicker back in 1996. She figures maybe Julie can give them some advice on how to survive, but Julie declines. Stevie actually works for Julie’s ex-husband, Ray, who was also one of the people targeted back then.
The new I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER has some suspenseful moments laced with humor. Also, it doesn’t always rely on obvious jump scares but fakes viewers out by not inserting them in some situations while using them other times. That adds to the movie’s suspense. It’s also noteworthy that the movie highlights the impact a traumatic experience can have on a person’s life years later. All that said, the movie’s plot and final resolution could be better structured. There’s almost too much happening in the story, for example.
The movie uses up and coming young actors for its main cast. Also, Jennifer Love Hewitt returns to the franchise as Julie James, as does Freddie Prinze, Jr., who plays Ray Bronson. Viewers at the screening MOVIEGUIDE® attended cheered when Sarah Michelle Gellar briefly appears in a dream sequence as her character from the first movie, who died.
The main characters in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER are trying to stop the killers. Otherwise, however, the characters have moral flaws. For example, they use lots of strong foul language. Also, Danica hops into bed with her ex-fiancé, Teddy, after Wyatt is murdered, and Ava has a make-out session with a young female crime podcaster who comes to Southport to report on the 1997 crimes. Finally, the movie also has lots of extreme violence with some blood. All of this objectionable content makes the movie excessive and unacceptable.
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