I Know What You Did Last Summer was released in 1997. The image of the sea rocking against a cliff while a lonely person watches it from the road is still very much alive in the horror fanatic audience’s mind. So much so that Prime Video just aired the first few episodes of a tv series reboot.
The movie trilogy represents how society viewed teenagers in the late nineties, as well as what their expected behavior was. There are a lot of changes that happened in the reboot, bringing us to the question: how diverse have we become in over 20 years?
What’s the story about?
The premise of this story is a great one: reckless teenagers accidentally killed someone with their car. They cover the murder and try to forget what happened and move on with their lives. However, someone knows what they did and wants to make them pay for it – hence the title. The trilogy was – loosely – based on the novel by Louis Duncan with the same name.
The Original Movie
The original movie represents really well the cliches we saw in that period, and it goes further than that. In the first scene, we meet the characters, they are watching and participating in an overly sexualized beauty pageant.
Also, it is interesting to see what type of behavior was accepted by the characters and the audience. Barry, played by Ryan Phillippe, is extremely aggressive towards his girlfriend and her friend. It is something that’s simply accepted by the characters as ‘part of his personality’. They do not even discuss it: just quickly settle down when he starts to scream on their faces and hold them by their shoulders while shaking them to get his point across.
Not to mention the lack of diversity in the characters. Every character in the movie is white. There is one exception: one of Julie James’, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt, college friends, Deb, played by Rasool J’Han, is black. She appears in a total of two quick scenes, and we don’t learn her name. Also, there are no LGBTQIA+ characters in the movie.
Is the I Know What You Did Last Summer Reboot Different?
That element contrasted with Amazon’s reboot. Let’s not focus on the questionable aspects of the series, like having one actress playing twin sisters – the good sister x the bad sister -, but just on the diversity aspect of the characters and the actors that play them. In the pilot, we discover that one of the main characters, Johnny, played by Sebastian Amoruso, is queer. Also, there are Asian and black characters that are a part of the main characters’ group.
There are some clear homages to the original movie: the opening shot of the ocean and the cliff and even the dialogue they speak. The group dynamic is a bit different due to more people being a part of it on the reboot, and they are not all in romantic relationships with each other. The more explicit abuse of drugs and alcohol is a huge change from the previous movies.
Are we more diverse after 20 years?
We have progressed as a society to accept and include marginalized people because of who they were. In 20 years, this difference is astonishing. Because the film industry depicts our everyday lives, it is quite clear how it has changed in this period. The film industry still has a long way to go regarding diversity, not only in characters and the actors that play them but also in who writes these stories and who produces them. Still, it leaves a good feeling when you are able to compare the same story, shot in very different years, and see these changes so drastically.
