Starring: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, and Austin Nichols, with Freddie Prinze Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Sony, out now

Ava Brucks (Chase Sui Wonders) returns to her hometown of Southport for the 4th July weekend and to celebrate her best friend Danic Richards (Madelyn Cline)’s engagement to Teddy Spencer (Tyriq Withers). Spencer is the best friend of Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King), Ava’s old boyfriend and along with local rehab survivor Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon), they used to be inseparable. They take a drive to look at the fireworks and tragedy ensues. Tragedy none of them can look in the eyes. Until, a year later, it comes looking for them…

This remake/sequel to the 1997 original is much smarter than you expect it to be. The first key to that is the trio of central performances by Wonders, Cline and Pidgeon. Wonders is great as a fundamentally decent young woman unsure of her place in the world and the movie does some surprising, and welcome, exploration of that through her bisexuality and a surprising, if understandable, kink. There’s no titillation, it’s not played for laughs, it’s just who she is and it’s so refreshing to see that.

Pidgeon too is great as the sad, cautious flipside to Ava’s determined go-getter. Then Cline lands in the middle of them, frequently stealing the show as a good-natured airhead who is surprisingly hard to kill. Tyriq Withers is great too as Teddy, a high-speed Channing Tatum-alike who is a tenth as smart as he thinks he is. Only Hauer-King is let down a bit as a generic boyfriend type but all five do good work and you care about them even as the movie sets them up on the chopping block.

The other key is how respectful the movie is of the original. Prinze Jr and Love Hewitt are flat out brilliant as their original characters and the movie uses them, along with Billy Campbell’s enormously fun Jaws-like mayor, to explore the cynicism needed to survive events like this. It gives the original movie a cost and weight and that helps the new one feel consequential.

It sometimes needs that help. The actual murders are uneven at best, oddly coy with blood until they aren’t and vacillating between comedic and horrific. There are reasons for that, but the movie asks a lot of you before giving you those answers. It’s also worth noting that the ending either burns this respect down or does something truly revolutionary with both the original and the format depending on where you’re standing. I loved it, and if anything, my one criticism is it didn’t go further, faster.

Verdict: Smarter than you expect but perhaps not as smart as it could have been, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a fun, witty slasher that breaks the form in some very entertaining ways. Here’s hoping it makes enough to break the form even more in a sequel. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart