“I Know What You Did Last Summer” Highlights Why Slashers Need to Evolve

Lazy writing. Paper-thin characters. Overcomplicated vendettas. And worst of all? A complete disregard for the rules that Scream called out nearly thirty years ago. Nearly three decades after Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson held a mirror up to the genre, we’re still watching characters split up when they should stay together, run upstairs instead of out the door, and make choices so insulting they drain suspense before the blade ever falls. It’s as if Scream never existed.

Wasted Talent on a Broken Script

The tragedy here is that the actors aren’t the problem. The young cast has talent, charisma, and potential. In a smarter script, some of them could shine. Instead, they’re stranded by writing that mistakes recycling for reinvention. Their performances are reduced to background noise, pawns in a hollow exercise that asks for nothing more than pretty faces running from predictable shadows. Even Jennifer Love Hewitt, a legacy player, is wasted in a way that feels less like homage and more like contractual nostalgia.

The “Final Girl” Protection Racket

And then there’s the protection racket. Slashers once terrified us because no one was safe. A likeable, central character could die, and it meant something. That unpredictability was the lifeblood of the genre. But today, studios coddle their stars, treating them as untouchable franchise assets.

It’s the same problem that crippled the last two Scream films, where Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding all miraculously survived encounters that should have ended them. Here, Madelyn Cline gets the same treatment—untouchable not because the story demands it, but because the sequel machine does. Characters who should be at risk are shielded by corporate insurance policies.

And if death has no weight? Then slashers have no bite.

A Genre in Regression

The slasher genre is supposed to evolve, to tap into the anxieties of its era. Instead, it regresses. Instead of building suspense, it floods the screen with gore that means nothing. Instead of crafting killers who terrify with presence—through mask, voice, or sheer menace—it cobbles together convoluted vendettas that collapse under scrutiny. Instead of making us scream at the screen—Turn around! Don’t go in there!—it makes us roll our eyes.

Slashers are meant to be cruel and unpredictable. They’re supposed to take away the character we love most, forcing us to watch helplessly as the story unravels without them. That danger is gone. In its place: a false sense of risk, manufactured tension, and endings that tease future installments rather than deliver resolution.

The Real Horror

The failure of I Know What You Did Last Summer isn’t just that it’s a bad film. It’s that it proves the industry has stopped listening. Scream warned us in 1996 that the rules had to change, that horror couldn’t just recycle clichés and expect to get away with it. Three decades later, here we are again, stuck in the same loop of lazy writing, wasted talent, and Final Girls who will never fall.

Slashers don’t stumble because audiences outgrew them. They stumble because filmmakers refuse to take risks.

Conclusion: Evolve or Embalm

This reboot embalms the genre instead of reviving it. It dresses the corpse of the slasher in new clothes, props it up for nostalgia, and pretends it’s alive. But no amount of nostalgia can hide the rot.

If slashers want to matter again, they need to evolve. They need to give us characters worth fearing for, deaths that carry consequence, and killers who radiate dread. They need to stop coddling their stars and start terrifying their audiences again.

Until then, slashers will remain what they too often are now: relics embalmed in sequels, desperately pretending the knife is still sharp.