Stay Tuned #59: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster Who Doesn't Know What You Did Last Summer.

Hello, Ticketholders! I don't know what you did this summer, but I overworked myself and bitched about overworking myself such that I'm financially stable but so mentally and emotionally run down that I forgot my own mother's birthday. I'm also in a time crunch content-wise, so fuck me and fuck this series I'm about to review. Let's get this shit over with.

From the company who thought the dad from Are We There Yet? (and the reason Vin Diesel had to make a XXX apology sequel) could hold a leading role in War Of the Worlds, and thought it was a good idea to make said movie one of the longest, worst, most blatant viral commercial wanks of all time, comes I Know What You Did Last Summer; a boring, linguistically try-hard, aimless, eight-hour "adaptation" of a Lois Duncan book that I finished listening to in less than three hours.

It's the same basic setup as the book and film, with a group of four unlikable, intoxicated, and psychologically volatile "friends" committing a hit-and-run and hiding the truth of the incident until the following summer, when a mysterious stalker/killer begins targeting those responsible. But in the 2021 version (which tries to capture the slow burn, character-rich suspense of the novel while having its cake and death, too,

with the tacked-on slasher villain reveal like in the movies), that motive is flipped on its head and overly complicated by an obvious twin "twist," remnants of a Wicker Man-esque suicide (or "sewer slide" or "self-deletion" or "auto-un-aliving" or whatever lame, shit-ass thing we're supposed to call it now) cult,

and such a Pepe Silvia board of juvenile sexual entanglements that there's literally no room for my brain to give a fuck.

Also, nearly every "important" character is named after a musician because who needs to be creative when search algorithms dictate everything, right? I mean, Bruce, Lennon, Johnny (numerous), Dylan, Courtney,.... How cutesy and distracting can you possibly get, Amazon?

I know they didn't entirely create the series themselves, but I don't care because after the fourth flashback of some character getting emo about walking in on two people fucking, both of whom that person previously fucked when other people walked in on them (this happens roughly once per episode, BTW), five hours of offscreen kills, eight hours of nauseating zoomer slang and multi-generational asshole behavior, and a series of bafflingly incongruous, nigh-motiveless villain reveals that culminate in the most nonsensical pile of "we have to have the killer speedrun-explain everything in zoomer speak during the credits so that it still doesn't make sense" starfish chocolate (because I've said "bullshit" too much and I just now decided to start making an effort at creativity) since The Usual Suspects...and now this sentence has turned into a run-on. So, yeah; I don't care who actually made this. Aside from Fiona Rene (Tracker), I don't care who starred in this. It bored me, annoyed me, frustrated me, confused me, its writing infuriated me, and its existence killed whatever emotions remain from my life being forty-one flavors of ass. No wonder it got canceled and left in a Hawaiian cave to rot.

F-

I dread having to watch the movies next week, but I'm looking forward to tomorrow's Zenescope - Omnibusted on Call Of Wonderland, so Stay Tuned and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Ticketmaster,

Tuned Out.