Slasher Blog: I Know What You Did Last Summer


I Know What You Did Last Summer movie poster
Following the story of four friends who share a dark secret on the Fourth of July, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a slasher film directed by Jim Gillespie. Based off the novel by Lois Duncan, the 1997 film follows four friends after they committed a dark crime on the Fourth of July. Getting drunk on the beach with her friends, Julie James (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) must hold onto the secret of the man they accidently hit with their car, but then dumped into the water to cover it up. A year later, Julie returns home from college to find that someone besides the four of them know what happened. As she slowly reunites with the other three (starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippee, & Freddie Prinze Jr.) from that night, the film makes it clear that someone is out to get those who were involved, even in the slightest bit. 

What really adds this film into the slasher series is the use of the Final Girl. Throughout the film, Julie takes on this role of the Final Girl, but with a few twists on it. Carole Clover discusses in “Her Body, Himself” how the ideas of the Final Girl are always quite consistent. She’s usually smart, has a virgin appeal, good senses, but often in distress and looked at as being disheveled sometimes. Clover also says that “She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril” (201). Many of these ideas can be applied to Julie, with her being the one to find most of the bodies. 

When it comes to seeing what’s really going on, Julie is the one who continues to investigate, who is levelheaded about what is going on in the sense that she wants to do the right thing to begin with. Throughout the film, you see these ideas constantly as she tries to make sense of everything. While Barry (Ryan Phillippee) used motives of threatening and trying to be masculine to get information, Julie was often thinking ahead, being smart about her actions. While she is the one being levelheaded, she is often not looked at in this way. Because of how the killer is acting, he makes Julie out to be crazed and deranged, getting others to not believe what she’s seeing and finding out.
Julie 
The ideas of gender and males being the first to die comes into play right away, as Max played by Johnny Galecki (who drove past the four as they tried to play off the hit and run) is the first to get murdered by the killer with an ice pick. This thought continues with Barry, as the killer goes after him as well. While he gets away at first, he ultimately dies at the hands of the killer as well. he also chooses not to murder Helen when he has the chance but waits and instead torments her. This idea coincides with Clovers own points on gender. 

The Killer
Julie herself is a very intellectual young woman, similar to what Clover discusses, but something that differentiates here is that she loses her virginity very early on, which doesn’t go along with the ideas of the Final Girl often being this pure being. Another inconsistency is the ideas of being the last one standing. The ending of the film actually has both Julie and Ray (played by Freddie Prinze Jr.) alive, as well as the killer as well. this is a big contradiction to the Final Girl being the last one, as you often see her being the one to actually murder the killer as well.





Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself.” Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton University Press, 1992.

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