Ty Watches "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and He has Some Thoughts on Movie Violence
/Over the weekend my wife and I pushed our date night to Saturday due to school stuff and because it was closer to Halloween. We had sushi, since we are so fancy, and my wife got to choose the movie. She wanted a scare so she picked "I Know What You Did Last Summer".
I have never seen the movie and it has been years since she watched it. She remembered really liking it and saying that it had some good jump scares. She also loves the show "Buffy" and is a big Sarah Michelle Gellar fan. It checks a lot of boxes for her. So we watched.
The movie was fine. My wife jumped a few times. It made me laugh a little because I kept thinking about "Not Another Teen Movie" and "Scary Movie". There were some okay chase stuff. It was a typical late 90's scary movie. It felt a lot like a JV version of "Scream", which is not a bad thing. But I came away from the viewing with a thought that has never really occurred within me. When the movie was over I thought that it was kind of hokey, not super scary and not too violent.
I was very wrong on the last thought. This movie was very bloody. A person gets hit with a car. There is a suicide. There is plenty of knife and hook wounds. Needless to say, there is a good amount of blood. But nowadays a movie like this seems so tame. That is brutal. It is actually kind of depressing. I think we are so numb to what we see now that a movie as gory as "I Know What You Did Last Summer" just kind of lands flat. I've seen more violence in a noir like "Drive". All three chapters of "John Wick" have a much higher body count and way, way more gore. The way "Uncut Gems" ends is way more horrifying than anything in this movie. Hell, I have seen worse in comedic movies. Or even psychological thrillers like "The Babadook" or "Black Swan" had me shook up. And even tv shows now are way more violent than this movie. "The Wire" had more hard core deaths. Gus Fring's ending in "Breaking Bad" was much more scary. "Lost" had more brutal scenes. And I think we all can agree that the first episode of "Squid Game" is way more hard core and gory than any scene in the entirety of "IKWYDLS".
That is crazy to me though. We have become so numb to violence in our society now. Some almost have to be pushed to the absolute brink to get even a little scared. When watching scary movies now there is so much more blood and gore and just flat out spooky things that happen. "IKWYDLS" feels almost ahead of its time, but at the same time it feels dated. It is cliched, but aren't all horror movies a little cliched when you really think about it? The acting is solid too, but newer, good horror movies have better acting. And the gore, the thing a lot of horror fans go for now, seems minimal. There were no real jump scares from me. I could feel them coming. But this movie did work on my wife. So what does that say about me? Am I so numb to it now that I need something like "John Wick" to get my blood pumping? I hope not. But I was just so surprised at how little I was scared while watching the movie on Saturday. And I scare easily at more modern horror movies. We are pretty numb to things we shouldn't be so numb to anymore, but it seems like the gross factor continues to notch up and we just consume it and are happy with it.
"IKNWDLS" is a solid horror movie, but it just does not hold up to the standards of today's horror movies. That could be the year or the consumer. I tend to think it has more to do with the consumer unfortunately, and that is what bummed me out the most.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.
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