Some secrets never stay buried...
I Know What You Did Last Summer is an American teen horror television series based on the 1973 novel of the same name by Lois Duncan. Amazon Studios announced the series' development in 2019, with Neal H. Moritz
and James Wan serving as executive producers. It was given a straight-to-series order in October 2020. Filming took place in Oahu and began in January 2021.
Part of the franchise of the same name, the series is a modern take on the original novel and the 1997 film adaptation and follows a group of friends stalked by a brutal killer one year after covering up a car accident in which they killed someone. It features an ensemble cast led by Madison Iseman, Brianne Tju, Ezekiel Goodman, Ashley Moore and Sebastian Amoruso, and also stars Fiona Rene, Cassie Beck, Brooke Bloom and Bill Heck.
The first four episodes of the series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on October 15, 2021, with the rest debuting on a weekly basis until November 12. On January 7, 2022, it was announced that the series had been cancelled after just one season.
This series contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion:
- This isn’t the first time Madison Iseman plays a Big Sister Bully to a troubled twin. That was in the movie Nocturne. It is however the first time she plays the other twin as well.
- Margot references the film Scream (1996). Her actress, Brianne Tju, was a cast member in that film's spin-off series.
- Adaptational Location Change: The series is set in Hawaii, unlike the book (which took place in New Mexico) and the film (where the setting is in North Carolina).
- Adults Are Useless:
- The party in the first episode is sanctioned by the parents, who justify it by saying that they'd rather have their kids drink in a situation where they can be in control instead of going to do it some place unsupervised. However, there are multiple scenes making it clear that they aren't adequately chaperoning. One of the first shots of the party shows a someone who is presumably a teenager naked from the waist down peeing in a pool. The party doesn't just have underage drinking, but hard drugs and sex as well.
- Dylan's parents leave him home alone and go on a yoga retreat well after the community realizes that the first murders weren't one offs and that there's a serial killer in their midst.
- Advertised Extra: Johnny is shown prominently in the teasers and the poster as one of the leads. However, in the second episode, he’s given the Drew Barrymore treatment when he is the first of the group to die.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Riley has a crush on her lifelong best friend Dylan, who is in love with Alison. She doesn’t take it well when she learns this.
- Always Identical Twins: Lennon and Alison Grant are identical twins. So much so that only their father can tell them apart.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Courtney mentions how Dylan has “gotten hot” in front of her daughter Riley.
- Amicable Exes: Margot and Johnny are close despite their prior relationship history. Margot even encourages Johnny's new relationship and is the one hit hardest by his killing. Subverted in the season finale as it's revealed that Margot killed him and his boyfriend because he had dumped her for him.
- Angsty Surviving Twin: The lead character is dealing with her sister’s disappearance, or so the official story goes. In reality, Alison has been living as her twin Lennon for the past year as the latter died in the accident and everyone (except the twins’ dad) mistook Lennon for Alison. This adds to the Grant family’s internal drama.
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Lennon Grant is a manipulative, controlling, and mean-spirited young woman who constantly bags on her introverted twin sister for not having a social life or set plans for her future, while also sleeping with the boy that she knew her sister liked. However, the show also implies that she had deep-seated psychological issues (which she took out on herself), possibly resulting from her mother’s suicide, and may have been putting up a front to make herself appear fine. Additionally, it is clear that her surviving family members are still grieving her despite their complicated feelings for Lennon.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Margot, the killer, gets away with it thanks to Alison framing Dylan for the murders.
- Bed Trick: Alison has sex with Dylan, who thinks she is Lennon. After the act, Alison reveals her real identity and Dylan promptly - and justifiably - is upset at this revelation.
- Benevolent Boss: Harold, who's the owner of the restaurant Lennon works at.
- Brutal Honesty: Riley is very blunt with her opinions.
- The Bully:
- Lennon Grant. She teases and abuses her sister Alison and sleeps with Dylan knowing well that Alison has a crush on him, and manipulates Margot (who is implied to have a crush on her) and tells her to her face that she never liked her when Margot suggests that Lennon get psychiatric help.
- The killer themselves taunts the group with mean-spirited texts, leaves severed goat heads in their closets, and sends them videos of their friends getting murdered.
- Bury Your Gays: The second episode has a two-fer. The bisexual Johnny is the first of the group to die, moments after his fiancé Coach Eric Craft is also murdered. Additionally, the actual Lennon is revealed to have had a sexual encounter with Margot - and is the one the kids ran over in this adaptation of the story. After the season finale, this gets even harsher, as with Riley's apparent resurrection, they're the only two major characters who are actually dead.
- But Liquor Is Quicker: Well, not liquor, but Lennon does get Dylan high with nose spray (ketamine) before the two have a sexual encounter.
- Closed Circle: Unlike the film or literature version, the series moves to a small town in Hawaii adding to the isolation of the characters when they come under attack.
- Coitus Uninterruptus: Lyla is discussing a case with her deputy over the phone while her secret lover is going down on her.
- Convicted by Public Opinion:
- After Johnny and Coach Craft's murders, the latter's ex-wife is accused of the murders, with many townspeople convinced that she killed them out of jealousy and revenge.
- Not long after, Clara is suspected to be the killer because of her strange behavior. The town officials then label her the killer after both her and Riley’s bodies are found in the cave.
- Creepy Housekeeper: Clara acts strange around the characters.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Dale gets a tube of Blue Crush from a drink machine shoved down his throat, causing him to drown and his skin color to turn blue.
- Johnny tries to save his boyfriend Coach Craft from a dumbbell crushing the latter’s neck. This is quickly revealed to be a trap, resulting in Craft’s skull being crushed and Johnny thrown several feet to the ground, where he is attacked and decapitated.
- Riley gets struck by a car, impaled with a machete, has her hand cut off, stumbles about the town hallucinating from these wounds, and finally gets dragged into the cave to be made up into a honey-encrusted sculpture.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Played with. Lennon justifies the things she does to Alison at the fateful party as this. She says she doesn't want Alison to have any lingering pointless attachments before going away to college. Alison justifiably tells her that she's being needlessly cruel and selfish.
- Darker and Edgier: As if the original wasn’t dark enough, this series ranks it up by beginning with one twin accidentally running over the other.
- Dark Secret: Natch' as the this is the classic premise of the show: the OG crew committed a hit and run and covered it up with now someone a year later stalking them.
- Dead Person Impersonation: The killer sends their threats via Alison's phone, though with the added twist that Alison isn't actually dead.
- Depraved Bisexual: Margot is revealed to be the killer, a vicious, manipulative young woman who's motivated partly by twisted love for Lennon, her dead female friend (whom she once had sex with) and revenge on Johnny, her ex-boyfriend, because he left her. It's downplayed however as Lennon, Allison and Johnny are also bisexuals but they don't display these traits.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Alison isn’t sure what she wants to do in life since she isn’t going to college unlike her twin sister Lennon. However, Lennon’s death ends up unintentionally thrusting Lennon’s life onto Alison.
- Dirty Coward: Alison lies and incriminates Dylan for Margot's crimes in order to avoid being unmasked.
- Disappeared Dad: Riley’s father does not appear to be around, while Margot’s father is apparently overseas.
- Downer Ending: Margot is revealed as the killer, and has pinned most of her crimes on Dylan, but Alison could exonerate him by revealing that Margot was the one who stabbed her and not him. She lies in order to hide her Dead Person Impersonation and Dylan goes to jail for Margot's crimes while the two women get off scot free.
- Driven to Suicide: In episode seven we see that Lennon deliberately ran into the oncoming car.
- Everyone Is Bi: Nearly half of the main characters (Alison, Lennon, Johnny and Margot) are bisexual.
- Fair Cop: Lyla, the police chief, is quite attractive.
- Fake Twin Gambit: The "twin exists" variant. Alison has to adopt Lennon’s life after the latter is killed in an accident the former is responsible for.
- First-Episode Twist: In addition to the accident, Alison is revealed to have accidentally switched identities with her identical twin sister Lennon and has been living as “Lennon” for the past year.
- Frame-Up: Margot frames Dylan for all the murders she committed with planted evidence, and Allison backs it up.
- Gainax Ending: The post-credit scene shows Riley's corpse reopening her eyes, leaving the audience unclear if Riley has really come back to life or if her body is being possessed by someone or something else.
- Gay Guy Dies First: Johnny is the first of the five to die, and Lennon is the victim of the hit and run. Both characters are bisexual and fairly sexually active.
- Gory Discretion Shot: The audience doesn’t see the group find Dale’s body, only Margot’s reaction and everyone else in shock over the discovery.
- Hereditary Homosexuality: Identical twin sisters Lennon and Allison both turn out to be bisexual.
- Home Porn Movie: It turns out Lennon made many home porn videos featuring her having sex with different guys (and Margot once as well) which she uploaded onto her Only Fans account, making money from this.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: Lennon wears a green jacket, while Alison wears a zip-up hoodie and a gold necklace. The Twin Switch mentioned below is the result of the two girls accidentally switching outfits and Lennon having earlier made up Alison to look like her. Additionally, Alison’s a smoker which “Lennon” takes up to “feel close to her.”
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the titles are taken from select lines of dialogue within the episodes.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Riley gets a machete through the back and stomach and her hand cut off by the killer. She surprisingly survives this assault, at least initially.
- Intimate Marks: Margot has small black tattoos by her breasts, as seen when she's having sex with Lennon in the video.
- Jailbait Wait: Johnny mentions having been in a relationship with his former high school coach since senior year of high school, and they are now getting married since legally Johnny’s an adult. This implication, thus far, hasn’t been explored further and probably won’t given their deaths in episode 2.
- Killed Offscreen: Dale’s body is discovered after dying offscreen.
- Loners Are Freaks: Clara is an eccentric woman who carves people’s names into the cave walls after they die, lives alone, and performs rituals involving encasing dead bodies in honey after they have had rare spiders inserted into their ears for good luck. Unsurprisingly, she is considered a prime suspect in the killings.
- Male Frontal Nudity: A local 5K run in the town has exclusively nude runners of all genders with the audience treated to some brief shots of their bare genitalia.
- Missing Mom: Alison and Lennon’s mother committed suicide when they were young. By episode six, however, this is revealed to be a lie - their mother simply left them and their father made up the story to avoid having to tell two eight-year-old girls why their mother is gone.
- Modesty Bedsheet: In "If Only Dogs Could Talk" after having sex with Dylan, Allison covers herself with the bedsheet, although her breasts are briefly shown earlier.
- More Diverse Sequel: The series, given its Hawaiian setting, has more POC and LGBT+ characters than any of the previous adaptations. With the latter mostly being used as murder victims.
- Ms. Fanservice: Lennon and Margot are uninhibited with their sexuality and provide many instances of fanservice for the show, ranging from revealing clothing to actual sex scenes, especially the former who made amateur porn.
- Never a Runaway: Alison is believed to have run away, which is the story in-universe. She was actually murdered.
- Never Found the Body: The official story for the disappearance of “Alison” is that she ran away. Because the group cannot find the body of “Alison” in the cave or even her name written on the walls (which had been done with everyone else who died in the cave), she is even briefly considered a suspect in the murders by the group. In episode 4, however, her body turns up and is given a burial.
- Never My Fault: When Alison calls out Lennon for sleeping with the boy they both knew Alison liked, she comes up with every excuse to pass the blame to Alison for not making a move sooner. Then she starts belittling Alison for still being attached to their mother when she says their mother only loved her. She justifies it by saying she doesn't want Lennon to have any needless attachments to her home life before going to college.
- Nice Guy: Johnny and Dylan are generally affable young men who actually treat Alison with respect, unlike the others. The restaurant owner also counts as this.
- Not Quite Dead: Riley hears breathing as she’s the last one to leave the cave after dumping Lennon’s body there. She doesn’t reveal this for several episodes as she thought she was hallucinating and then only after several people have been killed.
- Off with His Head!: Johnny dies this way, with Alison finding his head sometimes afterward.
- Parent with New Paramour: Alison learns that her dad is having an affair with the local police chief, and finds this awkward due to 1) finding a video of them having sex on her phone and 2) Lyla is investigating the murders that Alison and her friends indirectly set off.
- Parental Favoritism: Lennon straight up says to Alison that their father favored her, while their late mother loved Alison more. Invoked by Bruce, who tells Alison to write a letter explaining her disappearance, where he lists his negligence of her as a factor in her “running away.”
- Parental Neglect: Courtney seems to have this relationship with Riley at best. Apparently, she doesn't seem to care all that much that her daughter is a drug dealer. Hell, she even asks Riley for some drugs at a funeral service. Nevertheless, when Riley goes missing, Courtney is concerned with her well-being and marches to the police station and demands they launch a search for her. Indeed, the last thing Courtney does alive is trying to find her daughter.
- Parents Know Their Children: Even with the switch, Bruce unsurprisingly can tell that Alison is wearing Lennon’s jacket.
- Plucky Comic Relief: The deputy working under Lyla is a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander and provides some light moments in the show, then he gets killed at the end of the fourth episode not long after realizing that Dale was receiving Bitcoin from an OnlyFans account under Alison’s name and Kelly Craft is likely not the killer.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Lennon is sociable, charismatic, manipulative, and promiscuous while Alison is introverted, awkward, caring, and virginal.
- Police Are Useless:
- Played with. Lyla herself seems competent for the most part, though when Courtney tries to get her to search for her missing daughter, she's dismissive of her concerns by stating that the killer had only targeted men up to that point; this dismissal indirectly leads to Courtney's death when she tries to look for Riley on her own. Additionally, Lyla's deputy Doug seems like a Cloudcuckoolander initially but proves himself to be Smarter Than They Look by realizing that Kelly Craft is likely not the murderer through researching through various files, though is killed off in the same episode.
- Brought to new heights in the season finale when they are completely and utterly outwitted by Margot and especially by ''Alison's father switching the photos of Lennon and Alison to reinforce the lie.
- Profiling: When a deputy arrives at a trailer park to interview a potential suspect, he asks Riley (who's black) to show her ID despite her mentioning that she lived there. Her mother Courtney quickly starts filming this when she comes outside and chews out the guy as Riley walks away.
- Rasputinian Death: Riley gets chased down and struck by a car, impaled through the stomach and chest with a machete, has her hand cut off, is left delirious and seriously injured (and likely bleeding internally) from these wounds for about a day, collapses to the ground outside her house near Kelly Craft and her son, and is finally dragged into the cave to be made into a honey-encased sculpture.
- Really Gets Around: Lennon and Johnny, who are incidentally the first of the core group to die, were both quite promiscuous (with the former even making amateur porn videos as well for her Only Fans account).
- Red Herring:
- Dale and even “Alison” herself are deemed possible suspects. In Dale’s case, it is because like Max from the ‘97 film, he arrived at the scene of the accident shortly afterwards (though Dylan and Riley dismiss this theory given Dale’s status as The Stoner). In the case of “Alison,” it’s because of the fact that they Never Found the Body and the video showing Johnny’s decapitation came from her phone. This goes nowhere as both their bodies are found shortly thereafter.
- Clara’s eccentric behavior makes the gang, and eventually the town, suspect her of being the murderer. Additionally, she witnessed the gang place Lennon’s body in the cave the night of the accident. However, after her death, it is made clear that the killer is still at large after they attack Margot in her home.
- R-Rated Opening: "Hot Shrimp Salad" begins with Lennon and Margo having sex, which it turns out is from a porn video they did.
- Sacrificial Lion: Johnny is the first of the group to get killed to show the gang that they’re not safe.
- Secret-Keeper:
- The group, by necessity of the premise.
- Alison's father Bruce, who helps her pretend to be Lennon by furthering the "Alison ran away" narrative.
- Clara, the Creepy Housekeeper who hid Lennon's body for a year.
- Secret Relationship: Bruce and Lyla have had an ongoing affair for over a decade.
- Servile Snarker: Riley’s mother Courtney works for the Grant family and is prone to sarcastic remarks, even after finding two bodies.
- Setting Update: The story is moved up to the modern day from the film's setting in the late 90s, going from a California small town to one in Hawaii.
- Sex Signals Death: Lennon has sex with Dylan, which causes an argument with her sister and leads to Lennon leaving the party afterwards. She is then struck and seemingly killed by the group’s car. Johnny, mentioned to have had an active sex life, is also the first of the group to go.
- Shout-Out:
- The goat's head found in Lennon/Alison's closet with the killer's calling card in the first episode is a reference to The Godfather, which is even mentioned early on.
- When Riley and Dylan are exploring the cave where they hid the body, they are taken by surprise by Lennon and Margot suddenly showing up. This leads to Margot telling Riley to stop screaming like Neve Campbell. (Of course, the writer of the 1997 film - Kevin Williamson - also wrote that film).
- The singer Doja Cat is referenced in the second episode.
- Slashed Throat: Deputy Doug dies this way.
- Snuff Film: Alison, Margot, Riley, and Dylan are sent a video of Johnny getting decapitated.
- Social Media Before Reason: Margot’s decision to film herself at the funeral service of “Alison” for her followers gets called out by Riley, whom she had previously criticized only minutes before for being too self-involved.
- Struggling Single Mother: Riley lives with her single mother Courtney, who works two jobs to keep them afloat.
- Time Skip: The seventh episode skips the narrative ahead a couple weeks after Riley and Clara’s bodies are found and the latter is declared the killer by town authorities.
- Twin Switch: Alison accidentally takes her sister Lennon’s identity the night of the accident after the two had a major fight, when Alison takes Lennon’s jacket and Lennon Alison’s necklace. Then the group accidentally runs over the actual Lennon as she’s walking home and they mistake her for Alison, who doesn’t reveal the switch. This later becomes an Invoked Trope when Alison informs their dad Bruce of the accident as Bruce, devastated at losing one daughter, doesn’t want his other daughter to go to prison.
- The Unfavorite: Both twins view themselves as this.
- Upper-Class Twit: Margot is wealthy, social media-obsessed, and self-involved.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Margot has a tendency of vomiting during intense situations, which is graphically depicted onscreen. The first occurrence is at the accident site, where she throws up on Dale’s car after drinking heavily, then does it again after finding Dale's body.
- Wall of Weapons: Margot has a veritable arsenal at her house (including a bazooka) that covers an entire wall, which she explains as her dad being from New Jersey.
- We Used to Be Friends: The strain of the secret between them caused the friends to become estranged, brought together a year later when someone starts taunting them about it.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: Riley and her mother live in the impoverished area of the town.
