I Know What You Did Last Summer director says this whole thing could have been avoided "if men went to therapy," because "if you have the right tools, that pain is maybe not then turned into a murder spree"

Madelyn Cline in the I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer — (Image credit: Sony Pictures)

Challenging, liberating therapy sessions have been, at times, vital to my existing as a person in the world, but I imagine it's much harder to find a good therapist – and it's already so hard – when you're Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street or something. Like, what are you supposed to say? "I'm a dream demon that wears a fedora, let me tell you what I think about my mom"?

In the spirit of sharing our true feelings, I'll just come out and say it: I love them, my free time revolves around them, but horror movies require its protagonists to be unmedicated and bad at risk-assessment in order to work. That's why I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson acknowledges in a new interview with Vanity Fair that the slasher film probably wouldn't exist at all if guys just went to therapy.

The hook handed killer strikes in I Know What You Did Last Summer — Maybe put the hook down, and we can get you a psych appointment, OK? (Image credit: Sony)

"I think a lot of things would be better for us globally if men went to therapy," says Robinson. "So much of this movie is informed by a man who repressed his feelings and didn’t have the tools to work through the very deeply traumatic thing that happened to him, and how it then broke up his marriage."

Article continues below

The original I Know What You Did Last Summer from 1997 features a group of drunk North Carolina teenagers making the generally idiotic, drunken decision to cover up a car accident by dumping the pedestrian into the ocean. When he resurfaces a year later as a fisherman who likes a bit of pageant girl blood on the meat hook he kills them with, well, that's on them.

But what if there was another way? What if they all attended a restorative justice circle at a trauma-informed therapists office?

"If you have the right tools," says Robinson, "that pain is maybe not then turned into a murder spree."

I'm as surprised as you, but it looks like decent horror reboots might be back, as I Know What You Did Last Summer gets overwhelmingly positive first reactions.

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.