It's out in theaters Wednesday: "I Know What You Did Last Summer," the return of the cult slasher

When five friends unintentionally cause a fatal car accident, they choose to hide their crime and enter into a pact of silence. A year later, their secret resurfaces: someone knows what they did and wants revenge. Hunted one by one by a mysterious killer, they realize this bloody story has played out before. Desperate, they turn to the two survivors of the 1997 Southport Massacre for help in breaking the curse.

A quickly forgotten entertainment

In 1996, Scream gave a boost to slashers, the kind of horror film where a gang of "kids" is chased by a masked killer, who slaughters them one by one while staging his murders. Wes Craven's direction and Kevin Williamson's screenplay made a lasting impression and gave ideas to studios who saw in the concept a goldmine for producing copies with high commercial potential. The most famous of these clones is undoubtedly I Know What You Did Last Summer , written the following year by Williamson. And like Scream three years ago, this saga is now entitled to its requel, which consists of taking a new troupe of actors and putting them more or less in the same situation as their predecessors thirty years ago. The survivors (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Freddie Prinze Jr.) are also invited to the massacre in supporting roles, and their future is more uncertain than ever. Otherwise, the pattern is identical, as is the appearance of the psychopath, masked under his fisherman's costume.

While she may not shine in her bland direction or the originality of her performances, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson sprinkles the whole thing with a little feminist flair and avoids falling into gore. Suspense is present in a handful of scenes, and some twists are worth the detour. In the background, the film addresses the question of trauma and how it resists time. Intentionally reduced to stereotypes, the potential victims, however, struggle to exist and seem to be there only to fulfill a function before kicking the bucket. Fans will also regret that the director, with the exception of the finale, doesn't play more with the codes of horror films. A timid approach for a film designed to entertain the audience on a scorching afternoon, even if it means being forgotten within the hour. C. COP.

BY Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (United States), with Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King... Horror. 1h51. Our rating: 2/5.