there is life after high school || I Know What You Did Last Summer

you're not a has-been

“We used to be best friends.”

“We used to be a lot of things.”

Helen Shiver and Julie James, I Know What You Did Last Summer

“Tommorow’s not what it used to be

We’re all born to die.”

Scissor Sisters, ‘Intermission’

I’m telling you that I’m writing about a 90s teensploitation slasher flick but really, I want to speak to you about loss. An appropriate subject, you might say, as we continue this period of national mourning.

But we aren’t going to focus on the literal dead of I Know What You Did Last Summer (IKWYDLS), even though the movie scores a confirmed body count of five by its closing credit. Putting aside the more concrete loss of life, the film is also preoccupied with a loss of innocence. And I’m not just talking about Julie James doing it down at Dawson’s beach near the start of the film. While our girl describes the urban legend of the hook-handed killer (don’t ask which one, you know which one) as a “fictional story created to warn girls of the dangers of having premarital sex”, IKWYDLS’s hook-wielding antagonist isn’t concerned about adolescent promiscuity. This ain’t Halloween. His fixation is revenge, because in this movie the loss of innocence is its inciting incident.

In a nutshell:

After a night of partying, four friends/recent high school graduates (aforementioned Julie, her boyfriend Ray Bronson, and heterosexual power couple Barry Cox and Helen Shivers) are in a car when there’s an accident. They’ve hit a man, who appears to be dead. Despite protestations from Julie, the gang ultimately agree to dispose of the body, to preserve their own futures (he’s already dead so why should our llives be ruined, being the crux of the argument). Just as they are about to dump the alleged corpse into a body of water, the victim reaches out and grabs recently-annointed beauty queen Helen’s crown. Screams all round. In the ensuing panic the not-so-dead man is pushed into the water to drown. The car accident has become a conscious act of murder. Barry insists the four turn the incident into a “future therapy bill” and that they all keep the secret of the night to their graves. The gang ultimately agree*.

But the body, as we all know, keeps the score. One year later, we see the impact guilt has had on Julie, as the 19-year-old diminished to a “white-as-death chalky corpse” who struggles to eat. Ray never went to college, like he planned; Helen left town but ended up back where she started, except now she is working wanly at her father’s store. In IKWYDLS, the serial killer’s targets are in a bad place before he gets to work. They punish themselves before the avenger gets his chance. The loss of innocence here is embedded secret that is – in one of the kids’ words – “killing us”. You could say real slasher is the guilt we made along the way. Except the actual real slasher is a slicker-clad figure who does proceed to mess with and murder people for the rest of the movie.

There is a further loss that is explored in IKWYDLS. It is the loss of potential.

I want to focus on Helen Shivers.

At the beginning of the movie, Helen has everything figured out. She’s got plans. She tells her boyfriend Barry that she will move to New York and become a big-shot actress; that they will get married; that they will have three children; that they will live “happily blah-blah-blah”. One year later, she has given up on her aspirations and her relationship is over. You could chalk this up to the inciting incident, if you want to, and say that Helen’s guilt prevents her – like Julie – from pursuing her dreams and being happy.

But, as the old Facebook group once said, you can bet two things. Helen is haunted by last summer’s events, but she is also experiencing a more banal and, dare I say, relatable pain. She is growing up.

The horror, the horror.

The movie begins (and ends) on the Fourth of July, also known as Independence Day. Fitting, one could argue, as IKWYDLS shows our boys and girls waving goodbye to their childhood. Near the start of the film, Barry toasts their “last summer of immature adolescent decadence”. Even if they never got into that terrible accident at Reaper’s Point (or whatever on-the-nose name that section of road had), Helen couldn’t escape her fate: adulthood. When you’re young, providing you have a fairly stable and supportive upbringing, you’re told you can be anything, do anything; that your whole life is ahead of you. But at some point, Helen had to face the reality of her schoolgirl dreams.

They didn’t come true.

Her sister Elsa appears very determined to underscore the former’s fall from grace, describing the 19-year-old as a “washed-up, dried-out, has-been”. Logically, we know it is absurd to call a literal teenager those words, but we aren’t always logical when it comes to ourselves, are we?

Admittedly, I read a lot of Tennessee Williams as fourteen-year-old, so have worried about the “time, enemy, in us all” from a stupidly young age. But seeing aside my obnoxiously precocious younger self, I can’t help but notice the bizarre anxiety people in their 20s display about ageing (seriously, botox rates are outrageous). If people are afraid of losing the sweet bird of youth (IYKYK) at this early stage, it is reasonable to think the fear might well linger. Or even grow.

In another scene, bully Elsa points at Helen, working at a department store perfume counter, and says, simply “frightening, isn’t it?” What is the source of fright? Not retail, for sure – a lot of people (Elsa included) work in stores. Beyond the classist reading, I suggest that the cruel sister acts as the embodiment of a cruel internal monologue. The type that says you had a chance, and you blew it. Helen isn’t just in a job she dislikes (a fairly normal experience for, I’d say, humans to encounter at some point in their lives – ideally for a limited time). Elsa’s exclamation suggests that she has experienced a peripeteia, or reversal of fortune. Now, she is defined not by what she could be, but what she isn’t – or rather, what she’s lost.

Now that’s frightening. The same way Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’ is a little dreadful, or this sign from The Simpsons feels singularly sinister:

DON’T FORGET: YOU’RE HERE FOREVER

The movie picks on Helen. Having extolled the power of the ‘do’ earlier in the film, she loses her hair after the slasher cuts it off in her sleep. Losing your hair is associated with getting older, and so the not-yet-20 Helen is robbed of her youth, and the assets that helped her secure the ‘Croaker Queen’ title only one year ago.

There is a point where it seems like Helen might retrieve something she lost – that her and Barry might get back together, re-bonded through the trauma of the slasher’s rampage. But then he is killed in front of her.

Now This Is What I Call Primal Fear. The spectre of irreparable loss without the possibility of future growth. The hopeless notion that your sweaty, pimply, awkward adolescence really did constitute the best years of your life.

Helen’s trajectory takes her from charismatic bombshell to (unconvincing plastic) body nestled in (unconvincing) ice. If she isn’t quite chopped liver or yesterday’s mashed potatoes, the comparison to dead fish is hardly a flattering one. The film robs her of the dignity of a lovely corpse. The beauty that once demanded adoration ultimately can demand nothing more than a shriek of terror from her former best friend.

So yes, I am arguing a film about murder aimed at teenagers can really give you the creeps about adulthood.

At this point, I could try to soothe any rattled readers by saying this particular fear of loss is irrational. I could even share that list that crops up from time to time, detailing the impressive things celebrities achieved at all sorts of stages of life. But I wouldn’t wish to seem twee.

Besides, knowing other people have achieved things – great things – into their 90s and 100s does not immediately translate into a belief we can accomplish the same. We need to actively choose to believe in a future where we can be do more than we have already, be more than we are now.

Until you can do that, the voice of Elsa or Mr Burns or whatever critic (internal or external) will continue to send shivers down your spine.

*Though Julie does so under some considerable duress, considering Barry grabs her throat – we won’t dwell on the Cox boy too much, here, but I think there’s a really interesting Marxist interpretation just WAITING to be born when it comes to the guy.