Despite I Know What You Did Last Summer being one of the '90s most successful teen slasher movies, the author of the novel that inspired the film absolutely hated what was done with her original material.
Releasing in 1997, right after Wes Craven's Scream changed the template of '80s slasher movies for a modern audience, I Know What You Did Last Summer took an old urban legend, cast up-and-coming actors Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Ryan Phillippe as the leads. A script by Kevin Williamson, who also wrote Scream tied the movie together and ended up turning big numbers at the box office, going on to become one of the highest-grossing slasher movies of all time. Its budget of $17 million ending up turning a major profit for Columbia Pictures with a $125.2 million gross, and proved the days of stale, formulaic horror were over and could be reinvigorated with the right ingredients and a strong story.
Despite its success, Lois Duncan, a prolific author of YA-themed novels such as Killing Mr. Griffin, Daughters of Eve, and Don't Look Behind You, spoke out about her dislike of her material being turned into a violent slasher film. Though her stories also embrace themes of horror, thriller, and suspense, many of them are more murder mystery themed and deal with serial killers, psychopaths, and the like without embracing heavy violence, due to them being marketing to young adult readers. Even so, many of the author's books have been banned due to content.
I Know What You Did Last Summer Was Hated By Lois Duncan
Duncan passed away in 2016, but before her death, she spoke out about I Know What You Did Last Summer and how she felt the shift from the tone of her novel wasn't a good one. Part of the reason why she disliked the movie so much was because of the violent and how it embraced slaughtering teens, which is a staple of slasher movies and part of why the genre is continually successful. The '90s slashers weren't always as brutal as some of their predecessors from the decade before, and relied less on heavy drug use and nudity, banking instead on suspenseful jump scares and clever plot twists. However, the innately violent nature of the film did carry through, given its hook-wielding fisherman killer who was partially inspired by an old urban legend called simply "The Hook".
"The Hook" originated in the 1950s and told the tale of a young couple who are attacked by a hook-wielding psychopath while they are canoodling; it speaks to a classic morality and cautionary tale, which Kevin Williamson enjoyed being interwoven with the more traditional slasher elements of the film. Director Jim Gillespie actually took extra measures to take gratuitous violence out of the film; one scene in particular - where a character gets her throat slashed - was originally shot without blood. The character deaths are not as violent as in Scream, and the film is fairly tame for having earned an R rating.
Even so, Duncan's distaste for it stems from deeply personal reasons, as she found it difficult to enjoy a movie that embraced violence when her own daughter was murdered in the late 1980s, and remained unsolved. I Know What You Did Last Summer may not have been as popular as Scream with fans, but it still spawned two sequels in 1998 and 2006, and there has been recent news of a television series for Amazon being produced by James Wan as recently as 2019.