Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina, the dramatic film “I Wish You All the Best” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A nonbinary teenager moves in with their older sister after being kicked out of their parents’ home, and the teen starts a new life during a period of self-discovery.
Culture Audience: “I Wish You All the Best” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and coming-of-age stories about LGBTQ+ people.
Miles Gutierrez-Riley and Corey Fogelmanis in “I Wish You All the Best” (Photo courtesy of Lionsgate)
“I Wish You All the Best” is a well-acted and charming coming-of-age drama about a nonbinary teenager who starts a new life after experiencing parental rejection. The movie is sweet-natured but unrealistic in some areas. That’s because after the teenager moves to a new city, the teenager doesn’t experience any prejudice from the people in this new city. The only bigotry/ignorance depicted in the movie comes from the teenager’s parents.
Written and directed by Tommy Dorfman, “I Wish You All the Best” is based on Mason Deaver’s 2019 novel of the same name. The movie (which is Dorfman’s feature-film directorial debut) had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “I Wish You All the Best” takes place in North Carolina, primarily in the capital city of Raleigh. The movie was actually filmed in Los Angeles.
“I Wish You All the Best” begins with a brief montage of 16-year-old Ben De Backer (played by Corey Fogelmanis) having a seemingly idyllic life. In this montage, Ben (who is nonbinary and whose pronouns are “they/them”) is very close to Ben’s parents: Ben De Backer Sr. (played by Judson Mills) and Cathy De Backer (played by Amy Landecker). All three are seen watching a movie together at home in a seemingly loving and supportive environment. But everything changes one night, when Ben comes out as nonbinary to Ben Sr. and Cathy, who are religious conservatives.
This coming-out scene is not shown in full detail, but only snippets are seen in flashbacks. All viewers know is that Ben’s coming-out experience was emotionally painful, Ben’s parents rejected Ben, and Ben ran out of the home that night with no shoes on. Ben fled to a local convenience store, where Ben made a frantic and tearful call to Ben’s older sister Hannah Wallace (played by Alexandra Daddario), who lives in Raleigh. Ben tells Hannah what happened and asks her to take them to Hannah’s home, where Ben lives for the rest of the story. Ben’s 17th birthday takes place during this period of time.
Hannah, who is about 15 years older than Ben, lives with her husband Thomas Wallace (played by Cole Sprouse), who is a teacher at a high school in Raleigh. Ben and Hannah haven’t seen each other in 10 years because Hannah has been estranged from their parents, for reasons that are revealed in the movie. It should come as no surprise that liberal and open-minded Hannah has had her own issues with her conservative parents.
Hannah and Thomas (who is also liberal and open-minded) have an infant son named Cyrus, so Hannah is currently a homemaker. Thomas forges a permission notice from Ben’s parents so that Ben (who is a junior-year student) can be enrolled in the school where Thomas teaches. This type of forgery is illegal but is kind of glossed over in the movie because Ben’s parents accept that Ben wants to live in Raleigh with Hannah and Thomas. Hannah and Thomas eventually file an official application to become Ben’s legal guardians.
Ben is quiet and introverted and has an interest in fashion and art. Ben is very talented at drawing and painting portraits. Even though Ben is shy, it isn’t long before Ben meets three schoolmates who will become Ben’s closest friends: bisexual Nathan (played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley), queer Sophie (played by Lisa Yamada) and straight Meleika (played by Lexi Underwood), who considers herself to be an ally to LGBTQ people. All of Ben’s new friends are open about their sexual identities. Ben mentions later in the movie that Ben was a loner in Ben’s previous school.
Ben meets Nathan (who is a year older than Ben) when Thomas asks Nathan to give Ben a tour of the school’s campus. Nathan introduces Ben to Nathan’s friends Sophie and Meleika. Ben is immediately accepted into their social circle. In many ways, Nathan has a personality that is the opposite of Ben’s personality. Nathan is optimistic and confident. Ben is pessimistic and insecure. Ben and Nathan’s relationship evolves from a friendship into a romance.
The parents of Ben’s new friends are never seen in the movie, even though Ben sometimes spends the night at Nathan’s place. Ben, Nathan and their teenage friends never talk about what it’s like to be openly queer in their high school, which is a regular public high school, not an “alternative” school. The movie needed more realism in the teenagers’ conversations, which tend to be sitcom-ish and a bit superficial.
Ben gets mentorship from two adults who also happen to be queer: Ben’s nonbinary art teacher Ms. Lions (played by Lena Dunham) and gay transgender man Chris (played Brian Michael Smith), who is Ben’s supervisor at the senior citizen day camp where Ben gets a part-time job. It’s all so convenient how the only teachers/mentors who are shown interacting with Ben (aside from Ben’s heterosexual brother-in-law Thomas) are also queer. All of the cast members’ performances are very good (Fogelmanis and Gutierrez-Riley are the movie’s standout cast members), but the screenplay is the part of the movie that doesn’t ring entirely true.
Ben wears skirts and makeup in public and never even gets stared at by strangers. And although Raleigh is one of the more politically liberal cities in North Carolina (the city tends to elect conservative Democrats), it seems like a fantasy for the movie to depict Raleigh as a place where queer teens can go and not experience any hurtful prejudices from people who live there. Ben’s angst has mostly to do with how Ben feels about being rejected by Ben’s parents, who live in another city, which is unnamed in the movie.
Ben also gets lucky in Ben’s first romance as an openly nonbinary person because Ben’s partner Nathan is also openly queer and completely respectful to Ben. Ben’s biggest complaint about Nathan is Ben thinks Nathan is too cheerful. Ben experiences bouts of depression (in one part of the movie, Ben doesn’t leave home for a week and stays mostly in bed), but these mental health struggles are treated in a shallow way. Ben just gets a few stern lectures (not professional counseling) about this depression from the concerned adults in Ben’s life.
Many movies about LGBTQ+ people are centered on the hateful bigotry that LGBTQ+ people experience. It’s understandable if the filmmakers of “I Wish You All the Best” didn’t want to focus the movie on this type of harmful experience or for the movie to revolve around LGBTQ+ trauma. But at the same time, it’s far-fetched to erase the existence of this prejudice from the protagonist’s current community while positioning anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry solely as something from the protagonist’s past community, as represented by the protagonist’s parents.
Experiencing bigotry is a fact of life for anyone from a historically oppressed group of people. This type of toxic discrimination doesn’t magically go away by moving to a more politically liberal city. By refusing to address this reality, “I Wish You All the Best” does a disservice to its intended audience. However, if people are looking for a relatively lightweight approach to a coming-of-age story about a teenager who happens to be nonbinary, then “I Wish You All the Best” fulfills that purpose.
Lionsgate released “I Wish You All the Best” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Dylan, North Carolina, in 2024 and 2025 (with flashbacks to 2007), the dramatic film “Regretting You” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asian people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A recent widow finds out that her husband and her sister, who died in a car crash together, were having an affair with each other, and the widow’s teenage daughter rebels against her by dating a fellow student against her mother’s wishes.
Culture Audience: “Regretting You” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and corny melodramas about “difficult” romances.
Allison Williams and Dave Franco in “Regretting You” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)
“Regretting You” is the cinematic equivalent of an overstuffed Baked Alaska. Even with a talented cast, this drama’s tone is too sugary for the subject matter of finding love during grief. A soap-opera-length story is crammed into a feature-length film. The last 15 minutes of the movie are especially horrible at how the movie glosses over and neatly wraps up difficult traumas and messy life transitions.
Directed by Josh Boone and written by Susan McMartin, “Regretting You” is adapted from Colleen Hoover’s 2019 novel of the same name. The movie takes place in the fictional small city of Dylan, North Carolina. (Dylan’s population is a little more than 38,000 people.) “Regretting You” was actually filmed in the Georgia cities of Atlanta and Decatur. Even though most of the characters in the movie grew up in North Carolina, no one in this movie’s cast sounds like they’re from North Carolina. It’s not the only thing in the movie that looks phony.
“Regretting You” begins with a flashback to 2007, when two high-school couples go on a double date to a beach party. Traditional “good girl” Morgan Davidson (played by Allison Williams) and her free-spirited younger sister Jenny Davidson (played by Willa Fitzgerald) are at the party with their respective boyfriends. Morgan’s boyfriend is confident and popular Chris Grant (played by Scott Eastwood), while Jenny’s boyfriend is quiet and slightly nerdy Jonah Sullivan (played by Dave Franco), who is secretly in love with Morgan. Chris, Morgan and Jonah are in their last year of high school, while Jenny is either in her second or third year of high school.
Morgan seems to be aware that she and Jenny have ended up with boyfriends who have personalities that are the opposites of who Morgan and Jenny are. Morgan says so when she jokingly asks Jonah, “How did we end up with our opposites?” Chris is a little bit rude to Morgan when he tells her that he likes her better when she’s drunk. At this party, there’s something else that’s occupying Morgan’s thoughts that’s bigger than Chris’ disrepectful remark. Before going to the party, Morgan took a home pregnancy test and found out that she’s pregnant.
“Regretting You” then fast-forwards 17 years later to 2024. Morgan (whose last name is now Grant) and Chris are now the married parents of 16-year-old Clara Grant (played by Mckenna Grace), who wants to become an actress. The movie never really shows Clara making much of an effort to be an actress, exept for a few brief clips of her reciting lines. Conversations in the movie reveal that Morgan and Chris got married not long after they found out that Morgan was pregnant.
Meanwhile, Jonah is now a teacher at Dylan High School, his alma mater. After he graduated from high school, Jonah moved away and cut off contact with his friends from high school. When Jonah’s father died, Jonah came back to Dylan to attend the funeral.
Jonah and Jenny reconnected at the funeral, they had a sexual encounter, and she got pregnant with their infant son Elijah from that encounter. (The role of baby Elijah is played by twins William Burnham Simmons and Ryan Conner Simmons.) Jonah and Jenny began dating again after this unplanned pregnancy. Jonah moved back to Dylan, he and Jenny moved in together, and they have recently gotten engaged.
The present-day scenes begin with these family members gathered for Morgan’s birthday party, except for Clara, who is running late. Clara is driving on a road when she sees Miller Adams (played by Mason Thames), the schoolmate she’s had a crush on for quite some time. Miller is in on the side of the road and holding a Dylan city limit sign. He indicates that he’s looking for a car ride, so Clara stops.
Miller explains that he needs help moving the sign because his favorite pizza place won’t deliver outside Dylan’s city limits. Miller lives just right outside of Dylan, so he’s been moving the city limit sign so that pizza can get delivered to the house where Dylan lives with his widower grandfather Hank Adams Sr. (played by Clancy Brown), who has some respiratory-related health issues. (Hank is seen wearing oxygen tubes.) It’s later revealed that Hank has cancer.
Clara is secretly thrilled that she’s talking to Miller, who seems to like her too. Miller has a girlfriend named Shelby, who graduated from their high school the year before. Shelby is never seen in the movie, but she frequently calls Miller to check up on him because she’s a nagging and jealous girlfriend. Miller and Clara mildly flirt with each other while pretending that they’re not romantically attracted to each other. And you know what that eventually means in a movie like “Regretting You.”
During their conversation in the car, Clara (who is a high-achieving student) finds out that Miller (who is an average student) is an aspiring filmmaker. Clara tells him that she wants to be an actress, but Clara’s mother Morgan thinks that Clara should choose a more stable career. Clara says that she applied to a drama school anyway because she wants to go to this school instead of a regular university. Clara encourages Miller to pursue his filmmaking dreams.
Clara tells Miller she’s in a hurry to get to her mother’s birthday party. During this sign relocation, one of Clara’s flip-flop shoes accidentally falls into some mud. After they finish what they set out to do with the city limit sign, Miller asks Clara to give him a car ride back to his place. He introduces her to his grandfather and gives her $10 to buy a new set of flip-flops. After Clara leaves, she’s elated to see that Miller has started following her on social media.
Morgan is annoyed that Clara is late to the party. Morgan is also concerned that Clara was with Miller because Miller’s father Hank Adams Jr. is in prison for drug dealing. Miller’s mother died when Miller was a child. Miller is a student of Jonah, who assures Morgan that Miller is a good kid. Morgan isn’t entirely convinced and wants Clara to date someone who comes from a family that doesn’t have the stigma of having a convicted criminal in the family.
Morgan quickly forgives Clara now that the family is all together for the birthday party. It seems like a picture-perfect party, but things are not always what they appear to be. Clara’s relationship with Morgan is somewhat strained because she thinks Morgan is too strict and controlling. Clara confides in Jenny more than Morgan about Clara’s personal life. Clara also feels emotionally closer to her father Chris than with Morgan.
As already revealed in the “Regretting You” trailer, tragedy strikes the family shortly after this birthday party. Chris and Jenny are killed in a car accident where Chris was driving. Jenny and Chris had lied to their family members, by saying they would be at their respective jobs at the time of the accident. The fact that Chris and Jenny were in the same car at the time of the accident is an indication that they were having an affair.
Jonah and Morgan later find proof of this affair. At first, Morgan is more in denial about it than Jonah is, but they both eventually accept the awful truth. Morgan is afraid of Clara finding out this scandalous secret, so she and Jonah agree not to tell Clara. Meanwhile, Clara and Miller get emotionally closer to each other. Jonah and Morgan also become closer, as Jonah encourages Morgan to revive her career aspirations to be an interior designer.
“Regretting You” is a movie that has no suspense whatsoever about what’s going to happen. (The movie’s trailer gives away almost the entire plot.) And although the principal cast members do the best they can, the screenplay they have to work with meanders and stumbles in many places.
The movie’s comic relief usually comes with the character of Clara’s best friend Lexie (played by scene-stealer Sam Morelos), who is more worldly than virgin Clara. Lexie has some one-liners that are laugh-out-loud funny. Other lines of dialogue from other characters are unintentionally funny because they’re so corny and cringeworthy. The movie clumsily struggles to blend the joys of new romance with the sadness of grief.
One of the biggest failings of “Regretting You” is how it makes the grieving process so trivial and overshadowed, in service of having four people rush into romances not long after the deaths of Chris and Jenny. In real life, there’s no official timeline on how long it should take to grieve the death of a loved one, but it seems like the movie’s priorities are warped. For example, later in the movie, Clara gets more upset about being grounded by Morgan than Clara is upset about losing her father and her aunt: the two people whom Clara admired most in life.
The movie has a sappy teen romance that’s forced into a story where family grief becomes just another sidelined plot device. Even worse is how “Regretting You” handles the changing relationship between Morgan and Jonah. This is the type of movie where certain people decide that they’re in love with each other after kissing each other for the first time. It all looks so fake, no matter how much the cast members try to be convincing. (Grace and Franco fare the best in their acting performances.) “Regretting You” is ultimately more interested in schmaltz than substance and has many questionable and eye-rolling choices that oversimplify what would be a painful mess in the real world.
Paramount Pictures will release “Regretting You” in U.S. cinemas on October 24, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on November 25, 2025.
Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, Tyriq Withers and Madelyn Cline in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (Photo by Matt Kennedy/Columbia Pictures)
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2024 and 2025, in the fictional Southport, North Carolina, the horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and multi-racial people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A group of former high school friends are targeted by a serial killer who’s dressed as a hat-wearing, masked fisherman and who knows about the friends’ secret manslaughter involvement in the accidental car death of a young man.
Culture Audience: “I Know What You Did Last Summer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchise, and horror sequels that rely too heavily on nostalgia for earlier movies in the series.
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (Photo by Matt Kennedy/Columbia Pictures)
The 2025 version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is one of several horror movie franchises (such as “Scream,” “Saw,” “The Exorcist” and “The Strangers”) that have been revived in the 2020s, in order to attract new generations of fans. The 2025 version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is an example of a franchise movie that goes overboard in fan-service nostalgia instead of building a creative new path. There are some plot holes, and the murder mystery is easy to solve when the body count increases. Most horror fans will find something to like about this reboot/sequel, but it’s not enough to save a movie that’s full of recycled ideas and unanswered questions.
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was co-written by Sam Lansky and Robinson. The movie is based on Lois Duncan’s classic 1973 young-adult novel of the same name. The book was adapted into the 1997 horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which spawned the dreadful 1998 sequel “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.” The 2006 film “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” was released direct-to-video and had none of the characters (except for the Fisherman serial killer) that were in the first two “Last Summer” movies. There was also the 2021 short-lived Prime Video series “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which flopped with critics and audiences.
The 2025 movie version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” brings back at least two of the characters from the 1990s movies. In 2025’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the ages have increased for the group of friends who made a pact to secretly cover up being involved in a man’s accidental death. In the 1990s movies (and in the original novel), the friends are teenagers in high school and then in college. In the 2025 version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” the friends are in their mid-20s, although some of them still act like teenagers in high school.
The movie begins on July 4, 2024, when Ava Brucks (played by Chase Sui Wonders) has arrived back in her hometown of Southport, North Carolina. Southport was the location of 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” but this beach city has been transformed since the 1990s, due to gentrification. The formerly middle-class Southport is now an enclave to many affluent residents. In the movie, one of the characters describes Southport as “the Hamptons of the South.” (The 2025 movie version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was actually filmed in New South Wales, Australia.)
Ava (who graduated from high school in 2017) is among the people who grew up in a life of privilege in Southport. She’s also from a generation who wasn’t even born when the first wave of serial killings happened in Southport. Ava has come back to visit Southport to attend the Fourth of July engagement party of Danica Richards (played by Madelyn Cline), who was Ava’s best friend in high school.
Ava and Danica grew apart after they graduated from high school. They haven’t seen or spoken to each other in a few years because Ava stopped returning Danica’s calls and messages. Danica is engaged to marry Teddy Spencer (played by Tyriq Withers), who is the spoiled son of wealthy and powerful real-estate developer Grant Spencer (played by Billy Campbell) and his socialite wife Jill Spencer (played by Simone Annan), who is seen very briefly in the beginning of the film. Grant has a reputation for being the main reason why Southport has gentrified.
Also invited to this engagement party is someone whom Ava is somewhat nervous to see: Teddy’s best friend Milo Griffin (played by Jonah Hauer-King), who has a generic personality and who works in Washington, D.C., in some type of political job. Ava and Milo had a vague romantic attraction in high school. It seems like if Ava and Milo were ever a “couple,” it wasn’t a serious relationship, and it didn’t last. The point is that Ava and Milo are supposed to have sexual tension when they see each other again all these years later.
One of the biggest flaws in this version of “I Know You Did Last Summer” is that Ava unrealistically never mentions any of her family members when going back to her hometown. She’s seen getting dressed for the engagement party in a bedroom that is decorated the same way that she had it decorated in high school, which suggests that she’s in her former childhood bedroom. Her parents or other relatives (if she has any) are nowhere to be seen in the movie.
Ava is obviously supposed to be the movie’s main protagonist, but hardly anything is revealed about her life before and after she moved away from Southport. She never talks what she does for a living. She has limited and very superficial conversations with Danica about their friendship in high school. Ava tells Danica that she’s sorry about cutting off contact, but that’s about as revealing as their conversations go in the movie.
Danica’s family members are also invisible/non-existent in the movie. It’s a bizarre and unexplainable omission for someone who’s planning to have a lavish “high society” wedding. Danica talks a lot about shallow things, but not once does she mention who her family is. Danica might as well have been plopped into the movie like she got lost on the way to a “Real Housewives” reality show audition.
As the enagement party ends that night, the four reunited pals (Ava, Danica, Teddy and Milo) decide to continue their tradition of watching Fourth of July fireworks from a cliffside view. Teddy is ready to get very drunk and stoned. He’s already tipsy on alcohol, and he’s got some marijuana that he smokes on the way there. Ava also indulges in some of the marijuana smoking.
Before they drive off, the four friends notice two workers from the restaurant/bar that catered the party: Stevie Ward (played by Sarah Pidgeon) and Hannah Decker (played by Georgia Flood) are busy packing up some supplies. Hannah is a member of Southport Trinity Church, which has a creepy and overly zealous leader named Pastor Judah (played by Austin Nichols), who is introduced fairly late in the movie. Stevie is invited to join the four pals to watch the fireworks.
Why are Ava, Danica, Teddy and Milo interested in hanging out with Stevie? In dialogue that’s basically an exposition dump, it’s quickly explained that Stevie used to be a close friend of Ava, Danica, Teddy and Milo when they were in high school. However, Stevie’s life went downhill after her father was sent to prison for some type of fraud that caused her family’s finances to be ruined. Stevie developed an addiction that landed her in rehab while her former friends went away to college and seemed to forget all about Stevie.
Ava, Danica, Teddy and Milo feel some guilt about abandoning their friendship with Stevie at a low point in her life, which is why they invite her to watch fireworks with them. Stevie declines the offer at first because she says she has to finish working that night. But she is persuaded to join the group.
On a winding cliffside road, Teddy is drunk and stoned when he gets out of the car and starts acting like an idiot in the middle of the road. He narrowly avoids being hit by one car. A pickup truck drives up less than minute later and swerves to avoid hitting him. The truck crashes through a guardrail and is hanging over a steep cliff. The only person in the truck is the driver: a young man who’s barely conscious.
Ava, Danica, Teddy, Milo and Stevie panic about what to do as the car tilts precariously off the cliff. Anyone who goes inside the truck to try to pull out the driver could cause the truck to fall over the cliff. And then, the worst-case scenario happens: The truck falls over the cliff with the driver trapped inside. It’s a different scenario than the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which had a hit-and-run accident.
Teddy calls 911 to report seeing the truck go over the cliff, but he tells the others that he won’t tell authorities what caused the accident, and he insists that they all leave the scene of this manslaughter crime before police and anyone else sees them. Ava and Stevie are the only ones in the group who think they should wait for the police to arrive and tell the truth about everything that happened. Danica and Teddy (who don’t want their wedding to be ruined by this scandal) are the ones who feel strongest about keeping what happened a secret.
Eventually, all five of them make a pact to keep it a secret. However, Teddy later reveals that he told his father Grant, in case he needs Grant to help him get out of trouble. Grant has obvious motives to keep it a secret too. It’s revealed early on in the movie that the person in the car really did die because his body was found, and his death was in the local news. His name was Sam Cooper.
By changing the car accident from a hit-and-run to a victim’s car swerve gone wrong, 2025’s “I Know what You Did Last Summer” makes it more believable that this accident could be kept a secret because there was no damage done to the car that Teddy was driving. However, there are too many implausible things that happen in 2025’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” that become even harder to accept once it’s revealed who’s behind the murders that happen in the movie. After this information is revealed, it makes law enforcement and some other people look incredibly stupid for not knowing about certain information that would be easily known and investigated in real life.
One year after the car accident, Danica is having another Fourth of July engagement party. This time, she’s engaged to marry another handsome and wealthy guy. His name is Wyatt (played by Joshua Orpin), and he’s addicted to alcohol, but Danica says that she’s willing to overlook Wyatt’s drinking problem because Wyatt treats her well. It’s mentioned that Danica broke up with Teddy because Teddy went on a downward spiral of abusing alcohol after the car accident. (Danica seems to have a thing for alcohol-abusing, rich pretty boys.)
And once again, Ava and Milo are at this engagement party. This time, Danica gets an anonymous greeting card that says, “I know what you did last summer.” At first, Danica accuses Teddy of sending the card because she thinks he’s jealous that she’s moved on to a new fiancé. Teddy (who is still a heavy drinker) vehemently denies it because he wants to keep their big secret too.
Someone who’s in town to do a story on the serial killings that have plagued Southport is a true crime podcaster named Tyler (played by Gabbriette Bechtel), who hosts a podcast called Live, Love, Slaughter. Tyler (who has a brash and crude personality) thinks she can uncover information that no one else has reported. Ava and Tyler met because they were on the same airplane flight. Tyler is first seen in the movie having a sexual hookup with Ava in an airport bathroom.
It’s another example of how disjointed the movie is, because even though it shows that Ava is queer or bisexual, the movie doesn’t reveal hardly anything else about her personal life. In another scene, Ava drops a major hint to Milo that she’s into BDSM sex, which makes straght-laced Milo very uncomfortable. All of this might be the movie’s way of being provocative, but it looks so phony, contrived and irrelevant to the main story.
After Danica gets the mystery greeting card, the killings begin. Just like in the other “Last Summer” movies, the masked killer is dressed in a fisherman’s hat and jacket and uses a fisherman’s hook to murder the victims. This killer is called the Fisherman.
One of the movie’s biggest failings is how easy it is to narrow down who the killer could be. The movie has very few characters who are tall enough and strong enough to do all the strenuous fighting and murders that take place between the Fisherman and the murder victims. And then, when you look at possible motives and who’s still alive in the last 20 minutes of the film, it becomes even easier to figure out who committed the murders.
Two of the characters from 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” make their return in the 2025 version of the movie: Julie James (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (played by Freddie Prinze Jr.), who were a dating couple in high school. Julie and Ray are now a divorced couple who can’t stand each other. Julie works as a criminology professor at a local university. Ray owns Ray’s Bar, where Stevie and Hannah work.
Aside from not having enough possible suspects, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” has a big problem with how the screenplay overlooks or omits many things that should be in a believable slasher movie. The movie has no significant law enforcement presence that’s investigating these murders. That doesn’t mean police detectives had to be the main characters, but the movie needed to show at least one law enforcement official consistently interacting with any witnesses and anyone who was close to the murder victims.
Police officers are briefly seen but are mostly background characters. Danica has a scene where she’s alone in a police interview room, but that scene is mostly a setup for a nostalgia-oriented “surprise.” The “surprise” doesn’t last long and only serves as a reminder that 2025’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” has a shortage of fresh new ideas for its characters.
When you factor in that the people being murdered in this movie mostly come from affluent and influential families, that’s when “I Know What You Did Last Summer” loses all credibility that law enforcement is almost non-existent in this film. Instead, the movie shows Ava unrealistically trying to solve the crimes on her own. A few of the murders happen and then are never mentioned again. The screenplay is just so sloppy and distracting with these plot holes.
The acting performances are serviceable, with Hewitt making the most out of her screen time. Prinze is a little stiff in his role, but his acting doesn’t ruin the movie. However, all the new characters are as hollow as hollow can be. The movie’s fan-service pandering reaches its peak at the end of the film (including a mid-credits scene), which makes it obvious that the filmmakers opened the door for a sequel.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” has satirical comedy and some homages to the franchise’s first two films. And the movie has some effective amusing moments when it pokes fun at how a privileged character like Danica can live in a bubble of materialistic vanity. But when you consider at how much information is on the Internet and on social media, it’s hard not to overlook how ridiculous it is that the motive for these murders wasn’t discovered very early on in whatever investigation took place.
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies have never been about supernatural or paranormal killers. The killers in these movies are very much human. And that’s why 2025’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” makes the egregious mistake of making it only about the grisly ways that people get killed and ignoring all of the things that make the victims seem like real people whose murders would be investigated.
Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems will release “I Know What You Did Last Summer” in U.S. cinemas on July 18, 2025.
A 2015 photo of (pictured clockwise from upper left) Jason Corbett, Molly Corbett, Sarah Corbett and Jack Corbett in “A Deadly American Marriage” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Culture Representation: The documentary film “A Deadly American Marriage” features an all-white group of people who are connected in some way to the case of Jason Corbett, who was killed on August 2, 2015, in Meadowlands, North Carolina, by his second wife Molly Corbett and Molly’s father Thomas “Tom” Martens.
Culture Clash: There have been disputes over whether or not Jason Corbett (who was an Irish immigrant with two underage children when he married Molly, an American) was murdered or if he was killed in self-defense.
Culture Audience: “A Deadly American Marriage” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching true crime documentaries about families affected by tragic deaths.
Thomas “Tom” Martens in “A Deadly American Marriage” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
“A Deadly American Marriage” does a good job of presenting both sides of this controversial case about the 2015 killing of Jason Corbett by his second wife and her father. The movie’s title omits Corbett’s Irish heritage, which is a big part of the story. It’s a minor flaw but the title misleads people into thinking that this is was a marriage between two Americans when it was not. Jason Corbett was born and raised in Ireland and moved to the U.S. state of North Carolina in 2011, the year that he married North Carolina native Molly Corbett, whose maiden name was Molly Martens. Their marriage hit a rough patch, and Jason was considering moving back to Ireland with his two children when Jason was killed at the age of 39.
Directed by Jenny Popplewell and Jessica Burgess, “A Deadly American Marriage” was filmed in 2023, when Molly and her father Thomas “Tom” Martens (a retired FBI agent), who are both interviewed in the documentary, were out on bail and facing new charges after they were both originally convicted of the second-degree murder of Jason in 2017. That conviction was overturned for reasons that are explained in the documentary. In 2023, instead of facing a new trial, Molly pled no contest and Martens pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and were each sentenced to 51 to 74 months in prison, including time served. They were both released from prison in 2024.
What happened on the night of August 2, 2015, at Jason and Molly’s home in Meadowlands, North Carolina, remains divisive and debatable. According to Molly and Martens, Jason was a very abusive husband to her. Martens, who was visiting the spouses that night, says that he killed Jason because Jason was physically attacking Molly. Jason was bludgeoned to death with a cinder block and a baseball bat.
Jason and Molly were raising his two children from his first marriage: Jack (who was 10 when Jason died) and Sarah (who was 8 when Jason died) were both at home and asleep when this killing happened. Jason’s first wife Margaret “Mags” Corbett died of an asthma attack in 2006, when she was 31. Jason, Mags, Jack and Sarah were all born in Ireland. Jason’s family is mostly in the Limerick area of Ireland. Molly met Jason because she was hired to be the au pair for Jack and Sarah.
Originally, Jack and Sarah told police investigators that Jason was abusive to Molly. Jack and Sarah later recanted those statements when they both admitted that Molly told them to tell lies to the investigators about Jack being abusive to Molly. These contradictions led to the murder convictions against Molly and her father to be overturned. Molly and her father have maintained their stories in this documentary and elsewhere that the killing was done in self-defense. The prosecutors in the case disagree, based on evidence that Molly and her father had almost no injuries, while Jason was beaten to a bloody pulp.
The documentary also brings up several instances and shows proof that Molly was at the very least a chronic liar. On the day that she and Jason got married, she told her maid of honor (a woman identified in the documentary only as Susie, her first name) that Molly had given birth to Sarah. According to Susie (who was also interviewed in the documentary) and Jason’s sister Tracey Lynch, Molly also lied to people at the wedding by saying that Mags was a good friend of Molly and Mags had asked Molly to take care of the kids if Mags died. The truth is that Molly never knew Mags and met Jason, Jack and Sarah after Mags died.
After Jason’s death, Tracey and her husband David Lynch (who is also interviewed in the documentary) say that Molly wouldn’t return their calls, wouldn’t contact them to tell them what happened, and wouldn’t let them see Jack and Sarah. Tracey and David also heard erroneous information that Jason had died from a fall when Molly pushed him. It wasn’t until later they heard the gruesome truth.
Wanda Thompson, a lieutenant at the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department in North Carolina, says in the documentary: “It was one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’ve seen in a long time.” Alan Martin, the prosecuting district attorney in the case, breaks down in tears when he describes the crime scene (blood-spattered rooms) and the autopsy photos of Jason’s fatal injuries. Martin says, “He had so many blows to the head, the pathologist couldn’t count them because they overlapped. And a chunk of Jason’s skull fell out onto the [autopsy] table.”
Other people interviewed in the documentary are Molly’s attorney Doug Kingsbery; Jay Vannoy and Jones Byrd, two of Martens’ attorneys; and Dr. Scott Hampton, a domestic abuse expert who was a witness for the defense. There are also some people interviewed whose last names are not mentioned in the documentary. They include Mags’ best friend Lynn, Mags’ mother Marian and Mags’ sister Catherine, who all deny the defense team’s theory that Jason could have killed Mags. A friend of Jason’s named Brandon (no last name given) also denies that Jason was an abusive person.
Molly fought to get custody of Jack and Sarah, who were never adopted by Molly. But after about four days of legal wrangling, Tracey and David—the biological aunt and uncle of the kids—got custody and raised Jack and Sarah in Ireland with their own biological children. Jack and Sarah eventually changed their last names to Corbett-Lynch.
Molly made secret audio recordings of verbal arguments between her and Jason that she said was proof that he was abusing her. These recordings were used as evidence in the defense arguments for Molly and her father. However, the recordings featured in the documentary have no proof of physical abuse, and the recordings sound more like Jason was annoyed and frustrated that Molly was trying to make him angry. Jason’s family members who are interviewed in the documentary all say that he was not abusive and was actually a kind, loving and charismatic person.
Jack’s and Sarah’s comments and interviews in the documentary are the most impactful. Their story is tragic but it’s also an inspirational story of resilience and the power of family love. Under court order, Molly is forbidden from having contact with Jack and Sarah, who are now adults. Near the end of the documentary, Jack has this to say about Molly: “I don’t hate her. I just don’t want to give her power over me anymore.”
Netflix premiered “A Deadly American Marriage” on May 9, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina and in Virginia, the dramatic film “Breakwater” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An ex-con tracks down the estranged daughter of a fellow prisoner as a favor but finds out that this favor is not what it appears to be.
Culture Audience: “Breakwater” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching predictable and not-very-believable crime thrillers.
Dermot Mulroney in “Breakwater” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)
“Breakwater” starts off being a mediocre thriller, but then it goes swiftly downhill in the last third of the movie, when it crams in too many far-fetched plot twists. It doesn’t help that the movie’s protagonist is dimwitted and boring. Unfortunately, the trailer for “Breakwater” reveals about 85% of what happens in the last third of the movie, including a few of the plot twists that should be surprises. Therefore, anyone who sees the trailer before watching “Breakwater” will be even more bored, because of the long and often tedious wait to get to the expected climactic showdown.
Written and directed by James Rowe, “Breakwater” had the potential to be a much better film if it hadn’t relied so much on tiresome clichés. The movie is also plagued by mediocre-to-bad performances from many of the principal cast members. The “hero” and the “villain” in the story have one-dimensional personalities. It all adds up to a frequently flat cinematic experience that becomes the most cringeworthy in the last third of the movie.
“Breakwater” centers on a gullible young man named Dovey (played by Darren Mann, giving a very stiff performance), who was sent to a Virginia prison for drug possession. (“Breakwater” was actually filmed in North Carolina.) Viewers find out later that Dovey took the blame for the crime, in order to protect the guilty woman whom he didn’t want to go to prison. It’s an example of how Dovey is overly generous and can be taken advantage of by the wrong people.
In the beginning of the movie, Dovey is spending his last day in prison before he is released. A fellow inmate named Ray Childress (played by Dermot Mulroney) has somehow gotten a slice of cake inside a cell and gives it to Dovey as a “birthday” present, because Ray says that getting out of prison is a rebirth. Ray asks Dovey for a big favor when Dovey is out of prison: Ray wants Dovey to find his estranged adult daughter Marina, who hasn’t seen or spoke to Ray in about seven years.
Ray has an idea where Marina is because he saw a woman who looks just like her in a newspaper photo published with a story about the mast of a 19th century ship being found off the coast of North Carolina. The mast is still standing upright in the ocean before it will be transported somewhere to be examined. Marina was one of the onlookers in the photo.
Ray says that if Dovey finds Marina, then Dovey cannot tell Marina that Ray is looking for her. Ray also says he just wants Dovey to tell him where Marina lives or works and if Marina is doing okay. Dovey agrees to do this favor out of the goodness of his heart and because he respects Ray, who became his friend in prison. Dovey doesn’t expect anything in return.
Even though Mena Suvari is a headliner for this movie, she has a useless cameo that lasts for less than five minutes. She portrays a bartender named Kendra, who has a thing for ex-cons and tries to seduce Dovey soon after he gets out of prison and he becomes a customer in the bar where she works. Their brief encounter ends awkwardly when Dovey doesn’t go for Kendra’s kink of having an ex-con pretend to kill her while having sex.
Before going to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where Marina is believed to be living, Dovey goes home to spend time with his fisherman father Luther (played by J.D. Evermore), whose specialty is crab fishing. Luther is happy to have Dovey working with him again on Luther’s small fishing boat. However, Dovey doesn’t stay for very long before he hops on his motorcycle to go to North Carolina to find Marina.
It should come as no surprise that Dovey finds her, except she is now going by the name Eve (played by Alyssa Goss), and she is the single mother of a daughter named Harper (played by Ezra DuVall), who’s about 5 or 6 years old. Harper and Eve live with Eve’s roommate Jess (played by Celia Rose Gooding), a pop/R&B singer who gets gigs at local restaurants/bars. “Breakwater” barely shows what kind of mother Eve is until the problematic last third of the movie.
Eve, who is friendly but foul-mouthed in her personal life, seems to be financially struggling. She is juggling jobs at a bookstore and as a tour guide for Outer Banks historical locations. Dovey charms Eve when they first meet by telling her that they share a passion for ships and sea history. He also tells her that he grew up spending a lot of time in the water. Dovey and Eve’s attraction to each other goes exactly where you think it will go.
Eve decides to take Dovey to a rocky coast area so he can get a better look at the mast from the 19th century shipwrecked boat. She accidentally drops a bracelet that she says was given to her by her father. The bracelet has sunk into the water, but Dovey decides he’s going to be a gallant gentleman, so he dives in the water to retrieve the bracelet and gives it back to Eve, who is flattered by and grateful for this kind gesture. Dovey later describes the bracelet to Ray in a phone conversation, which is how Ray knows that Dovey found the right person.
Of course, since it was already revealed in the movie’s trailer, Ray has sinister reasons to find Eve. Dovey’s no-nonsense parole officer Bonnie Bell (played by Sonja Sohn) becomes involved in this mess when she finds out that Dovey has violated his parole by crossing state lines without permission. It all leads to a very hokey conclusion with ridiculous-looking action scenes and plot “reveals” that sink the movie faster than you can say “forgettable, low-quality movie.”
Vertical released “Breakwater” in U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on December 22, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Jackson County, North Carolina, the dramatic film “Devil’s Peak” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A young man tries to start a life apart from his drug-dealing father, who expects him to take over this family’s criminal business, while the father of the young man’s girlfriend is the district attorney who has been targeting the drug-dealing father in a sting operation.
Culture Audience: “Devil’s Peak” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching convoluted and fake-looking crime dramas.
Billy Bob Thornton in “Devil’s Peak” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)
The novelty of real-life mother-and-son duo Robin Wright and Hopper Penn portraying a mother and a son in “Devil’s Peak” is not enough reason to watch this dreadful crime drama with a putrid plot and subpar acting. Almost nothing in this flop is believable. It’s the type of dreck that is overstuffed with bad dialogue and ridiculous plot twists that add up to a complete waste of time.
Directed by Ben Young, “Devil’s Peak” is based on David Joy’s 2015 novel “Where All Light Tends to Go.” Robert Knott wrote the low-quality adapted screenplay for “Devil’s Peak.” Just when you think the movie can’t get any worse, the last 15 minutes are such a pile-on of utter stupidity, it will have viewers rolling their eyes more than the tweaking meth addicts who are the customers of the drug-dealing family at the center of the story.
“Devil’s Peak” opens with a scene of a terrified-looking guy in his late teens named Jacob McNeely (played by Penn), who is half-crouched behind his truck that’s parked on an deserted road. He’s pointing his rifle at an approaching car and has the stance of someone who’s expecting a shootout. The movie circles back to this scene in the last third of the film to reveal who’s in this showdown with Jacob.
Viewers will know from the beginning of “Devil’s Peak” to brace for some bad dialogue when Jacob is heard saying in this voiceover narration: “In Jackson County, North Carolina, my family name meant something. Our family was a matter of blood, just like hair color and height. By the time I was 9 or 10, Daddy had me breaking down big bags of crystal meth.”
Jacob continues, “He got them from the Mexicans through his biker buddy Ed McGraw. The auto shop was a front, where I worked with Gerald Cabe and his skinny-ass brother Jeremy Cabe. They were the ones who did Daddy’s dirty work. And everyone in these parts knew he was not the kind of man you want to cross.”
If you can get past the ridiculousness that a guy who’s being groomed by his father to be a menacing drug dealer is still calling his father “Daddy,” there’s still more phony garbage to come in “Devil’s Peak.” It doesn’t help that many of the cast members either over-act or their acting is too stiff. Try not to laugh at the cringeworthy utterings of Jacob as he continues to tell his story in voiceover narration.
“Even though they were mean as hell,” Jacob says, “the Cabe brothers were the closest thing I had to kin. Methamphetamine was a living, breathing body in Jackson County. Daddy was the heart-pumping blood in every vein in the region.”
Jacob continues, “I got a cut from the sales, like most kids got allowance. But Daddy held on to my money. Maybe it’s a life I could’ve accepted, like generations of McNeelys had done before me. But Maggie Jennings, she made it so I couldn’t.”
Viewers soon find out that Maggie (played by Katelyn Nacon) is Jacob’s 18-year-old girlfriend, who lives with her mother and stepfather in an upper-middle-class part of Jackson Country. Maggie is a “good girl” who plans to go to the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Maggie wants Jacob to go to the same university with her at the same time.
But Jacob’s ruthless father Charlie McNeely (played by Billy Bob Thornton) has other plans for Jacob: He expects Jacob to stay in the family’s meth distribution business. Charlie says to Jacob at one point in the movie: “We did not choose this way of life. It chose us. It’ll be that way until we ain’t breathing.”
And to make matters more complicated, Maggie’s stepfather is district attorney Bob Jones (played by Brian d’Arcy James), who is up for re-election and has been targeting Charlie and his gang for a major drug bust. Bob has secrets that are eventually revealed in the movie. The secrets should come as no surprise to viewers who’ve seen enough of these types of films where politicians can be just as corrupt as the criminals.
As a money-laundering cover for his drug dealing, Charlie owns and operates a mechanic shop called McNeely’s Automotive. All of the men who work at the shop, including Jacob, are really part of the McNeely drug gang. The aforementioned brothers Jeremy Cabe (played by Jared Bankens) and Gerald Cabe (played by David Kallaway) are stereotypical sleazeballs. (The story in “Devil’s Peak” takes place in North Carolina, but the movie was actually filmed in Georgia.)
One of the worst and most unbelievable things about “Devil’s Peak” is that the McNeelys are supposedly the most powerful drug-dealing family in Jackson County for generations, with the current district attorney intent on busting them. But only two cops are part of this story: Sheriff Rogers (played by Jackie Earle Haley) has been in law enforcement in Jackson County for years and knows all about the McNeely family. A junior officer named C. Bullock, also known as Bull (played by Harrison Gilbertson), is a hothead bully who likes to pick on Jacob.
Sheriff Rogers has a soft spot for Jacob’s mother Virgie (played by Wright), a forlorn meth addict who has been trying unsuccessfully for years to conquer her addiction and clean up her act. Virgie and Charlie have been divorced since Jacob was a child. Charlie is still bitter because Virgie cheated on him when they were married, but viewers will get the impression that hypocrite Charlie isn’t exactly the “faithful spouse” type either.
Virgie is currently down on her luck, unemployed, and living in near-poverty. She doesn’t have a car, but sympathetic Sheriff Rogers sometimes gives her car rides and looks out for Virgie as much as he can. The movie shows hints that Sheriff Rogers probably has romantic feelings for Virgie. Because of her drug addiction, Virgie has been in and out of Jacob’s life. Charlie has been the parent who has primarily raised Jacob. And Charlie doesn’t let Jacob forget it.
As the emotionally broken Virgie, Wright gives perhaps the closest thing to an authentic-looking performance in “Devil’s Peak.” Unfortunately, she’s not in the movie for very long (her screen time is less than 20 minutes), and her scenes consists mostly of Virgie apologetically trying to reconnect with Jacob, or Virgie defensively trying to convince suspicious Charlie that she’s not a confidential informant for the police. Virgie is openly driving around with Sheriff Rogers in his squad car, so it’s no wonder that Charlie thinks that desperate drug addict Virgie might be getting paid to set up Charlie to get arrested.
Charlie has a girlfriend who’s young enough to be his daughter. Her name is Josephine, nicknamed Josie (played by Emma Booth), and she goes along with whatever Charlie wants. Josephine shows a little bit of sassiness and occasionally talks back to Charlie, but he’s really the one in control of the relationship. “Devil’s Peak” is ultimately a male-dominated movie where the few female characters in the film just react to whatever the men are doing.
The rest of “Devil’s Peak” involves murders, a kidnapping, chase scenes and a race against time for people who want possession of Charlie’s hidden stash of cash. Thornton’s portrayal of Charlie is a caricature of a villain, with every action utterly predictable and soulless. Penn, who pouts his way through his performance, lacks charisma in his role as protagonist Jacob. And that’s a problem when viewers are supposed to be rooting for the protagonist.
“Devil’s Peak” tries to cram in too many “surprises” in the last 15 minutes of the film. It all looks so fake, because the movie makes it look like there are only two cops in Jackson County who are dealing with the huge mess that Charlie causes in this story. There are many more than two people to blame for the mess that is “Devil’s Peak.”
Screen Media Films released “Devil’s Peak” in select U.S. cinemas on February 17, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on February 24, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional small town of Duboisville, North Carolina, the horror film “Abandoned” features an all-white cast of characters representing the middle-class and working-class.
Culture Clash: A husband and a wife move into an isolated house that was abandoned for years, and then sinister things starts to happen.
Culture Audience: “Abandoned” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Emma Roberts and to viewers who don’t mind watching shoddily made and monotonous horror movies.
Michael Shannon in “Abandoned” (Photo courtesy of Vertical Entertainment)
“Abandoned” is how to describe any hope that viewers might have that this dull and idiotic horror flick will be scary or interesting. It’s the type of derivative haunted house movie that’s just recycled trash. The terrible ending of “Abandoned” is just one of many examples of how this creatively bankrupt dud fails at even ripping off good horror movies.
Directed by Spencer Squire, “Abandoned” is so bad, it looks like the stars of the movie don’t really want to be there. Erik Patterson and Jessica Scott co-wrote the atrocious “Abandoned” screenplay, which tepidly regurgitates over-used plot devices that have been in dozens of movies about haunted houses.
There’s the family moving into a house that has a sinister history, but the family doesn’t know or doesn’t care. The house is usually in an isolated area. And there’s usually at least one young child in the house, in order for viewers to be more alarmed that any evil spirits lurking around could harm the child or children.
All of these clichés on their own or together don’t necessarily mean that a movie is going to be horrible. It’s when a movie does nothing compelling with these clichés that the filmmaking becomes lazy and irritating. “Abandoned” is an example of what not to do when making a movie about a haunted house.
“Abandoned” opens with an exterior scene of an isolated farmhouse in the fictional small town of Duboisville, North Carolina. (The movie was actually filmed in Smithfield, North Carolina.) An unseen young female can be heard screaming in the house: “You promised me I could keep one!” And then, gunshots are heard.
Forty years later, married couple Sara Davis (played by Emma Roberts) and Alex Davis (played by John Gallagher Jr.) are being given a tour of the house by a real-estate agent named Cindy (played by Kate Arrington), who is nervously eager to make this sale. Sara and Alex have brought their infant son Liam (played by Marie May) with them. Liam seems to get agitated as soon as they go inside the house, and he begins crying. Get used to hearing a baby shrieking and crying, because this movie overloads on these sound effects.
Of course, viewers can easily deduce from the opening scene that this house’s history includes at least one brutal murder. Unlike other haunted house movies where the new residents didn’t bother to get that background information, “Abandoned” has the house buyers getting that information before they purchase the house. Predictably, the house is being sold at a “too good to be true” bargain, but the house has been on the market for years.
Sara asks Cindy why the house has been for sale for such a long period of time. Alex quickly says, “I don’t want to know.” Sara responds in an insistent tone, “I want to know.” Cindy then reluctantly tells Sara and Alex that years ago, a teenager named Hannah Solomon shot her infant brother, her widowed father and herself in the house.
Cindy also hands Sara a legal-sized envelope with all the details. Later, when Sara opens the envelope, she sees news clippings about the killings and police photos of the dead bodies. How morbid. What kind of real-estate agent gives this gruesome file to a house buyer? Only a weird real-estate agent in a dumb horror movie like “Abandoned.”
Sara has this nonchalant reaction when stating that she still wants to buy the house: “We’ll take it. You know, I don’t mind a little haunting. Besides, it’s all in the past. We’re focused on the future.” Who talks like that? Only stupid house buyers in a terrible horror movie like “Abandoned.”
Alex is a veterinarian who plans to use the barn on the property as his veterinary clinic. However, the barn doesn’t have electricity. Alex expects farmers to be his main clients. However, the property is at least a one-hour drive away from the nearest farm. And so, with no electricity yet for his would-be veterinary clinic, and his potential clients living so far away, Alex has already set up major obstacles to get his veterinarian business started in this home.
Meanwhile, it’s soon revealed that Alex and Sara are moving out of an unnamed city to a rural area because Sara has been battling depression, and they want a calmer environment for her. Because the most logical place to go for more peace and quiet is a house that you think might be haunted. Who makes moronic decisions like this? Only the targets who put themselves in harm’s way in a mindless horror movie like “Abandoned.”
Soon after moving into the house, Sara notices that Liam refuses to breastfeed. And so, expect to see a lot of tedious whining from Sara about how she doesn’t like it that she has to bottle-feed milk to Liam. There are also time-wasting scenes of Alex visiting the nearest farmer to try to get some work for Alex’s fledgling veterinary business.
Sara likes to snap a rubber band that she wears around her wrist. Don’t expect the movie to explain why she has this odd habit. There’s a vague mention that Sara was getting medically treated for her depression. However, she stopped taking her medication because she was breastfeeding Liam. And now, Liam refuses to breastfeed. Sara still doesn’t want to take the medication in case Liam will start breastfeeding again.
But wait: “Abandoned” isn’t quite done using up all the over-used haunted house clichés. There’s also the creepy and secretive person who just shows up in the lives of the house’s new residents. In the case of “Abandoned,” it’s Chris Renner (played by Michael Shannon), a neighbor who wants people to call him Renner. And the way that Renner shows up is very rude and stalker-ish.
When Sara is in an upstairs bedroom, she turns around to find Renner in the room. He’s holding a case of beer as a housewarming gift, as if it’s perfectly normal to walk into a stranger’s home uninvited. During this conversation, where Sara doesn’t seem bothered at all that a stranger came into her house uninvited, Renner says that he knew the Solomon family that was killed in the murder-suicide. He also mentions that Sara looks like Hannah Solomon.
It isn’t long before Sara starts having nightmares, none of which looks very original or horrifying. In one of the nightmares, she’s surrounded by a swarm of flies. When she tells Alex about these nightmares that seem real to her, it just leads to yet another horror movie stereotype: the woman who is not believed and is then labeled as mentally ill.
Alex thinks that Sara’s depression is the reason for everything bad happening in their lives. And irresponsibly, he believes the depression will just go away because he thinks it’s post-partum depression that will disappear when Liam gets older. For someone who has a medical degree, Alex is certainly a dimwitted doctor.
Sara confesses to Alex how she feels about parenthood: “I thought it would be the best thing that would ever happen to me. It’s not.” Sara says of Liam: “I look at him, and I feel so uncomfortable, like he’s an intruder or something.” Alex’s response is the worst “in denial” medical advice ever when he tells Sara: “That’s just the depression. It’s not you. It’ll go away.”
Eventually, secrets are revealed about the house and the Solomon family. These secrets are not surprising at all and are foreshadowed very sloppily in “Abandoned.” In addition to having mediocre-to-bad performances from all of the cast members who mostly play witless characters, “Abandoned” is extremely lethargic and fails to deliver any truly terrifying scenes. Simply put: At any point in watching “Abandoned,” viewers are more likely to fall asleep in their seats rather than be at the edge of their seats.
Vertical Entertainment released “Abandoned” in select U.S. cinemas on June 17, 2022. The movie was released on digital and VOD on June 24, 2022.
Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina, from 1952 to the early 2020s, the dramatic film “Where the Crawdads Sing” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: In 1970, a 24-year-old woman goes on trial for murdering her ex-boyfriend, and her past as a poor and abandoned child is used against her in the trial.
Culture Audience: “Where the Crawdads Sing” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the book on which the movie is based, as well as to people who are interested in stories about how people of different social classes are treated in society.
Taylor John Smith and Daisy Edgar-Jones in “Where the Crawdads Sing” (Photo by Michele K. Short/Columbia Pictures)
“Where the Crawdads Sing” has a lot of timeline jumping that will either annoy or intrigue viewers. The movie (which starts off very slow) gets better as it goes along and is elevated by a distinctive lead performance by Daisy Edgar-Jones. Fans of Delia Owens’ 2018 novel “Where the Crawdads Sing” should be satisfied with this cinematic adaptation, while other people who haven’t read the book might have more mixed reactions.
Directed by Olivia Newman and written by Lucy Alibar, the movie “Where the Crawdads Sing” takes on the challenge of telling a story that spans several decades. Just like in the book, the movie takes place in North Carolina. (The movie was actually filmed in New Orleans.) However, the timelines in the book and movie are slightly different. In the book, the timeline goes from 1952 to 2010, whereas the movie’s timeline goes from 1952 to the early 2020s.
The beginning of the film has some editing that might confuse some viewers. The opening scene takes place in the fictional coastal town of Barkley Cove, North Carolina, on the morning of October 30, 1969. Two boys riding their bicycles near a swamp have discovered the body of Chase Andrews (played by Harris Dickinson) underneath a fire tower. At the time of his death, Chase was in his mid-20s and a manager at a local auto dealership.
A medical examination shows that Chase banged his head from falling down the tower, and this head injury was fatal. However, police investigators have found no fingerprints nearby on the tower. And so, they’ve come the conclusion that Chase’s death was not an accident or suicide, and that whoever murdered him covered up the crime by wiping away fingerprints and getting rid of other evidence.
The movie then abruptly cuts to 23-year-old Kya Clark (played by Edgar-Jones) being chased down by law enforcement and put in jail. Inexplicably, a cat gets into her jail cell, and Kya cuddles with the cat for the night until the cat is taken away from her. Kya’s arrest for Chase’s murder is the talk of the town. Kya has a reputation for being a mysterious loner. And because she grew up poor, some people automatically think she’s trashy.
The evidence against Kya is very circumstantial. Kya does not have an alibi during the time frame (midnight to 2 a.m.) that investigators estimate was when Chase died on October 30, 1969. Not long before Chase died, he and Kya were seen having a fight outside that got violent. A witness saw Kya threaten to kill Chase if he ever came near her again. People close to Chase knew that he always wore a shell necklace that Kya had given to him, but the shell necklace was missing when his body was found.
On the night of Chase’s death, Kya was seen in her boat near the water tower. Kya denies it. She claims she was on a short business trip to see a book publisher in Greenville, North Carolina, and that she didn’t return to Barkley Cove until after Chase’s death. Witnesses say that they saw Kya leave and return from her trip by bus. However, she has no proof of where she was between midnight to 2 a.m. on October 30, 1969.
At a local bar, a retired attorney named Tom Milton (played by David Strathairn) is having a conversation with a few other locals about the case. Tom comments, “I’m retired. It’s not my business anymore.” But then, in another example of the movie’s not-so-great editing in the beginning of the film, Tom is then shown meeting with Kya and telling her that he wants to be her defense attorney.
The movie never bothers to explain how and why Tom changed his mind about coming out of retirement to represent Kya in this murder case. Very little is a told about Tom’s trial strategy for the case, or what kind of experience/background he has as a criminal defense attorney. If people are expecting scenes where Tom and Kya have meetings to discuss the case, forget it. Those scenes aren’t in the movie, except for a brief discussion where Kya tells Tom in no uncertain terms that she won’t take a plea bargain, which would have given her an approximate 10-year prison sentence.
What the movie does show are numerous flashbacks about what happened in Kya’s life before she went on trial for Chase’s murder, as well as riveting scenes from the trial that began in 1970. These flashbacks are not in chronological order, but the movie at least does show on screen the year in which a scene is supposed to take place. Viewers who are not paying full attention to “Where the Crawdads Sing” when watching the movie might miss some crucial details and might get confused.
Kya’s birth name is actually Catherine Danielle Clark. She is the youngest of five children. And she has lived in Barkley Cove her entire life, in an isolated house near the marsh. Her unnamed parents (played by Garret Dillahunt and Ahna O’Reilly) have a troubled marriage because Kya’s father is a violent alcoholic, who often beats his wife and kids.
When Kya was 6 years old (played by Jojo Regina), her mother suddenly abandoned the family and never came back. Kya actually saw her mother leave with a suitcase, so the trauma of this memory haunts Kya. One by one, Kya’s older siblings—sister Missy, brother Murphy (aka Murph), sister Mandy and brother Jodie—leave the household. Jodie is closest in age to Kya, so his departure hurts Kya the most.
In the movie, Will Bundon portrays a young Jodie, while Logan Macrae plays the teenage/adult Jodie. Toby Nichols portrays teenage/young adult Murph. Emma Willoughby (also known as Emma Kathryn Coleman) portrays teenage/young adult Missy. Adeleine Whittle portrays teenage/young adult Mandy. All of these siblings except for Jodie (who comes back to Barkley Cove years later) remain distant from Kya.
Kya is about 12 or 13 years old when she’s the only child left to live with her father. She still fears him, but she finds that he treats her better now that he doesn’t have to take care of so many kids. He’s also eased up on drinking alcohol.
However, he’s extremely bitter about his wife’s abandonment. When Kya’s mother sends a letter, Kya’s father angrily burns the letter in front of Kya. He’s also so enraged that he burns everything that reminds him of his wife.
Kya’s father has a knapsack of shells and feathers. After Kya’s mother left the family, Kya began using her mother’s watercolor paints to paint these shells and feathers. Kya’s talent for drawing art and her fascination with shells and feathers become major parts of the story.
As a child, Kya is often left alone for days when her father goes on gambling binges. And after one of these trips away, Kya’s father never comes back. She learns to fend for herself by catching and growing her own food. She also sells some of her food at the local general store, which is owned an operated by a friendly couple named Jumpin’ (played by Sterling Macer Jr.) and Mabel (played by Michael Hyatt), who have mutual respect for Kya.
Jumpin’ and Mabel know that Kya has been abandoned by her entire family, but they don’t want to report her to child welfare authorities because she is self-sufficient and isn’t causing any trouble. Kya is able to dodge any social services workers by hiding in the marsh if any authorities go to the home to visit. She gets the unflattering nickname Marsh Girl from people who know about her.
For most of her childhood, Kya is illiterate. On the one day she goes to school, she is taunted and laughed at by classmates for spelling the word “dog” as “god.” Kya runs away from the school and never goes back.
As a child, Kya briefly meets a boy around her age named Tate (played by Luke David Blumm), who is a friend of Jodie’s. When Kya is in her late teens and living on her own, Tate (played by Taylor John Smith) comes back into Kya’s life when she finds out he’s been leaving little gifts for her, such as booklets and supplies. Tate offers to teach Kya how to read and write when he finds out that she’s illiterate.
Just like Kya, Tate also comes from a working-class background and has a family tragedy that haunts him. His father is a shrimper. Tate’s mother and sister were killed in a car accident in Asheville, North Carolina. Tate feels tremendous guilt about their deaths because he believes that his mother and sister were in Asheville to get him a bicycle as a birthday gift.
Eventually, Tate and Kya become romantically involved with each other. However, their romance comes to an abrupt end when Tate goes away to college to pursue his dream of becoming a biologist. Before going away, Tate promised to keep in touch with Kya, but he never does.
Feeling abandoned and vulnerable, Kya ends up dating Chase, who ardently pursues her. He showers her with compliments and eventually promises that he will take care of her. However, there are some red flags about Chase, such as he doesn’t want to introduce Kya to his family. He also seems a little jealous that Kya is thinking about making money by selling her art as book illustrations.
Kya does indeed end up having a volatile relationship with Chase, which is why she’s the only suspect in his murder. What “Where the Crawdads Sing” does well is show how people who are abuse survivors see life in a different way, because they are often “on guard” or in “survival” mode. Kya’s experiences as an abuse survivor have a lot to do with the decisions that she makes in her life.
Just as in the book, the movie shows the outcome of the trial and who is guilty of Chase’s murder. How much people like the movie will depend on how much they’re engaged in Edgar-Jones’ performance. All of the other cast members are perfectly fine in their roles, but Edgar-Jones is utterly convincing in her role as this tortured soul, who doesn’t want people to see her as a victim. “Where the Crawdads Sing” certainly covers a lot of issues that have to do with how different social classes are treated and perceived, but the movie is also about not judging people by where they came from but who they are now.
Columbia Pictures and 3000 Pictures will release “Where the Crawdads Sing” in U.S. cinemas on July 15, 2022.
