MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

A sort-of-sequel, sort-of-remake, this year’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is a slasher horror film directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and is the fifth instalment in the ‘IKWYDLS’ franchise following the original 1997 film, the first sequel from 1998, the straight-to-DVD third film from 2006, and the short-lived Amazon Prime TV series that aired in 2021. Like all the other entries, the story follows a group of wealthy and privileged teenagers who accidentally kill a man in a car accident, and cover up their involvement to avoid consequences. A year later, as they try to move on with their lives, a stalker sends them taunting messages about their crime, and they soon realize that the stalker is imitating the fisherman serial killer from the events depicted in the first film. The film stars Madeline Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonathan Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, and Sarah Pidgeon, with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprising their roles as the survivors of the original massacre.

The original I Know What You Did Last Summer was scored by John Debney, the first sequel by John Frizzell, and the TV series by Ian and Sophia Hultquist, but this latest incarnation is by the super-talented Ohio-born composer Chanda Dancy. She has been hovering around the fringes of the film music A-List for a few years now, off the back of scores like the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody, the horror satire Blink Twice, and the TV series Lawmen: Bass Reeves. She really should have been in the Oscar conversation for the Korean War action drama Devotion back in 2022 more than she was, but irrespective of that it’s really great that she is getting the opportunity to score something like this film, which has the genuine commercial potential to boost her career even further.

Her score for I Know What You Did Last Summer is a throwback 1990s-style orchestral mayhem, and the whole thing took me back to that era when these types of horror and thriller scores were big, bombastic, and full of energy. Dancy doesn’t re-invent the wheel here – she didn’t need to – but what I like about this score is less about originality and more about style.

I’ve written sentences like this before about other scores, and I know it sounds odd to write this about music, but one of the big things that Dancy’s score has going for it is how clearly, almost stubbornly, musical it is. This isn’t a random crash-bang-wallop score, and it isn’t one of those post-modern Indiewire horror scores which just places a simple drone under the action and calls it a day. No, there is form and structure to this work. There are recognizable themes and motifs, and then when it erupts into its action sequences its gestures are grand and bold. This used to be the norm in mainstream horror 20-30 years ago; now it feels like a refreshing change.

I don’t have enough of a memory of John Debney’s original I Know What You Did Last Summer score to know whether Dancy references any of his work here, but what she does do, she does very well. The score’s lyrical main theme, a moodily romantic piece for piano and surging strings, emerges for the first time from the tragedy of “The Pact” with a sense of loss coupled with determination. It appears prominently in later cues such as “The Note,” the more tender “Dani & Ava,” the dramatic “It’s Happening Again,” and in the opening moments of “Call Me Back,” to excellent effect. Dancy often uses what appears to be a prepared piano to give it a more broken-sounding and haunted sound, and then sometimes this is also coupled with what appears to be a hammered dulcimer, adding yet another sophisticated layer to the instrumental palette.

The action music, as I mentioned, is fulsome, front-and-center, and is not afraid to hit listeners with a one-two-three punch of sinister strings full of creepy tension, pulsating and energetic chase sequences, and moments of vivid, howling dissonance for when the fisherman attacks with his trusty hook. Throughout cues like the opening “Reaper’s Curve,” “Harpooned,” “Bayside House,” the rampaging “Float Warehouse,” the guttural “Broken Doors,” and the violently aggressive “The Boardwalk” Dancy goes full throttle, with some notably excellent brass writing and layers of complicated, insistent strings, some of which plays like a blend of James Horner and Elliot Goldenthal, with a bit of Bernard Herrmann thrown in for good measure.

Occasionally Dancy even incorporates the unexpected sound of an angelic choir into the mix, briefly adding a layer of operatic drama, while parts of “We Did a Bad Thing” have an unexpected elegance to them, the strings prancing and dancing around you more than they are attacking you with sharp objects. The rest of the score outside of these highlights is more low-key and textural, stingers and slaps, nervous pizzicato sounds, and the like, and sometimes Dancy incorporates some unusual electronic textures and sound design, you know, for the kids.

The ten-minute finale comprising “The Yacht” and “Final Showdown” brings everything together in one final bloody assault, a mass of slashing strings, hearty and throaty brass clusters, intensely raging rhythmic passages, and explosions of dissonant horror. The music is punctuated with riffs on the main theme and short passages on the dulcimer, before rising to something like a grand guignol crescendo. Then, the conclusive “An Old Friend” offers a final stinger, setting up the inevitable sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Again… Again.

Overall, this is good stuff. As I said, Chanda Dancy doesn’t rock the boat or do anything especially innovative with her music, but what she does she does with intelligence and no small amount of talent, and this results in this score being a success. Hearing someone from the 2020s confidently and unashamedly leaning on the horror music tropes of the 1990s is a treat indeed, and if you’re like me, you’ll find the score for I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025 to be a nostalgic alternative from a lot of the recent trends in horror movie music… in other words, you’ll be hooked.

Buy the I Know What You Did Last Summer soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store.

Track Listing:

• Reaper’s Curve (2:00)
• The Pact (3:30)
• The Note (2:06)
• Harpooned (2:56)
• Dani & Ava (1:56)
• Podcast Girl (2:07)
• Bayside House (6:09)
• It’s Happening Again (2:18)
• Make Some Noise (3:17)
• Graveyard (1:50)
• Float Warehouse (3:52)
• Motion Detected (2:52)
• Call Me Back (3:55)
• Broken Doors (2:50)
• We Did A Bad Thing (2:57)
• The Boardwalk (0:51)
• We Need To Leave (1:43)
• The Yacht (6:22)
• Final Showdown (4:19)
• An Old Friend (0:57)

Milan Records (2025)

Running Time: 58 minutes 35 seconds

Music composed by Chanda Dancy. Conducted by Anthony Parnther. Orchestrations by Jeff Kryka. Additional music by Shaun Chen and Shao Jean Sim. Recorded and mixed by Alvin Wee. Edited by Natalia Goldstein and Kevin McKeever. Album produced by Chanda Dancy.