I Know What You Did Last Summer (TV): The 10 Best Kills

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses violence, gore, and spoilers for I Know What You Did Last Summer.

For a modern remake of a classic slasher film, Amazon’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is lacking in blood. The only death in the first episode is arguably accidental. The rest of the violence occurs offscreen with the main cast only finding the bodies later on. There is no terrifying murderer with a fish hook. Only ominous notes and characters lying at every turn.

Amazon’s remake is a murder mystery for the new age. It confronts the psychology of what it is to be a teenager. The trauma of the kids in question is more violent than actual murders occurring on screen. Instead of slashers, the show focuses on self-harm and eating disorders. But even so, many kills remain memorable in the new show.

10 The Goat

The first kill in I Know What You Did Last Summer should not be discounted. While Lennon was technically the first to go, she was an accidental casualty in a hit and run. The goat is the first murder victim when Alison returns home a year later. This is important visually and a significant precursor for what is to come.

The goat signifies the beginning of the mayhem that will ensue. No human lives are taken when Alison opens her closet to find the head of a goat and the titular message. But the visual is bloody and gets the point across that this is only just beginning.

9 Officer Cruise

Officer Cruise arrives quickly and is taken away too soon. The law enforcement in I Know What You Did Last Summer is largely incompetent. Chief of Police Lyla is more interested in her personal life than in solving any crimes. But Officer Cruise cared about the crimes occurring in his town.

He is the only one to consider that there was more to Johnny’s death than meets the eye. With a Type A personality, Cruise was motivated to find the killer. It is devastating when the town finds him in a bathroom with his throat slashed. Right next to the town’s favorite cook, Harold.

8 Eric

Eric had one of the most graphic deaths on the show, considering how little time he appeared onscreen. While he was Johnny’s future husband, the audience largely only sees him in the scene of his demise. Johnny refers to him quite a bit and is happy about the life they will share.

That is what makes it so shocking when Eric is killed by a dumbbell to the face. This is in the early stages of the murders when the teenagers don’t quite know what is going on. Johnny arrives at the gym to find Eric struggling to lift a weight off his chest. It seems as though Johnny might make it in time. But the killer stops Johnny and Eric’s life is ended with the aforementioned dumbbell. It is not a question as to how this serial killer gets away with it in the end.

7 Dale

Dale is the result of another off-screen kill, making this show a contender for the original horror film being better than the remake. But the reveal of his body makes it that much more surprising. Dale was a townie that had many liaisons with Lennon when she was still alive. This made him a prime target for the killer. Dale was found hours later by Officer Cruise at his place of work.

Though the audience does not see him die, Cruise finds Dale with a tube from the slushie machine inserted in his mouth. A horrifying mixture of blood and blue slushie covers the floor, making Dale’s death one of the most memorable.

6 Lennon

Lennon’s death was accidental, but that doesn’t make it any less brutal. Her demise is what kicks off the disturbing chain of events. And it is even more disturbing that her sister Alison is the one that kills her, whether she intended to or not. After the twins fight at a graduation party, Alison takes off in Lennon’s jeep. All her friends assume Alison is Lennon.

This makes matters worse when Alison hits Lennon with the jeep while driving home. Though a typical hit-and-run, this death is made especially revolting as the teens decide to hide Lennon’s body and pretend that she ran away. This twist is a great improvement for the horror movie remake.

5 Courtney

While Courtney is not the best mother to appear on film, she does care about her daughter. She proves this after Riley never comes home. Frantic to find her daughter and frustrated that the authorities are doing nothing to help her, Courtney goes off on her own.

Courtney’s death becomes tragic because she intended to only find Riley. She never knows what happens to her daughter as she falls into a trap laid by the killer. While searching for Riley, Courtney is caught in a field and garroted by a ditch digger. She is strung up in one of the more graphic displays of violence on the show.

4 Johnny

Johnny never had a chance from the moment he tried to save his fiance Eric from his terrible fate. This is a shame, as Johnny is one of the I Know What You Did Last Summer‘s most likable characters. Johnny also had the disrespect of his death being filmed on camera. After Johnny fails to save Eric from the dumbbell, he is decapitated on film.

It is quite some time before Johnny’s head is found. This is the vital act that makes the main cast understand that someone is after them for what they did last summer. Johnny’s head is ultimately found with the inside crawling with spiders.

3 Helen

Helen may have the least amount of sympathy, but that doesn’t detract from her sudden and gruesome death. Alison and Lennon’s mother arrives back in town not to reconnect with her daughters, only to find the bible that was central to her cult. Fellow cult member Clara had had it, and after her death, Helen came back to reclaim it.

Helen never finds absolution. When Alison and Dylan go searching for Margot, they find Helen skewered on Clara’s property. Although she was never a mother to Alison, it was still traumatizing for her to see her mother’s corpse.

2 Clara

Clara’s death is largely up for debate. The audience never sees how she dies, but the authorities of the town are convinced that she had suffocated herself with honey. Dylan somewhat corroborates this later when he says that he helped Clara free herself from this life.

No one will ever know if this was Clara’s decision or just what Dylan told people. But regardless, her obsession with honey led to her death because of it.

1 Riley

Riley’s demise was one of the most prolonged in I Know What You Did Last Summer. The crew of teenagers sneak onto Clara’s property to try and find evidence that she is the killer. Clara comes home and starts wildly shooting at everyone, forcing them to scatter. While most of them make it home safe, Riley is caught. She is first stabbed through the chest, with her arm cut off while she is trying to call her mom.

Riley makes it so far as to return to civilization. But it is too late to save her. Riley dies while thinking of her last humiliating memory of being rejected by Dylan, making her one of the most sympathetic and saddest deaths on the show.

About The Author

Carolyn Jenkins
(109 Articles Published)

Carolyn Jenkins is a voracious consumer of film and television. She graduated from Long Island University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Producing where she learned the art of character, plot, and structure. The best teacher is absorbing media and she spends her time reading about different worlds from teen angst to the universe of Stephen King.

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