IKWYDLS = I Know What You Did Last Summer

Not sure if this should be flaired as misandry or media? I ultimately went with the latter but the moderators can re-flair it as the former if they feel it fits better. Also I guess spoiler warning in case? There'll be some spoilers as I really can't talk about my issues with this film without some major spoilers. So fair warning from this point onward.

A few days ago I watched the new IKWDYLS film, being a Horror fan and someone who always enjoyed the 1997 original which flaws and all still holds up as a pretty good and entertaining movie, and one that had strong female characters in it without being demeaning to the male ones. Well, just the opposite is true with the new film which in addition to being pretty terrible and like a very hollow, pale imitator of the first, is also horribly misandrist much of the time.

Almost every victim is male barring one female victim who's death is noticably not nearly as graphic or brutal as the others. The male characters make the bulk of the film's stupid choices like going some place alone, not noticing the killer in plain sight, etc. At one point a character is seen with a coffee mug that says "Tears of the patriarchy," which made me groan. But wait, there's more! Near the very end, one of the last lines of dialogue uttered by one of the two surviving female characters saying "This would've all been avoided if men would just go to therapy." I wanted to shout out loud in the theater when this line was said, which furthermore makes no sense at all when one of the main villains is also a female. And this brings me to my next point, when it's revealed one of the killers is Ray, who was in the first two films and while a red herring in the first, was ultimately not a villain. The turn this character took was just completely sudden and out of left field and felt so horribly out of character and unnatural for him, and didn't mesh at all with what was previously portrayed. The film's reasoning is that his PTSD and him being bitter over the town forgetting the original murders changed him into a killer, but it makes zero sense and is completely inconsistant and out of character for him. It felt like it was trying to be bold and shocking for the sake of being so, and again felt like it was just more misandry with how it was trying to depict every male character as negatively as possible.

This review (which also has some spoilers, so be warned) highlighted these issues for me and I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this film's blatant misandry. It felt so unnecessary and like such a setback, as the original movie depicted strong women without being misandrist about it. As did many of the 80s/90s slasher films and also movies like the first two respective Alien and Terminator movies. It also goes to show how widely accepted misandry is not only in society but also in entertainment, which I hate. I'm a mostly liberal and left-wing person with my views and I hate it so much how people associate being as such with misandry and not wanting to help men and outright demonize them for it. The movie was bad enough but then to have such open misandry in it was salt in the wound. Misandry in both society and entertainment is a major reason fewer males are identifying as left-wing, and not nearly enough is being done about it.