Being spook month and all, this is the perfect time to conjure up some scary movies. They are the perfect way to get the blood pumping without leaving the comfort of your couch (or bed, I don’t judge). However, the horror genre tends to be very problematic, especially towards women. I tried to find a mainstream classic slasher flic with a female queer character; but shocker, there wasn’t one. Women are typically the brunt of violence and harassment within horror movies, with their screams being music to Hollywood’s white ears. This is heavily evident in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but I will especially be focusing on moral agency and personhood assigned to women in the film, using the Oppositional Gaze bell hooks defined in “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.
bell hooks states “even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” (250). As a woman, the oppositional gaze is critical when watching horror films. The screams on women on screen are music to Hollywood’s ears, even as the damaging effects circulate through society. Watching I Know What You Did Last Summer, I saw the typical violence against women, but also the inability of a woman to save or speak for herself in any situation. The movie is not only phallocentric in that it focuses on a man going around stabbing people with a rather phallic shaped hook, but also in the sense that women cannot do anything about it. The women exist solely to be saved and stabbed. 
Before diving in to moral agency in the film, it is important to note that in the beginning of the film, Julie recognizes that the Hook Man myth is sexist and only exists as a way to deter girls from having sex. They tried to be meta, they really did. Regardless of Julie’s awareness, the Hook Man kills them anyway. Granted they killed a man, but they had sex too.
Moral agency in film is the ability a character has to distinguish right from wrong, and do something about it. The female characters were allowed to know right from wrong, but they couldn’t do anything about it at all. Barry, Ray, and the hook dude had all of the moral agency, good or bad. The bad guy had more backstory than the other four characters put together.
The biggest slap in the face to women is Helen’s death scene. She witnesses Barry’s death, and the cop essentially calls her crazy and an idiot. We then see him and her sister (we met her like 3 times for 0.2 seconds each time) get killed. No man would listen to her, and then she gets killed because a night parade (who holds a parade at night???) masks her screams. Then Ray comes to the rescue of Julie after she climbs onto the killer’s boat (silly girl). Julie runs from the killer for about 3 straight minutes with no success, but as soon as Ray comes back the killer dies in 30 seconds. The death and chase scenes demonstrate the stupidity and weakness of women, while enhancing the strength and intelligence of men. As I said, the women existed solely to be saved and stabbed.
There is one woman of color in the movie, but we do not even learn her name until the end in a passing conversation. Deb seems to be the caretaker and worrywart roommate of Julie, which is very reminiscent of the Mammy role assigned to many black women in film. I guess we should be thankful at least Deb doesn’t die, like she would have in every other horror movie.
Deb, the only person of color in the whole damn movie
Overall, the movie is not great and I would not recommend it to any woman. We can do better, and I’m sure this is not what Lois Duncan had in mind when she wrote the book.
hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-131.
Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 