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    Movie Review

    Long-awaited Dune is a visual splendor with a story that's stuck in sand

    Alex Bentley
    Oct 20, 2021 | 10:15 am
    Long-awaited Dune is a visual splendor with a story that's stuck in sand
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    The current movie world is one in which IP — aka intellectual property — is king. If some past movie or TV show has good name recognition, chances are someone out there has plans to remake or reboot it for modern audiences. Dune definitely fits those parameters even though its source material, Frank Herbert’s novel, came out almost 60 years ago, and the most well-known adaptation, David Lynch’s 1984 movie, was considered a failure.

     

    The new version, written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, is probably one of the best-looking films of the year, but one whose complexity may leave audiences cold. In somewhat of a nutshell, the film centers on Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), whose father, Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), leads a group that has been designated to overtake the caretaking of Arrakis, a planet rich with a powerful spice prized by many in this particular galaxy.

     

    Not everyone approves of the House Atreides taking over the harvesting of the spice, especially the former caretakers, the House Harkonnen, led by the portly Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård). The Atreides must also deal with the Fremen, the natives of Arrakis who only wish to be left in peace to live in the desert, as well as giant sandworms that roam the dunes and threaten to disrupt the spice harvesting.

     

    Villeneuve, along with co-writers Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, does a great job of showing the epic nature of the story, but when it comes time to explain why it’s so grand, he comes up lacking. The mythology of the Dune world is clearly deep, but the film, despite its running time of two-and-a-half hours, takes little time to guide the audience through the intricacies of its competing factions or terminology. Instead, viewers are left on their own to understand each particular unfamiliar phrase, or most significantly, the magic powers that Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), seem to possess.

     

    Also, anyone hoping to indulge in a bit of Chalamet-Zendaya shipping are out of luck because Zendaya’s character, Chani, is hardly in the film. Although the marketing doesn’t indicate as much, the film points out right away that this is merely Part 1 of the story. In this part, Paul seems to have a weird psychic connection to Chani, but she’s mostly shown in brief, wordless flashes, only getting a small amount of dialogue toward the end of the film.

     

    One might think that a film that’s telling only half the story would have plenty of time to set up the character dynamics and stakes of the saga at large, but Villeneuve and his team struggle in this regard. They seem much more interested in portraying the scale — both literally and metaphorically — of everything in the film, forgetting that all of the grandiosity only matters if the audience cares about the people involved. Several significant characters meet their doom in the film, but their sacrifices and/or comeuppances have all the emotion of a business meeting.

     

    The performances in the film are all strong enough to keep the characters interesting even when their stories are not. Chalamet, Ferguson, and Isaac make for a nice, if age-inappropriate, family, and Jason Momoa turns in one of his strongest roles to date as a soldier who has a personal investment in protecting them. Skarsgård gets to have fun in an unusual role for him, and Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem make the most of their relatively small roles.

     

    Sci-fi lovers may revel in the idea that the vast worlds of Dune are finally getting the showcase they deserve, but anyone who wants to truly know what the story is about will either have to see the movie more than once or do some Internet research. Part 2 may hold the answers and emotion that this film does not, but it’s a curious approach to withhold even a hint of those things the first time around.

     

    ---

     

    Dune opens in theaters and on HBO Max on October 22.

    Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune.

    Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune
      
    Photo by Chiabella James
    Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune.
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    Movie Review

    Lazy 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' remake hooks nothing but nostalgia

    Alex Bentley
    Jul 17, 2025 | 1:45 pm
    Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in I Know What You Did Last Summer
    Photo by Brook Rushton
    Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

    When the original I Know What You Did Last Summer came out in 1997, it was riding the coattails of Scream, which came out in 1996. Like that film, it featured hot young actors of the time, albeit with a story that was much more standard than the inventive Scream. Still, it made enough of an impact for some studio executive to think it was worth reviving nearly 30 years later with its own legacy-quel.

    In the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, a group of five high school friends - Danica (Madelyn Cline), Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) - have reunited at the engagement party for Danica and Teddy on the 4th of July. While on an impromptu trip to watch fireworks on a twisty road in the nearby hills, Teddy goofs off in the middle of the road, causing a truck to swerve and drive off the cliff.

    A year later, having sworn to each other to not speak of the accident to anybody, they start getting stalked by a mysterious person in a fisherman’s slicker carrying a hook. With Teddy’s rich father, Grant (Billy Campbell), actively trying to cover up what his son did (as well as the fallout), it’s up to the group to figure out who is coming after them and how to stop that person.

    Written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, and co-written by Sam Lansky, the film doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel; in fact, it barely builds something that can roll. It might just be the laziest and most incompetent attempt to capitalize on an existing piece of intellectual property. There is almost zero effort put into establishing a connection between the members of the friend group, making them feel like strangers for the entire film.

    It doesn’t help that the young male actors in the film - which grows to include Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), a new fiance for Danica - serve no purpose other than to be generically good-looking. The most impactful of the men in the film is the returning Freddie Prinze, Jr., who - along with Jennifer Love Hewitt - has his old character from the first two films shoehorned into the new story. The filmmakers undercut any good feelings from their return by giving them hardly anything to do and then having Hewitt deliver the line, “Nostalgia is overrated.”

    The film as a whole never has a sense of momentum. The inciting incident is so tame - they even attempt to save the driver before the truck goes off the cliff - that the guilt they feel and the anger of the person going after them doesn’t feel warranted. Once the attacks start, it is shocking at how low-energy the sequences are, providing no sense of suspense or thrills. The filmmakers resort to the lamest of horror movie tropes, turning the film into a paint-by-numbers affair.

    Cline (one of the stars of Netflix’s Outer Banks) and Wonders (The Studio on Apple TV+, Bodies Bodies Bodies) are the clear stars of the film, but their characters are made into inert scream queens, negating any acting talent they possess. Hauer-King, Withers, and Pidgeon don’t bring anything interesting to their characters, existing merely to have someone else for the killer to go after.

    Even the worst films can have some kind of redeeming value if you look hard enough, but the only thing I Know What You Did Last Summer has to offer is that it becomes so comically bad by the end that you can’t help but laugh at its ineptitude. Both fans of the original and fans of horror movies in general will feel cheated by the experience.

    ---

    I Know What You Did Last Summer opens in theaters on July 18.

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