‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ – Helen Shivers and a Truly Iconic Chase Scene in Slasher History
Freddie Prinze Jr. made a bold claim during the premiere of the I Know What You Did Last Summer legacy sequel. On Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers death scene, he gushed: “I genuinely mean this: I think it’s one of the best death scenes in the history of horror films.” While her actual death scene appears mostly offscreen, behind a wall of rubber tires, I would argue that he likely meant her chase scene. It remains the most heart-pounding and all-time best chase scene in slasher history, outpacing the likes of Laurie Strode in Halloween and Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Chase scenes are as old as movies themselves. The first horror movie, 1896’s The Haunted Castle, features rudimentary scares and mechanics that would later become integral pieces to horror movies of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, from Nosferatu to Dracula and Frankenstein. 1942’s Cat People pairs an early example of a “chase” scene and one of the first jump scares, with the bus on the street scene. As Alice (Jane Randolph) makes her way through the dark New York City Streets, Irena (Simone Simon) pursues on foot in her leopard form. She stays just out of frame as the camera intensifies and pans behind Alice until BAM! the bus pulls up to the curb.
While these films are far from being slashers, they did offer the tools filmmakers would later use for such landmark releases as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978) that would become the gold standards of what tense chase scenes out to be. While Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) ran for her life by jumping through a farmhouse window and down a long, winding driveway, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) screamed her lungs out as she darted across the street to the Doyle House. “Tommy, it’s me!” she howled into the night air, as Michael Myers (Nick Castle) stalked her in suburbia. These grandfather slasher films cemented the chase scene as an essential piece to the slasher puzzle, including a masked killer and the Final Girl archetype.
In the next two decades, slashers offered up numerous chase scenes worthy of an induction into the Chase Scenes Hall of Fame. Those films include A Nightmare on Elm Street, Prom Night, Curtains, Blood Rage, numerous genre sequels, and various odds and ends from big budget and smaller pictures. There’s an endless supply of chase scenes during the slasher boom of the 1980s and the slasher comeback of the late ‘90s – but none broke the model and reset the gold standard quite like I Know What You Did Last Summer.
On July 4th, Helen Shivers (Gellar) attends the beauty pageant to pass the torch to the next lucky young lady and witnesses Barry’s (Ryan Phillippe) death in the balcony. After a police officer investigates, he offers Helen a ride home and runs into The Fisherman pretending to have car trouble. The cop becomes gutted by The Fisherman’s shiny, sharp hook, and the chase scene is on.
Helen busts out the back passenger widow of the cop car with the heel of her pump, crawls out the back, and darts through the dark streets, supplying plenty of spooky silhouette scenes to build mood and tension. Music going full throttle, the chase to the Shiver’s department store is scene enough to make it iconic on its own but it’s far from over.
After Elsa (Bridgette Wilson) meets a grisly fate, the chase picks back up after The Fisherman leaps out from underneath a plastic sheet after pretending to be a mannequin. Helen then makes her way upstairs to a second-floor window where she leaps backwards into a dumpster. She climbs her way out and shuffles between back alleyways to her demise behind a wall of rubber tires. The local band marches by, and combined with a fireworks display, no one can hear her scream.
The anatomy of this chase scene can be broken into several parts. The character of Helen, owed to Gellar’s magnetic, charming performance, quickly endears her to the audience. While we don’t understand her relationship with her sister, we come to know her through the dynamic with Barry, Ray (Prinze Jr.), and Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) a year removed since killing a man. Then, there’s how the chase scene is built – from an initial chase to slowly unraveling tension through various quieter set pieces inside the department store to a emotional, mid-chase reveal. When you think she might live, she is slaughtered just out of eyesight from the crowd. Without one section, the chase scene would not be as intensely effective as it is.
There are very few chase scenes before or since that have even reached partial icon status. Scream 2 comes close with the Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) chase through the sound booth, as does Sasha’s (Tare Reid) epic stalking in Urban Legend. A few others at the turn of the 21st Century include Valentine, Cherry Falls, House of Wax, High Tension, and When a Stranger Calls. Throughout the next few decades, we’ve shockingly not had a single chase scene to even compete with I Know What You Did Last Summer, even though films do continue to include chase scenes of varying lengths and effectiveness – The Strangers: Prey at Night, Freaky, Halloween Kills, Fear Street, Happy Death Day, and Totally Killer.
Kevin Williamson, the writer behind I Know What You Did Last Summer, understood the assignment in writing 2022’s Sick, which is basically one entire chase scene. The problem is two-fold there: not one chase scene rises above the others, and it’s a streaming-only release. As such, the film never quite got its due with the general public and has since fallen by the wayside for greater recognition.
More recently, Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes (written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy) spotlights one of the stronger chase scenes. After discovering the killer in her closet, Ally (Olivia Holt) and work colleague Jay (Mason Gooding) are hunted out onto the street below all the way to the local carnival – where Ally fights off Heart Eyes on the merry go ‘round. Yet it doesn’t achieve the same level of suspense as its predecessor. It’s still a worthy contender for the Chase Scenes Hall of Fame, though.
Ironically, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer fails the general chase scene assessment. Numerous partial chases and references to Helen Shivers does not equal an icon-level chase scene. Tasked with one job, they did not deliver. But that’s the struggle of being a fan of the original film. Nothing ever comes quite close enough.
In over 100 years of horror movies, particularly the slasher variety, I Know What You Did Last Summer remains the single best example of a nail-biting chase scene that lives up to its full potential. It’s an unexpected thrill ride that keeps the audience on their toes every step of the way. When you think Helen Shivers just might survive, the chase picks up speed again to the heart-rending finale. She might die by the hands of the Fisherman, but she lives on in our hearts.
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