I Know What You Did Last Summer review
I Know What You Did Last Summer is a subpar slasher wearing a surprisingly effective nostalgia cloak.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Screenplay by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Sam Lansky
Starring Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt
I Know What You Did Last Summer Review
Full disclosure right off the top…I am not a fan of the original I Know What You Did Last Summer. My take on it is, perhaps, my most cynical one about non-Rob Zombie/Zack Snyder movies. Two talented directors whose worldviews are so deeply depressing to me that it strips any joy from their films. I don’t have the same issues with the 1997 slasher hit upon which this new film serves as a legacy sequel to as I do with those filmmakers’ work. It’s more of an issue with timing than anything. Scream revitalized the slasher world upon its release in 1996. Writer Kevin Williamson became a hot property in Hollywood overnight. I Know What You Did Last Summer was his follow up work to Scream’s stunning success. This is where my lack of nostalgia for the original film (and its even worse 1998 sequel) takes two different paths.
First, as a massive fan of Scream, another Williamson story (albeit based on a 1973 Lois Duncan novel) was an exciting premise. His brilliant understanding of the slasher genre was the largest part of Scream’s enduring appeal. I Know What You Did Last Summer, on the other hand, had nothing to say about anything. A tremendous disappointment to a much younger me. How did the man who garnered the fastest greenlight in horror history see his commentary go from pushing the genre forward to settling for something so basic in just a few months? This road usually ends with me settling for slasher films being welcomed back into theaters and accepting they aren’t all meant to push boundaries.
The second path is the bigger issue. I Know What You Did Last Summer isn’t a good slasher movie. Spare me your nostalgia…a concept we will be discussing a lot in this review…it’s forgettable at best. An immediate squandering of the goodwill that Williamson, Craven and company had brought a once prominent subgenre that had been lost in a void for nearly a decade. As if it had arrived solely to cash in on a moment in time…with nothing to add to the conversation. Like I said…my most cynical take. When a legacy sequel was announced following the success of the returning Scream franchise…well…it looked to me like history was about to repeat itself. Horror is having a moment…both critically and commercially. Here comes I Know What You Did Last Summer to cash in on it.
A double cash in, in fact, with a nostalgia factor added in. My immediate question was obvious. Who is out there nostalgic for Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray…I don’t even remember his last name. You don’t either. Don’t lie to me. The guy Freddie Prinze Jr. plays. Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott can be brought back as many times as Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell will agree to return. They’re iconic. People care deeply about them and enjoy seeing where they are in their lives. Julie James? Other than a meme mocking her “what are you waiting for?” moment…who’s talking about Julie James and those times the Gorton’s Fisherman tried to kill her?
Perhaps the most surprising thing about 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is that it seems to quietly understand that question. Nostalgia plays a big part here, as you’d expect. But it’s a more interesting nostalgia than I could have ever predicted. Southport hasn’t just moved on from the events of the 1997 movie…it’s rebuilt itself and buried them completely. Julie James left town and never looked back. Ray Bronson…I looked it up…owns a dive bar named…Ray’s bar. That’s so Ray. The town has covered up everything about its dark history. Property values were in the tank…and rebranding itself was the only way for prosperity to return. I Know What You Did Last Summer ends up being as much about the dangers of burying the past as it is about the new cast of characters who find themselves caught in the same situation.
Like…the exact same situation. In what has to be the silliest choice the movie makes…its new group of characters finds themselves covering up an accidental murder. The odds of this happening twice in the same town are beyond the limits of believability. What makes matters worse is the fact that this accident is far less egregious than the original. Watching the scene play out…you’ll be thinking about how many different ways these characters could have done something different. That’s after they all desperately try to save their barely, but I suppose technically, victim. They even attempt to do the right thing…in their own warped way. So many things could have been avoided here it was difficult to get past.
Flash forward a year…and, of course, someone receives a note that someone knows what they did last summer. Yeah…it’s the exact same plot off to a worse start. But it gets better. That I don’t mean cynically. 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer has plenty of flaws. It’s too long…the kills are almost universally basic and unmemorable…some of the dialog (especially early) is rough. It also has plenty of positives. The cast is very good. The production values are very high for a slasher movie. Most importantly…it understands itself better than a quick cash in would ever bother to try.
More specifically…it knows what it did 28 years ago. Southport may have willingly forgotten…but the creative team didn’t. It takes big swings that are almost all aimed at defining the relevance of returning to this story. As someone who has zero affinity for the original film…it worked. I can only imagine how much the fans of the franchise will respond to it. If you’re someone who has unironically asked what Julie James has been up to…the care put into the legacy aspects of I Know What You Did Last Summer should more than satiate that appetite.
Those big swings elevate the basic slasher we saw in 1997 to something more. Make no mistake…the core of 2025’s version is pretty much the same thing. Despite the best efforts of the new cast…you’re unlikely to care about their story as much as what’s happening around it. That would be a damning statement for a film’s story if the stuff it does around it wasn’t so interesting.
An unexpected dream sequence, an intriguing marriage between the old story and the new that should please genre fans wanting to see some variation of the theme for a long time, some earned laughs at the history of the franchise delivered in an earnest yet wining way, a mid-credits scene that serves as a bit of fan service for a sequel that may, honestly, have no fans…I Know What You Did Last Summer’s big swings all connect in surprising ways. The story boldly sets up more than one sequel idea. Whether we see it or not depends on how much interest there is in the nostalgia that I Know What You Did Last Summer is peddling. Those who seek it will find it peddles the right kind.
Scare Value
It took 28 years for the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise to find something interesting to say. Even then…it only has something to say about what it did 28 years ago. The modern-day plot is as dismissible as the original’s was nearly three decades ago. But nostalgia is a hell of a drug…and the 2025 version of the story knows what kind of bumps the viewers need. The good pieces may not combine into something truly worthwhile…but it’s still better than where we started.
3/5
I Know What You Did Last Summer Link
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