Nostalgia can be a wonderfully horrible thing, especially when what’s being romanticized rarely lines up with reality. Such is the case with the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, an attempt to resurrect a ’90s slasher franchise that was competent enough, sure—but hardly deserving of the full-blown 2025 fan-service treatment.
Coming on the heels of a horror movie renaissance sparked by Wes Craven’s 1996 Scream—the meta, self-referential slasher that jump started a genre which had exploded after John Carpenter’s 1978’s Halloween and thrived well into the early ’80s—Scream, at least for a moment, made slasher movies mainstream again. A year later, Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer offered a reductive but stylish and fun riff on Scream, ditching Craven’s high concept by going back to basics: an attractive group of young people stalked by a vicious killer. It lacked cleverness, but like its early ’80s predecessors, it was bluntly effective at delivering scares and a pretty good time, sure.
Now comes the reboot, billed as a “legacy sequel” (whatever that means), written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson with a reverence for Gillespie’s original—mostly in that it sticks to stalk-and-slash playbook while paying major tribute by bringing back three of the original film’s iconic ’90s stars: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and, most effectively, Sarah Michelle Gellar (who, by the way, also had the best chase-death scene in the original).
But despite such commercial potential, the film isn’t likely to revive the series (which included the 1998 Bahamas-set sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer). The new entry simply isn’t good enough. Despite polished technical credits and an enjoyable setup, it mostly fails to scare—and at a padded 112 minutes loses momentum well before botching its climactic reveal (which feels less like 1997 reverence and more like 2025 hokum).
At this point, after hundreds of slasher films (and I’m a connoisseur from my 80s teendom to today), the template needs no explanation—but Robinson’s story is merely a direct lift from the original (which itself was already a carbon copy of the well-traveled slasher formula). Nonetheless, it goes like this: a close-knit group of young adults accidentally contribute to a roadside crash/death in Southport, North Carolina, the same location as the original film. One year later, a note is received (“I know what you did last summer”). While it’s initially thought to be a prank, it doesn’t take long for them to start dying at the bloody end of a fish hook, and the hand of a menacing figure in a black rain slicker.
The particulars include best friends Danica (Madelyn Cline), blonde and engaged to be married, and Ava (the very good Chase Sui Wonders), brunette and dabbling in lesbian sex with death-obsessed podcaster Gabriette (Tyler Trevino) while flirting with nice guy Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), who happens to be best friends with Danica’s alpha ex, Teddy (Tyriq Withers). After old friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) rejoins the group for a thrill ride along a seaside cliff road, the usual hijinks result in a nameless driver plummeting to his death.
Now comes the ridiculous part—the group, for some reason, is terrified to report… an accident. Why? None of them is directly responsible, and since they tried to save the guy, any rational person would just go to the police. But then, of course, there’d be no movie.
There are moments that work: a fun harpoon-on-a-rope sequence, a creepy silhouette that turns out to be something else and a restaurant chase scene that cleverly nods to Gellar’s department store death chase from the original. The return of reluctant Julie James (Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Prinze Jr.) adds some legacy weight, and a brief, surreal dream appearance by Gellar—who literally crumbles into a corpse after warning about the price of covering things up, or something like that, gives the film a much-needed morbid fun. But those are small compensations in an otherwise slick-looking film shot by Elisha Christian (The Night House), who uses widescreen scope framing well and lends a polished sheen to the silliness.
Shot slickly in widescreen scope by Elisha Christian (The Night House), the movie looks good but feels hollow. The final act, a high-seas twist that’s both convoluted and overwritten, all but collapses our investment. A wish fulfillment post-credits tease suggests Robinson hopes to launch a new era of the franchise. That likely won’t happen. Whatever happened during post-production clearly didn’t help, as the ending is choppy and chaotic, capped by the (nearly impossible) survival of a character left for dead and an extended post-credits scene that seems to suggest Robinson and company expect to reboot the franchise.
That probably won’t happen. The bar for slasher movies is low—they don’t need to be objectively good to be hits—but they do need to scare, jolt and play fair with at least a hint of logic. I Know What You Did Last Summer looks great, has a sometimes creepy killer and a few decent performances, but it doesn’t generate enough tension and ends up as a convoluted nostalgia trip with uneven pacing. We can likely guess what we won’t be doing next summer—sitting through another sequel.
2 stars
