It’s always fun to think of names for movie sequels. For example, the Fast & Furious series is all over the place, but I Know What You Did Last Summer has always had their sequels build in persistence. We had the original 1997 film, then I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and then the horrendous direct-to-VOD sequel I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. It’s 2025, and we have our new sequel. In a perfect world, this movie would be called I’ll Continue to Forever and Always Know What You Did Last Summer, but it seems they went down the Halloween (2018) and Scream (2022) legacy sequel route of going back to the name of the OG.
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return to this famous slasher franchise as Julie James and Ray Bronson. Many years after they first found themselves stalked by a fisherman armed with a hook holding them accountable for a crime they committed the previous summer, these two are back in Southport, helping a young group of friends who find themselves responsible for a person’s death and the subsequent cover-up. Because apparently, this just happens all the time in Southport.
If these first two paragraphs didn’t “hook” you, then I’ll cut to the chase: I Know What You Did Last Summer is a disappointing, frustrating movie that can’t help but live in the shadow of the original. Despite a few very bold ideas, the execution is lackluster. This movie goes back to basics, once again set in Southport on July 4th. All these movies don’t get the notoriety they should for being Independence Day films, but they should be watched every 4th of July. We meet our new set of characters. They’re young and they all have some history together.
All horror movies require you to suspend some disbelief. But I truly think that this movie pushes it a bit by having yet another group of people find themselves responsible for a person’s death on the side of a cliff, and they make a pact to never speak of it again. The fact that it happened in the same town is lunacy. But when you’re essentially copying the premise of the first movie, you have to find a better way of doing it. This movie doesn’t do as good of a job with its inciting event.
Teddy (Tyriq Withers) is being annoyingly reckless and standing in the middle of the road. His friends try to get him out. A car then swerves to avoid hitting them, and it crashes through the barrier. The characters try to stop it, but the car goes over. Inherently, this is less relatable. The first movie plays with your fear of driving and accidentally hitting someone, which can happen to any driver. This movie’s accident can be avoided as long as you’re not an idiot who stands in the middle of the road at night. Don’t do that. It’s a bad idea.
Secondly, the characters do nearly everything in their power to try to save him. In the first movie, the person they hit with their car is already presumed dead. Then, when the person wakes up, they directly throw him into the water. In this new movie, it’s so clearly an accident that they could all easily get away with. They saw it happen, they tried their best to save him, and they couldn’t in time. They’re not as directly responsible. Later on, a character remarks, “What we did was so f—– up.” But all I could think was, “No, it wasn’t!” The first movie? Sure! In the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, the weight of that inciting incident is lost because they’re rehashing the original and not doing it in a way that improves on it.
The first film cuts to one year after, and we see how the guilt has eaten away at our characters. This new movie doesn’t seem interested in the characters at all. Once they put the accident behind them, we only get hints about what’s happened to them since then, and none of it is very interesting. For the most part, they seem normal at first. Chase Sui Wonders, who you may have seen in her supporting role in the Apple TV show The Studio, plays Ava, one of the main characters. She’s not interesting. She gets virtually no characterization. Madelyn Cline plays Danica, and she gets a tiny bit more that you can sympathize with, but whenever we get moments that can flesh them out and their relationship, it’s fleeting.
But of course, Danica gets a card that says, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and the friends find themselves hunted down by a fisherman with a hook. From here, we have a bit of good and a lot of bad. While this movie generally does an accurate job with its Gen Z lingo, it overdoes it with the comedy. People often complain about how Marvel movies undercut everything with a quip or a joke. I think this movie does that worse than any MCU film. Every time we’re about to have some real tension or drama, the film feels some compulsory need to cut it short with a hit-or-miss joke. It adds up that this movie is co-written and directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, a co-writer on Thor: Love and Thunder.
People often misremember Kevin Williamson’s work as a writer. He wrote Scream (1996), a movie that plays into humor and has fun with the genre tropes. The year after, the original I Know What You Did Last Summer came out, and that movie, despite iconic moments like “What are you waiting for?!” is quite serious. There aren’t a lot of jokes. It’s exciting, but it takes itself seriously. It feels like they Scream-ified I Know What You Did Last Summer. We have quips, we have little jokes designed to make cinephiles laugh, and there’s a self-awareness to the legacy of the original that permeates every bit of this film.
Are the jokes funny? A bit. It’s hard to do that to a franchise known for horror. Final Destination Bloodlines, from earlier this year, was a great example of how to make a long-delayed sequel with the right amount of humor, heart, and pure carnage. My theater was roaring with laughter during Final Destination Bloodlines. I Know What You Did Last Summer had a few funny moments that got some decent laughs, but a lot of it doesn’t land as well. This movie doesn’t have a lot of heart, but it does have its kills, just like any movie in this series. The kills work pretty well. There’s decent gore, but nothing to write home about. While Final Destination Bloodlines’ opening penny sequence feels instantly iconic, I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t have too much noteworthy.
How about the horror direction? Robinson previously directed some well-reviewed comedies like Someone Great and Do Revenge. She hasn’t ventured into horror before, and it’s easy to tell. The jump scares in this movie are cheap and awful. No movie should ever have the audacity to do the “hand on shoulder with loud sound” jump scare ever again. It’s the most predictable jump scare ever. It’s a horrendous cliché. The film also keeps suddenly cutting to flashbacks and accompanying it with loud sounds. It’s not showing you anything scary. It’s just blasting noise at you. The film never becomes scary for a second because it has nothing more to offer than a few people getting killed. No real tension or suspense. Just some kills and loud sounds designed to make you jolt.
Some filmmaking choices are a bit obvious. We practically hold for applause once Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s characters show up. When Ray meets the new generation of IKWYDLS characters, we get this epic Avengers-esque group shot. Another thing Robinson forgets is the feeling of dread. The Fisherman from the first two IKWYDLS movies toyed with our characters. It felt very psychological. He could kill them whenever he wanted, but he made them fear him first. He put dead bodies in places our main character could see and removed them soon after, making other characters gaslight the protagonist. There was a lot of dread, particularly in that first film. This movie just has someone going around and killing people. The Fisherman is now no different from Ghostface. The tension throughout is so nonexistent here that we even have time for two characters to start having sex in the middle of the movie.
But let’s talk a bit about The Fisherman, also known as Ben Willis. He appears to die at the end of the first film, but then he comes back in the very end in a final scare. When I Still Know What You Did Last Summer came out, they retconned that final scene and implied that it was just a nightmare that Julie had. That second film also ends with The Fisherman appearing to die, but the last scene reveals he’s still alive, and he drags Julie’s feet before we cut to black. That’s the last time we saw Hewitt as Julie: about to get murdered. So what happened after that? This movie has no idea.
It feels like this movie would prefer that you don’t remember the fact that Julie was clearly about to die at the end of that second film and that Ben Willis was very much still alive there. But the fact that we don’t even get a reference to what happened after the end of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, what happened to Ben, and how they got out of that situation is crazy.
Throughout the movie, there are tons of instances of horrendous writing. There’s a scene where Danica is trapped in a room, and she can’t use her phone because she left it in the car outside. What woman leaves her phone in a car before entering a building, especially when there’s a killer on the loose?! It’s solely a screenwriter choice. During another scene, Teddy fights The Fisherman and knocks him to the ground. We then cut to him limping away as The Fisherman gets back up. The character they set up is hot-tempered and good at fighting. There’s no reason why he would flee while he was literally winning the fight. Teddy could have easily smashed The Fisherman to a pulp, taken their hook, and unmasked them, but he doesn’t because then the movie would be over.
How are the performances? They’re good. Cline and Wonders are standouts, and they do a wonderful job bringing their characters to life. Cline commits herself to this horror movie perfectly. It’s also great to see Prinze and Hewitt step back into these roles, and they’re great. Now, how about the ending? Without giving anything away, this is where IKWYDLS really becomes a new version of Scream. Now, there is a twist that’s very surprising. It’s a huge risk that some fans are going to love and others will hate. It didn’t work for me. I appreciate the bold, creative choice this movie takes, and I’m happy they were willing to go there because not many other movies would, but I was not a fan.
So, should you watch the new I Know What You Did Last Summer? If you’re a fan of the series, yes, but go into that third act with caution. There’s a mid-credits scene you’ll love and some good callbacks to the original. But there are better slasher films out there. This movie didn’t make me care much when some characters died. It does the job and has its moments, but overall, there isn’t anything I was too impressed with.
SCORE: 4/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 4 equates to “Poor.” The negatives outweigh the positive aspects, making it a struggle to get through.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our I Know What You Did Last Summer review.
