Five friends find themselves targeted by a killer in a slicker with a large hook in the profoundly lacking legacy sequel, I Know What You Did Last Summer.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is the latest to get the re-quel treatment, joining Scream, Candyman, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Exorcist. The formula: revive a dormant franchise, possibly ignore some of the sequels, bring back familiar faces, and revamp the franchise for the new generation by telling essentially the same story with a modern lens. Sometimes it works, as seen in Halloween or Candyman. Sometimes it doesn’t, like Texas Chainsaw and Exorcist: Believer. I Know What You Did Last Summer, directed by Do Revenge’s Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, is a whiff as well.
Like Candyman, I Know What You Did Last Summer has less to shove away into the “forget this part” pile, with only three films in the series. First, in 1997, a group of friends dealt with reprisals for hiding a death. The maligned I Still Know… followed in 1998, leaving a gap of 8 years before the third: I’ll Always Know… Yes, there was a third film. The 2006 entry followed the revenge after a skating accident with… sigh.. the fisherman resurrected as a murder zombie. I’m serious. There was also a TV show in 2021. I never heard of it until my friend mentioned it. All of these are based on the 1973 Lois Duncan book of the same name, but while the set-up is the same, the results are vastly different.
I love slashers. I’ll admit I’ll give them leeway I might not give other sub-genres. There’s something primal about watching an endless series of empty films of a masked killer taking down victims. I’m unashamed of my love of the Friday the 13th series and its endless ripoffs.
But this series isn’t that type. I Know What You Did Last Summer 1997 was the leader of the post-Scream revision to the slasher formula: adding a mystery (or bringing back if you count Christie-mystery types or gialli as proto-slashers), more character, and world-building between murder-set-pieces. For better or worse, this legacy sequel of 2025 is very much this type. Films like the previous entries, Valentine, Cherry Falls, or the Urban Legend films, attempt to have a cohesive plot with an “oh it’s you” reveal that facilitates gory deaths, but never work as well as Scream. I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025 is a mess in trying to revisit the post-Scream (now ’22 edition), coming out annoyingly lackluster. (Although, Thanksgiving did it very well two years back.)
In that way, the new edition is strangely weird and formless, floating its way through with a strange emptiness. The writing, by Robinson and Sam Lansky (with story by credited to Robinson and Leah McKenrick) is atrocious and laughable. The film flits through the sequences, characters, and moments. It’s airy and ungrounded. Lines are hilariously on the nose and direct, and the whole lacks cohesion; it feels like a first draft: put the pieces into place and fill in the details later to make it work. Woefully incomplete, these people exist as people are inconsequential and even bring in questions of “where are the characters’ parents, where the hell is anyone else? Where did this character go after being set up?” and the like. It’s the sort of slasher where the killer ALWAYS knows everyone’s exact moves, stretching the point of breaking. Most slashers work this way, but when these thoughts flood my head while watching, it’s a failure of world-building and audience investment. The characters are some of the absolute dumbest in years. Written vapidly and shallowly, they make the worst decisions continually to move it forward.
It doesn’t help that the acting is widely bad, spouting the poor dialogue awkwardly and stiltedly. Chase Sui Wonders overacted with a terrible scared/cry face in Bodies Bodies Bodies, and it’s worse here, gaining scoffs instead of sympathy. Sarah Pidgeon is in a different world. Tyriq Withers and Jonah Hauer-King are bland. Only Madelyn Cline seems to be aware of the inherent camp, living it up and scene-stealing with great timing. The terrible, underwhelming climax provides an atrocious but hilarious “reveal” performance.
As for the legacy? Freddie Prinze, Jr is solid. Jennifer Love Hewitt seems like she’d rather be anywhere else. Most of the callbacks are groaners in how they’re handled. There’s one segment that’s both the best and worst thing in the movie. Contradictory, yes. But it’s so out of left field and weirdly handled, I have to give it a pass. This moment, along with a stinger, brings the sneaking suspicion that at some point this was more satiric and self-aware, but this element was mostly removed, leaving the anemic script. It’s a movie at odds with itself. One aspect outright shits on whatever legacy the series might have. I hated it and killed whatever pass I might have given the film despite the other faults.
How are the kills, the one thing left I might recommend? Mostly disappointing. The movie is R, but from the first half, outside of language, one can’t tell. A frustrating number are the “cut away to a splash of blood,” or the camera is just above the gore. Heck, most of the time when it does cut to where there should be a nasty wound, the victim’s shirt isn’t even cut. Seriously? Now, there are some more gnarly moments later on (and one early one is well-done). Unfortunately, it’s shot and edited so bluntly (so many weird cuts), there is little tension to drive the sequence. If at least this aspect worked, I’d be more likely to enjoy the film despite its flaws. As noted, I highly enjoy bottom-of-the-barrel slashers if they deliver on the kills.
Wow, this is one of those reviews where I started out on the fence, and find myself rather disliking the film by the end, now that I’ve devoted more thought to it. I Know What You Did Last Summer isn’t much of anything with empty characters, a formless execution, underwhelming kills, and an awkward approach to the legacy.