I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) and It’s Not Good!
Title: I Know What You Did Last Summer
First Non-Festival Release: July 16, 2025 (Theatrical Release)
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Writer: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky, Leah McKendrick
Runtime: 111 Minutes
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
In 1997 and 1998, a masked fisherman tormented Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr), and their friends for their involvement in a fatal hit and run. After putting Southport, North Carolina behind her to be a professor, Julie finds herself back home when Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) reaches out about a string of killings that eerily mimic the ones she survived years ago. Ava, along with friends Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sara Pidgeon) covered up the results of a deadly accident when they failed to report a car crash on the Fourth of July, something Julie knows all too well.
Gift-wrapped in a cheap plastic veneer, I Know What You Did Last Summer confounds in its uneven legacy moment.
Far from a beloved classic, I Know What You Did Last Summer squanders its opportunity to rebrand following its largely negatively received missteps. With its original legacy being in question somewhat, the 90s slasher was ripe for the picking in terms of a remake. Unfortunately, the formula is tough with this franchise in a way that makes its story feel rushed and cheap. With each new iteration of I Know What You Did Last Summer that wiggles its way into the pop culture consciousness, it gets less interesting as much of the material has been mined through already. Ignoring the focus on guilt in the original, the characters in 2025 are tortured solely by the fact that they are being targeted and seem to have only the most surface level concern for the welfare of the person they killed. While the original crew weren’t exactly shining stars of society, it was clear that their actions were catching up to them physically and psychologically.
Baffling character choices and uneven dialogue stretches the playfulness of the slasher reboot. Setting up this latest clash with the Fisherman with another roadside accident, I Know What You Did Last Summer fumbles through the bland characters relationships that rarely feels like a friend group with a sordid shared history. Under-reactions, character inconsistencies, and one-liners with the sharpness of a teaspoon make it so the major players of I Know What You Did Last Summer feel more like caricatures rather than characters. Awash in trendy slang and therapy speak, the Gen Z dialogue gets grating not only in its frequency but also in its misplacement.
Despite talent behind the camera, it’s impossible to ignore the hyper-glossy sheen that makes I Know What You Did Last Summer look so artificial. Explained away with an info dump about Southport’s tourist rebrand, the cozy fishing town of the 90s is no more. Instead, a gaudy display of sleek, modern McMansions line the shores and the town’s demographic shifts significantly to the young, rich, and vapid. Even on the greatest hits tour, where the film takes viewers back to the iconic moments from the first film, the revamps fall flat. Lacking the tension of the original scenes, their inclusion is underwhelming at their best and uninspired at their worst. The old Shivers store retread and final boat confrontation are two egregious examples of this tendency. Lacking substance beyond priming audiences to remember past frights and using gentrification as a major vehicle to explain away the empty set design, there just isn’t much making this trip to Southport seem worth it.
While too far and few in between, it does boast some solid kills and chase scenes for those concerned mostly with its scares. There’s nothing tongue-in-cheek in this sequel when it comes to kills. While mostly sticking to variations of hooks and other seaside equipment, the brutality breaks up the mundanity of the young adult’s scrambling to avoid wandering into the killer’s path. While the gore is well-executed, the sequences lack the intensity needed to be done well. The pacing problems of I Know What You Did Last Summer shine through in these moments. Scenes are constructed in ways that either rush through the story beats or linger in them, making it awkward to build tension and pull off the increasingly ridiculous story.
There are worse instances of nostalgia bait, but the motivations feel particularly empty regarding I Know What You Did Last Summer. Shining from its devotion to all things plastic and cringe, I Know What You Did Last Summer wants to capitalize on nostalgia that it simply does not have. Campy yet corny slasher conventions tie together yet another story of a guilty party paying for their sins. Lacking the gravitas of other legacy sequels as of late, I Know What You Did Last Summer is an exercise in wanting to cash in on IP without a compelling hook.
Overall Score? 4/10
