I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Fails to Sink its Hook Into the Teen Slasher

“Nostalgia is overrated,” says Jennifer Love-Hewitt in 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, a line that should read as pure camp for the 46-year-old actress in her long-awaited return as final girl Julie James. Yet that doesn’t feel to be quite the grand statement behind director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s new iteration of the teen slasher as much as the film wants it to be. Instead of dissecting the blurry lens of nostalgia that’s infiltrated so much of our current media, I Know What You Did Last Summer falls short of its meta commentary in this clunkily plotted, cameo-driven rehashing of the original 1997 film.

Nearly 27 years after Love-Hewitt’s iconic twirl around an empty street screaming “What are you waiting for,” Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems decided to jump into the game of “requels” with 2025’s film of the same name, getting Do Revenge’s Robinson behind the camera both as director and co-writer alongside Sam Lansky. Like any 1990s film with a grain of recognizability, there have  been other attempts to revive the franchise, including a cut-short Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard script in 2014 and a failed 2021 Amazon Prime series that came and went. Yet, after the critical and commercial success of 2022’s Scream, the studios seemingly went back to the drawing board, likely thinking that Kevin Williamson’s other teen slasher franchise might hit it big as well. 

Veering close to the plot of the 1997 film, I Know What You Did Last Summer centers around a group of 20-somethings (aged up from the teens of the original) whose lives in their wealthy North Carolina coastal town of Southport are upended by one fateful night and the murder of a stranger. Back in town for her Goop-esque friend Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy’s (Tyriq Winters) engagement party, our obvious final girl Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) is the first character introduced as she prepares to see her ex-boyfriend (Jonah Hauer-King) after years of being away from Southport.

Like many small-towns, every person has a connection to everyone, which we learn through the introduction of Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon). Once part of Ava’s group of carefree, rich kids, Stevie was abandoned by her friends when her father ran off with her college fund, leaving her to fend for herself post-high school. This is all told through very clunky exposition by Ava, as she relays this information to her friends just a mere 15 feet away from Stevie. 

Ava invites Stevie out for old time’s sake to watch the 4th of July fireworks with them. Agreeing to this invite, the now re-healed group of Southport friends drive off into the night sky to have an absolutely lovely, trauma-free evening. If this is when the metaphorical Kill Bill sirens begin blaring off within your head, you’d be correct! 

This is where the plot begins to follow a similar structure and plot to the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, to the film’s ultimate detriment. A person dies due to the main group’s involvement (no matter how accidental it may be), and a year later, the 20-somethings begin facing the consequences of their inaction as they’re stalked by a killer in a fishermen’s costume. 

Yet in this edition, the group actually tries to help the person who dies. Sure, they didn't go to the police to give a statement but they did call them to the scene and they all attempted to break into the car to snatch the person out. Compared to the original film where the rich, careless teens’ drinking and reckless driving leads to them barreling into and killing a person, this film chooses to give them a bit of an out, showing that the person rears their car off road after as if the movie doesn’t want us to dislike these characters in any way or form. Unfortunately, this fangless decision gives us some pretty two dimensional characters whose motivations will have you scratching your head. 

A year passes after the post-4th of July manslaughter, bringing all our now seemingly traumatized characters back together just in time for the mysterious “I know what you did last summer” notes to start appearing. Yet, the first to be killed by the fishermen’s spear are side characters, like the Gen Z true crime podcaster played by Gabbriette Bechtel who uses phrases like “gentrislaycation” and is obsessed with the town’s 1997 massacre to the point that they have a custom made Helen Shivers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in the original film) shirt that you would see all over Etsy.

The lack of tension that stems from waiting for anyone from the main group to be actually harmed is one of many seemingly confusing decisions made in I Know What You Did Last Summer. None of the younger characters have any idea of their hometown’s bloody history, which is waved away as all information was “wiped from the internet.” Not one person has even heard a rumor or tall-tale about this growing up in such a gossipy small-town? Okay, sure! Even the film’s reintroduction of 1997’s Southport massacre survivors Jennifer Love-Hewitt’s Julie and Freddie Prinze Jr’s Ray feels haphazardly thrown in, with both actors popping in as real-life exposition vehicles for the younger characters with very little to do until the final act.

All of the inane decisions made by the film’s characters like, say, walking out of a safely locked house to retrieve a phone charger from a car or hitting up the gym sauna as a killer is loose, culminates in the film’s wacky climax. The multi-twist ending leaves the viewer with more questions than answers, especially when the reveal of who is behind the hook-inclined murders comes off as more mean-spirited instead of a truly satisfying conclusion for the story.

There are still some highlights in the film, including a few fun set pieces and the performances of Chase Sui Wonders and Madelyn Clyne as two different types of scream queens that try their best in outwitting the masked slasher. As the main character, Wonders is given more to do than her co-stars, which she does her best with despite  clunky dialogue and ridiculous situations. Clyne, whose small-town beauty queen character is a stand-in for Gellar’s Helen Shivers, gets some of the best one-liners that elevates her character to be more than just her teen slasher stereotype.

Whether I Know What You Did Last Summer was going for a camp classic in its revival or a meta-commentary on Hollywood’s wave of reboots and sequels, there is still much to be desired in the film’s attempt to hook into either idea. There’s always the sequel, as hinted at by an off-hand comment in the film’s final moments and a schlocky but delightful post-credits scene which includes the return of a fan-favorite character. One free vacation to the Bahamas, coming right up!

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