When the lights came up after screening I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025), I left fatigued by endless callbacks, influencer-core aesthetics, and jump scares that didn’t land. Director and writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson gifted us with this latest franchise revival. She doesn’t aim to update or challenge the legacy of the 1997 original of the same name. Instead, she more or less repackaged it. I say Robinson has a writing credit, and so does Sam Lansky, and Leah McKendrick, but with how formulaic this flick is, I’m not sure this credit is correct. An afternoon at Starbucks with ChatGPT would likely give us a similar script. It’s a complete retread: A group of privileged young adults return to their coastal hometown for a boozy reunion. I say young adults, it’s unclear how old they are. They can drink, do drugs, and are getting married. They may be considered kids nowadays, but earlier generations would place them squarely in the adult category of society.
Regardless, a joyride goes wrong, someone dies, and they swear to take the secret to the grave. A year later, a note scrawled with “I Know What You Did Last Summer” appears and cue the moody beach shots, increasingly implausible plot twists, and a killer dressed up as a fisherman. Well, an early 20th century fisherman anyway, even in the shots in the marina, no fisherman is wearing all that gear, but I guess a guy in shorts, flipflops and worn Nirvana t-shirt wouldn’t scream fear me.
But that’s the thing, this is 2025. Even if audiences are aching for 90s nostalgia, things are different. I don’t believe the same scary man in old clothes formula from 1997 will work. John and Jane Doe splurging on a night out at the movies is dealing with high rent, and expensive groceries. This movie needs to be better. Even if these movie-goes can leave their economic anxiety at the door, the characters lifted straight from the 90s won’t help. At some level, people are getting tired of watching shows and films exclusively about wealthy sycophants. The wealth gap has widened to a moral chasm, and it’s nearly impossible to sympathize with the problems of hyper-groomed, influencer-adjacent rich kids. It’s even harder to care when they’re trying to get away with causing a stranger’s death. All the surface-level dialogue about guilt and trauma become meaningless when the characters flippantly flutter from beachside mansion to yacht and back to beachside mansion. For the majority of the movie, we follow Ava played by Chase Sui Wonders, and Danica played by Madelyn Cline. They lead the cast with hollow dialogue and vague backstories. It’s palpable how much Robinson is begging us to care, but it’s hard to mourn people who barely feel human to begin with. The faintest amount of remorse evaporates instantaneously. Even as characters are picked off, the gang is Scooby-Doing through scenes to discover the bad guy, when they themselves are also “bad guys.” They’re less victims and more cautionary tales, but the film never gets there.
For franchise fans, it’s likely nice to see Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt return as Ray and Julie. They awkwardly drop in to deliver exposition and grimace at history repeating itself. The script is consumed with tying everything back to the 1997 original. It gestures toward legacy, but undercuts it.
That’s typical now. In the past year, about a dozen reboots, revivals, or sequels to old horror franchises have hit theaters, like Final Destination: Bloodlines, or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Whether good or bad, none of them are treading new ground, so let’s be honest: this isn’t really about putting out a good movie … it’s about the IP. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a glossy cash grab disguised as a tribute, designed by committee and aimed at algorithms. Nostalgia is the whole movie and it’s not enough. Get drunk, and don’t take this 3 out of 10 seriously.
