I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

Legacy reboots are all the rage these days and we have now reached the I Know What You Did Last Summer, the first came out in 1997, the sequel the following year and then in 2006 we got the last terrible instalment. The film follows a new group of irritating young people after they are involved in an accidental death and the following year they start getting a note saying…you know what it says. One of the few positives that they at least tried to do something different to make it less like they rehashed the original plot. In this version, the death happens when the car avoids hitting Teddy who is being irritating by thinking he has the right to be standing in the middle of the road at night when lighting is not great.

Like Jurassic World and Star Wars there is a mix of new and old. We have Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return along with a surprise cameo from Sarah Michelle Gellar. Jennifer Love Hewitt makes a Ralph Macchio level appearance. She only appears in two or three scenes and only gets involved in the story in the final scene. It's like they had her for two days and this was what they came up with. Freddie Prinze Jr. has a bit more of an impact on the plot but it's not too much that it steals the spotlight from the new group. Freddie Prinze Jr seems at first to be a nostalgia return but the big twist is that he is the killer to try and make people remember what happened in 1997. It’s a twist which feels a little bit lazy and doesn’t really make much sense as to make people remember after the town was being redeveloped isn’t the worst thing in the world.

The new group aren’t as annoying as I would have expected. Danica walks the fine line as at times she is annoying but then she is less annoying. Ava is clearly the one that is the new Jennifer love Hewitt as she is the less annoying one but still has a personality. I thought that Chase Sui Wonders was the best of the new group and along with Madelyn Cline, its clear that if there are more films then these two will be the face of the franchise. I suspect we may get more because they probably made this cheaply with the big paychecks going to Hewitt, Prinze Jr. and Gellar.

I was slightly distracted with Milo ( Jonah Hauer-King), I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t figure out where I had seen him before and I didn't want to turn my phone on so it just bugged me for the rest of the film and then and it turns out that he was Conrad Clarke who was a pretty important character in the last series of Doctor Who. Tyriq is your typical bloke who thinks he could take on anything and goes to the gym to try and be able to fight him off and when he has the chance to fight him then things go predictably wrong. I disliked him enough that I enjoyed it when he wasn't able to put up much of a fight against the killer.

I Know What You Did Last Summer wasn’t crying out for a legacy sequel but I suppose it was inevitable and it could have been worse and at best it is on par with the 1997 original. I hope that if there are more then they will attempt to do a better story. I’m not sure what they could do but anything would be more creative than what we got in this safe and slightly underwhelming horror outing. The 1997 version came at a time when we had Scream and films like that but the horror landscape has changed and you can't put this little effort into a film and expect to get away with it.