I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) is pretty much what I was hoping for: a traditional/formulaic slasher movie, sometimes slightly more clever than expected, sometimes dumb enough to get some laughs. It has a solid cast of fresh faces, just the right amount of “legacy sequel” characters (more than cameos, less than leads), and a couple fun surprises that I guess people didn’t care enough about to spoil for me even though I missed this in theaters. Thank you! I had a good time watching it at home with friends and a box of Jason Voorhees sponsored cider.

Like HALLOWEEN and SCREAM and almost TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE before it this is not a remake but a sequel that inexplicably has the same title as the original. It does feature a new group of young people who do a new cover up of a new car accident, but when they receive a note saying “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER” and start getting killed by somebody dressed as a fisherman holding a hook they recognize this as something that happened before and they go to original main characters Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt, CAN’T HARDLY WAIT) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr., WING COMMANDER) for advice.

In the trailer this seemed like a ridiculous concept – what advice could they really give? (Unless it’s “Turn yourself in.”) There’s definitely a certain amount of DIE HARD 2 “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” knowing absurdity at play. But the idea is that the fishing town of Southport, North Carolina has been gentrified and turned into a highly profitable resort town, and in the process information about the 1997 murders was scrubbed from the internet to protect their reputation. So trying to learn more about the crimes is the group’s only lead for figuring out who would by copying them now. Okay, I’ll go with it.

Rather than recent high school graduates, this new group of friends are twentysomethings reuniting after a few years of adulthood. Ava (Chase Sui Wonders, ON THE ROCKS, BODIES BODIES BODIES) returns home for the 4th of July engagement party of her best friends Danica (Madelyn Cline, GLASS ONION) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers, HIM). We know from what she says to herself in the mirror (a tried and true storytelling cheat) that she’s nervous about seeing her ex-boyfriend Milo (Jonah Hauer-King, Prince Eric in the live action LITTLE MERMAID) and might want to hook up with him. We also learn (without the use of mirrors) that Teddy is the heir to a business empire, but we already knew somebody here was ridiculously rich just because this is more extravagant than any wedding I’ve been to, and it’s only the engagement party.

What the fuck is an engagement party? Was I supposed to have that? Often movie characters live opulent lives compared to us, but they’re supposed to be normal. Here I think we’re supposed to notice. Their immense privilege makes their later choices seem even more shitty.

After the party they decide to, for old time’s sake, drive to a spot on a windy road where they used to drink and smoke pot and watch the fireworks. They convince somewhat estranged friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon, THE FRIEND), who’s on the clock cleaning up after the party, to come too, so you feel bad for her burying the hatchet just in time to be involved in manslaughter.

As in the original story their partying causes a fatal car accident. The remix element is that instead of running someone over, stoned Teddy walks into the road and causes a car to swerve into the guardrail. It teeters on the brink for a bit and they all attempt to save the driver, but then it falls. (Did I miss something, or did the detail that the driver reaches out and pulls off Teddy’s shirt never become relevant?)

They’re not teens looking forward to bright futures, but they’re still trying to make something happen. Aren’t we all? They agree to leave the scene but go to the police, and instead Teddy takes them straight home. I have heard a complaint that this makes the others less guilty, but I think the story has always been about being pressured to go along with the friend group not owning up to their mistake. That’s what happens again. They reluctantly agree not to talk about it, and Teddy’s powerful father (THE ROCKETEER himself, Billy Campbell) pulls some strings to blame the victim and get them off the hook. (Which is a pun.)

Good news: there are no influencer characters, like you get in so many modern horror movies. Bad news: there’s a true crime podcaster, like you also get in so many modern horror movies. She doesn’t last long enough for us to have to hear much about it, though. When we return to the story a year after the accident, Ava has just met Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel, singer of a band called Nasty Cherry) on the plane and has sex with her in the airport restroom. As one does. Ava is back in Southport for Danica’s bridal shower, Tyler is here for the first time to record an episode of her show Live, Laugh, Slaughter about the 1997 murders and/or to share information about them with the characters/viewers. She wears a Helen Shivers Croaker Queen shirt that I believe was also sold by Cavity Colors as an official tie-in. Synergy.

As they investigate they get attacked by someone dressed as the fisherman. I appreciate how good everybody is at ducking when a hook gets swung at them. I also appreciate that Teddy gets hyped up to fight the fisherman, goes to the gym to prepare (no training montage, sadly), and does get to have an actual fight. For her part, Ava tracks down Julie, who lives 45 minutes from Southport working as a college professor, but a cool and/or sad one because she wears a The Cure t-shirt under her blazer. She’s divorced from Ray, who got out of the fish business, but owns the fishing-themed Ray’s Bar in Southport, where Stevie works. He only reunites with Julie to ask her what the fuck? when he finds out her advice to Ava (the police won’t help you, you have to find out who it is yourself and kill them).

Although I like that modern horror has shed many regressive views that were common in older ones, I gotta admit it makes them feel kinda safe and clean in a way that can work against the horror. So I enjoyed the messy, questionable morality of this one. Julie seems like the moral center of the I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER universe and yeah, that was a pretty crazy thing to tell a young person.

Many slasher movies of the ‘80s infamously followed the sex = death cliche, and the SCREAM era’s progress mainly involved breaking a made up rule that only virgins could survive. So I really respect that so many modern horror movies allow their heroines to enjoy casual sex without being shamed for it. This one I’m not sure what to make of though because it’s not, like, she like to party and have a good time – it pushes it to the level of getting fingered by a near-stranger in an airport restroom, as our reintroduction to her after the one year time jump. So I think the implication is that it’s Ava’s version of acting out due to what-you-did-last-summer related stress. That may or may not also be why when she’s finally gonna have sex with her high school sweetheart she asks him to “choke and punish” her. I guess maybe the idea is that she’s the one who wants it and he gets scared off by it, so it’s the reverse of the misogynistic, sexualized violence of many slasher movies? Maybe? Or maybe director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (DO REVENGE) and her co-writers Sam Lansky (I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST) and Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.) just want to destigmatize that kind of stuff? I don’t know. Whatever it is it’s odd. It’s interesting.

(By the way, if I’m not mistaken not just the director and one of her co-writers but also the editor, composer and production designers are women. Makes me flash back to the ‘90s when some male horror fans looked down on horror, including I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, that they felt was aimed too much at teenage girls. Personally I’m happy to share the genre with whoever’s interested. [Except jerks.])

As far as trying to decode the choking scene, I guess I should note that Milo not feeling comfortable with it causes him to leave the room and get murdered. In this particular incident abstaining = death. We will also find that the killer (SPOILER ABOUT WHO THE KILLER IS) had just turned her life around by going to rehab. Hmmm. So maybe in this universe it’s best for everybody to indulge. I would’ve been dead too though.

You can read what I wrote about I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and even the DTV sequel I’LL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER when I revisited them in summer of 2023. For me they’re in that classical slasher tradition of movies I don’t hold in the highest of esteem but also must admit I enjoyed in theaters (where applicable) and more than once on video. So I gotta admit I’m a fan. One thing I appreciated about them at the time is that as much as they were leeching off the popularity of SCREAM, they were not copying the meta part. They were made with the belief – definitely not universal at the time – that this is still a fun genre and should still exist not just as deconstruction. Not only do I still believe that but at this point slasher movies purporting to say something about slasher movies are the thing that has worn out its welcome. What has not is movies where you get to watch as a hook very slowly pierces one cheek and goes out the other, or where two bodies get hung up over a dock like the smaller shark in JAWS. They’re like a black t-shirt. They’ll never go out of style.

Not in all of the slasher classics, but in quite a few of them, it’s good to have some laughs, even if (especially if?) they seem unintentional. I definitely appreciated that here – silly things like the bluntness of some of the expositional dialogue, or how many times they refer to the killer as wearing a “slicker.” They never call it a raincoat or anything else, always slicker. Maybe that’s regionally accurate, I have no idea, but it felt to me like they were all following a style guide.

There are also things more clearly meant to be funny, sometimes successful. I love the switch where we see Danica’s groom at the bridal shower and realize it’s not the same one from the engagement party. She found a different rich guy already! I also liked the part where her different rich guy (Joshua Orpin, Titans)’s response to getting impaled with a harpoon is to say “What the fuck, bro?” In another scene there’s a version of the trope where the killer is gonna shoot our hero and we hear the gun go off but our hero is still standing and then the killer makes a face and slowly collapses and someone is behind them ‘cause they shot him and that was actually the gun we heard, not his. In this case it’s not a gun, though – we think we’re hearing the splootch of a hook stabbing when in fact he got hit from behind with a harpoon.

In this subgenre it’s crucial to have leads with a strong screen presence, and I believe they achieved that. Cline (who reminds me a bit of Sydney Sweeney) is especially impressive because there are many jokes about Danica being frivolous and superficial, she’s absolutely the type of character to be killed for laughs in a slasher movie, but her attempts to get her friend some lovin in the midst of terror made her funny and endearing, and I felt invested in her and Ava surviving and maintaining their friendship. (SPOILER: Test screening audiences must’ve felt the same, since the ending where Danica survives and they hang out on the beach together was a reshoot.)

About the beach – I think this is a fine looking movie, but definitely not as fine looking as the original, which not only was made during a time of superior studio craftsmanship but also paid alot of attention to creating a strong atmosphere and personality for Southport. Since it’s been turned into a vacation paradise (and/or due to global warming) the weather is nicer, and it’s just not as interesting or ominous to look at. You at least gotta have a tropical storm, like the Bahamas of part 2! So that’s one criticism I have. I can dish it out, man. I don’t just like everything.

Most people have been much harsher. Such is life. I’m just telling you my side of the story. In order to truly discuss it though we’ve got to get into serious spoiler territory.

SUPER SPOILER SECTION

I was genuinely grateful that I went in not knowing this stuff, so you’ve been warned. I will be discussing the identity of the person who knows what they did last summer, and much more.

Okay, first of all there’s a creepy nightmare sequence where Sarah Michelle Gellar returns in the role of Croaker Queen Helen Shivers. I remember seeing Gellar saying in interviews that no, she wouldn’t be in the movie because her character was dead, and I believed her. I’m impressed that they kept it a secret.

Another surprise I kinda had an inkling about because people’s non-specific comments about “they finally did what SCREAM should’ve done” were enough for me to guess that one of the previous heroes would turn out to be the killer. Yes, it turns out that it’s Ray, who (if I understand correctly) finds out that his employee Stevie is doing this and offers to help. Why the fuck would he do that? Well, his ex-wife Professor Julie James herself said in a lecture that “Over time, if you don’t deal with your trauma, your trauma will deal with you. Because trauma changes the brain in mysterious and complex ways.” He also makes a speech explaining his frustration that what they went through has been erased for the reputation of the town and needs to be remembered, so that’s the motive as far as he sees it.

I enjoyed this twist because first of all, part of me did feel kind of uncomfortable with the hero of parts 1 and 2 now being a serial killer. And then another part of me laughed at the very concept of being offended by a negative portrayal of beloved character Ray Bronson. #NotMyRayBronson

And as always it’s impossible not to think of these movies in comparison to their cousin the SCREAM series – particularly with this one, since the unmasking of the killers and having them make crazy speeches is the SCREAM format. I do prefer just having the killer be scary-ass Muse Watson. But I have often tried to articulate how having a cast of ongoing characters being stalked by the killers is both what is unique about the SCREAM series within its genre and its greatest weakness, because in the new ones it feels like none of the main characters would be allowed to die. They are made for a younger horror fandom who never lived in the world where nobody expected anybody to return in a horror sequel. So they get mad when bad things happen to good people.

To be fair they did kill Dewey (R.I.P.), but would they have made him turn evil? Definitely not. And I’m not saying they should. But when it’s just Ray Bronson – yeah, why not? That’s a fun idea. And what’s almost more subversive is just the choice to have this couple from the original movies now be divorced and hate each other, and not rekindle anything, or make peace at all. That’s not the standard way to do this. You make them divorced but then they go through some shit and they admit how much they admire each other. Not here though.

In the original there was this idea that the pressure of keeping the secret breaks all their friendships. In this one we learn that Danica and Stevie have actually become very close during the one year gap. Is that possible? No, turns out she was faking it. It fits the logic of the series. I like it.

The other big surprise is a mid-credits scene with some fan service that I’d hoped for but not expected. Yes, Brandy Norwood (OSMOSIS JONES) makes an appearance as Julie’s college roommate Karla Wilson, in a scene setting up a sequel we probly won’t get. Would it have just been called I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER? We may never know.

The fellas on a horror podcast I enjoy called The New Flesh seemed mystified by this cameo, asking who would be excited for it. The general answer is obviously “fans of the movies this is a sequel to.” The specific answer is “me and my friends I watched this with, including one I definitely saw part 2 with in the theater, and maybe part 1, I can’t remember.” All of us were of age in the time when Brandy was a popular R&B singer we didn’t listen to but were aware of. In 1998 it was funny to see her star in an enjoyably trashy slasher sequel, and now it’s funny to see her participate in this after having largely disappeared from the limelight for many years. There’s even an underdog quality to it since her sequel was dismissed at the time and still doesn’t get respect but real ones know it’s kind of the better one. So treating her character as important and exciting is acknowledging an unpopular truth. Take that, The Man.

I would like them to make the followup to this. Maybe Jack Black (uncredited)’s weed dealer character will get to do the dream sequence this time. It looks like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER 2025 was profitable, but probly not enough to make that happen. So I guess in around 27 years we’ll find out if it’s Ava or Danika who takes up the hook to help the next generation. I wish them both well.