I know what you did last summer.
But what about 28 years ago?
See, a funny thing happened on the way to watching the new sequel to 1997’s I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. (Yes, the newbie has the exact same name as the original so it might be a bit confusing as I write about both. I shall try my best.) I didn’t re-familiarize myself with the franchise before entering the cinema to watch the latest and found myself confused at what exactly had happened all those years ago as the plot, in-jokes and Easter eggs evaded me. I have a good memory, but knowing that much lore about the original film, lo those decades ago, was challenging. And it inhibited my enjoyment of this movie because it assumes we’re aficionados. Granted, I liked the original frightener, and I admired much of this one as well, but too much leans into the nostalgia and lore, blurring the lines and understanding of what’s going on here.
In the original film, five teenagers in a seaside town inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, but rather than go to the cops, they cover up their involvement to avoid any repercussions. Then, a year later, a mysterious killer dressed up like the Gorton’s fisherman (slicker raincoat, matching hat, and boots) comes a-callin’ on the kids and proclaims in a note, “I know what you did last summer.” Soon after, the teens start succumbing to the fisherman’s wrath, usually via his giant fisherman’s hook, and the whole horror show becomes not only a tense variation on slasher tropes, but a fairly decent whodunnit too as the filmmakers throw a number of potential suspects at us to weed through.
The successful franchise made even bigger stars of TV favorites like Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Freddie Prinze, Jr., spawned two sequels before this one, and established a cult classic beloved by Gen X. Now, in 2025, the exact same plot drives this film as well. Yep, five teenagers horsing around on a dangerous mountain road, lead a motorist to drive his Dodge Ram half off the ledge before the vehicle plummets to its doom. The teens are the soulful Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), her bestie Danica (Madelyn Cline), Danica’s beefcake boyfriend Teddy (Tyriq Withers), Ava’s ex Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), a former friend who fell out with the crowd after high school. They’re all together for Danica’s engagement party and – surprise, surprise – they too fail to go to the authorities. Guess what happens a year later?
The new stalker, in the same guise, starts giving his victims the hook, of course, but surprisingly, he doesn’t go after the core five right away. That begs numerous questions, mainly as to the killer’s motivation. Why bother with those on the sidelines? Why don’t any of the main five get truly threatened until almost an hour into the film? Is there a hidden agenda to the pecking order, or is it merely the studio demanding the stars stay alive for as long as possible?
Things get further derailed by an excessive amount of callbacks to the previous films, especially when Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze, Jr. show up, reprising their original roles. Granted, they become costars of the film here and are given a lot to do, but it suddenly feels like a strained hodge-dodge of past and present. If you don’t know those characters and what happened to them in the first one, you might be even more confounded than I was. And their screen time takes away from the new cast, particularly the very funny Cline who makes quite a vivid impression here.
Granted, this new film has some excellent scares, a number of decent twists, and even a couple of inspired cameos. But I felt disconnected by how much this film leans into all its nostalgia, and some of its newer, better ideas get lost with the focus so strongly aimed at the past. One of those ideas with potential here is the introduction of Grant Spencer, the town’s real estate tycoon who also happens to be the dad of Teddy. As played by Billy Campbell, a veteran actor who’s played many superb baddies (ENOUGH, THE 4400), the character is a smiling bully, the true power in the town. Campbell brings a subtle shadiness to the role and you want his menace to figure more prominently in the plot, but that’s difficult when so much time is spent looking backwards with Hewitt’s Julie and Prinze’s Ray rehashing their backstory.
This trend of rebooting franchises that trade off so heavily on nostalgia are getting to be a thing in Hollywood and it renders sequels and prequels all the more overly complicated. And in this new trend, filmmakers are assuming that we in the audience know all the minutiae of their franchises like the back of our hands. And if not, then they overcompensate with a lot of ham-fisted exposition to clue us in. This film is guilty of plenty of both approaches. It becomes a filmgoing experience that practically needs those Amazon Prime notations on the side to help us along like a big-ticket cheat sheet.
Look, there are fresh ways this franchise could be taken if indeed, a reboot is the intention. For starters, give the fisherman the hook. The premise of this series is about teenagers who cover up their crime and get served just desserts for their sins. It could be like the FINAL DESTINATION franchise in that way – same premise, different characters and settings. But no matter, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER needs to step up and find new ways to scare us without making so much of the subsequent films more than affectionate trips down memory lane.
