During the climax of 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, which revives the 90s slasher series, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James states that “nostalgia’s overrated”. In this current age of legacy sequels, it is hard to say if that statement is true, considering that many franchises, some that are still around from decades ago, seem to be the bread and butter for studios to do well at the box office. As this year has become surprisingly good for horror cinema, you still get the occasional dud, which brings us to I Know What You Did Last Summer.
The most interesting thing that ever came out of this franchise, which originated from Lois Duncan’s 1973 suspense novel of the same name, was that the first film was written by Kevin Williamson, who had previously done Scream, which was all about satirizing the tropes of the slasher that dominated the eighties. Although Duncan herself dismissed the adaptation, which deviated from the novel’s slow-burn mystery nature, 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer became a hit and revitalized the slasher genre.
Following two sequels and a television series that lasted for one season on Amazon Prime Video, and in an attempt to follow the recent resurgence of the Scream series, I Know What You Did Last Summer gets its own legacy sequel. Taking place twenty-seven years after the Tower Bay murders, another hook-wielding killer appears and begins targeting a group of friends one year after they covered up a car accident in which they supposedly killed someone. As the police of Southport seem resistant to investigate the murders, due to inner-city politics, the group seeks the help of the only survivors of the Tower Bay murders, Julie James (Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr).
Whereas Scream still feels refreshing with subsequent installments that continue to break the formula of slasher movies, Last Summer in all incarnations has always been about sticking with the formula, with a tone that tries to play the horror straight, even if it gave birth to the parodic Scary Movie. Having previously directed and co-written the 2022 teen black comedy Do Revenge, you would think that Jennifer Kaytin Robinson would bring a similar energy here. But despite some inventive kills that make good use of a fisherman’s tool kit like a speargun, the few moments of humor rely more on awkward one-liners from the likes of Madelyn Cline’s Danica and Gabbriette Bechtel’s Tyler.
No matter how much this reboot tries to update the surroundings that you first saw in 1997 through the usage of social media and even more glamorous boats than you would expect on the fishing docks, the film feels trapped in its own IP. Even with a subplot that seems lifted the fifty-year-old Jaws which involves the Rocketeer himself Billy Campbell as a wealthy property developer who is trying to erase any criminal history in order to gain tourist attraction, the overall piece feels as shallow as the young cast, none of which leave much an impression, despite with the threat getting hooked.
Weirdly, the film’s only successful element is that very nostalgia that fans of the original film will be delighted with, most notably the return of Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. Despite their limited screen-time, their iconic roles of Julie and Ray have been through a lot, been together and have drifted apart, and thus there is more development in their history than any of the new characters that pop here. However, despite the sense of closure of these characters during the film’s absurd and twisty climax, there is a mid-credits scene that suggests that we could see more from this franchise. Once again, nostalgia’s overrated, but do these filmmakers actually believe that?
