‘People are always trying to kill that woman…’
I Know What You Did Last Summer is a curious franchise. The original is fondly remembered, but it is also derivative of Scream, and runs out of steam in the third act. The two sequels that followed, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, are both, and I don’t say this lightly, utter dogshit. And yet, the cult status of the first movie ensured that there was some excitement for this 2025 legacy sequel. And do you know? It’s fine…
27 years after the events of the first movie, a group of teenagers led by Danica (Madelyn Cline) and her wealthy best friend, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), cause the death of a stranger while larking around on the road in the middle of the night. A year later, everyone involved starts receiving mysterious letters. So, yeah. It’s basically the plot of the first movie all over again.
This is a weird one because I’m not sure how any director could make much of this premise. I won’t spoil the surprise here, but legacy characters return around the halfway mark (as is the fashion at the moment), and while all involved do a good job in making us believe in these characters again after all these years, they don’t really add much to the party in terms of plotting. You could take two of these legacy characters away and the plot would be unchanged. There is also a completely unnecessary lesbian love scene featuring another character who adds nothing to the narrative, and, in fact, makes the whole film much more implausible than it needs to be.
While every film in this franchise struggles with plausibility, this one requires a particularly stringent suspension of disbelief. Much of the plot hinges around the fact that these teenagers aren’t aware that a man dressed as a fisherman, brandishing a hook, embarked on a killing spree 27 years before the events of this movie. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson unsuccessfully attempts to explain this away in the dialogue, but I suppose that nobody comes to I Know What You Did Last Summer for logic. They come for the grisly murders. And in that respect, the film mostly succeeds. It’s not Terrifier, but it’s not as bloodless as the original movie either.
2025’s edition of I Know What You Did Last Summer will no doubt go down as a footnote in the annals of horror film history, but lovers of the first film will find plenty to enjoy here – a good time at the movies.
