I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025)

I Know What You Did Last Summer, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 17, 2025

There's a brief moment in I Know What You Did Last Summer when one might think the filmmakers might do something completely different with this belated sequel to the 1997 horror movie. The setup looks almost identical to the previous movie, as a group of partying friends drive down a winding mountain road. In the '97 movie, the friends' car hits someone standing in the road. In this one, it's one of the friends who's standing in the middle of the road when a car is approaching.

For just a flash, we might consider the possibilities and promise if, instead of killing someone or causing someone's death and being tormented by a killer or two the following year, one of these friends turns out to be the victim of a different group of partying pals. Would the filmmakers dare to turn this formula entirely on its head? Think of the potential if the rest of the movie followed the surviving friends, who are so angered and traumatized by the senseless death of their good friend that they become the slicker-cloaked, hook-wielding threat to the group in the other car.

Indeed, embrace the notion that co-writer/director Jennifer Kaytin might do something distinct with a cheap attempt at cashing in on the trend of legacy sequels while it lasts. It's a brief moment, just as Teddy (Tyriq Withers) stands on that road, accompanied by four of his friends, as the sounds of an approaching car become louder and as the headlights grow brighter. The promise ends as soon as a pickup truck, which apparently has some sort of bespoke stealth mode, follows the first uneventful passing a few beats later.

It swerves to miss Teddy and slams into the guardrail, before it falls off the cliff. The friends try to help, but as soon as they realize they can't, they decide to cover up the whole thing with the help of Teddy's powerful father (played by Billy Campbell) and vow never to speak of this to anyone else.

The sequel is, essentially, exactly the same movie as its predecessor, just as the first sequel in 1998 was the same movie, only in a different locale and somehow much sillier. Characters here keep telling us how long ago the events of the first movie took place, in case we somehow forget every five or ten minutes, but it might as well be '97 all over again for the limited imagination shown by Kaytin and co-writer Sam Lansky.

Later on, a character has the gall to say, "Nostalgia's overrated," even though the character is only in this sequel because of nostalgia. Meanwhile, that line is followed several minutes later by a mid-credits scene that sets up yet another sequel, based entirely on nostalgia for the '98 iteration of this story.

The main difference between this sequel and its forebear with the same title, perhaps, is the number of characters who could be and, hence, are killed by or come under suspicion of being the killer in the slicker. Teddy—whom the friends could have and, based on developments that happen, probably should have held accountable for what happened with the person in the pickup truck—is joined by Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon).

There's some conflict and drama among the friends, of course, when Ava returns to the fishing town of Southport a year later for Danica's bridal shower. She had been engaged to Teddy, but after some vaguely established problems with him and their relationship, she's now engaged to another guy, whose name is irrelevant, since he's obviously going to be the first to go.

Many others, either involved in the crime and coverup or completely unconnected to it, are killed as well, in bloodier ways than the previous movies, and for no reason of internal logic within the plot, Ava asks Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), the "final girl" of the first two movies, for help. She offers advice that pretty much anyone else could under the same circumstances, and at least Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.), Julie's now permanent ex after their prior on-and-off situation, has an excuse to make a dramatic entrance at a town hall meeting about the killings. He never left Southport and is still haunted by what happened. In a particularly forced scene, another character from the first movie shows up, too, to literally haunt one of the new cast members.

I Know What You Did Last Summer cannot escape its past, because it doesn't want to. That would require some kind of thought and effort. It's so much easier, apparently, to copy what came before, constantly remind us that's what it's doing, and make some unconvincing jokes about how obvious that is along the way.

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