What could have been a paint-by-numbers reboot is smarter and sillier than expected.
You know the drill here: a year after they cover up an accidental death, a group of photogenic young people start getting picked off one by one by a hook-handed nemesis in a fisherman’s slicker. The killer leaves notes along the general theme of “I Know What You Did Last Summer“, and so our hapless protagonists must figure out who has the goods on them before they’re all slaughtered.
That’s the plot for six iterations of I Know What You Did Last Summer so far. There’s the original 1973 novel by Lois Duncan, which would be all but forgotten if not for the 1997 film adaptation. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe, it was an amiable enough time-passer born out of the post-Scream slasher boom, even sharing a screenwriter in the form of Kevin Williamson.
Amiable enough in fact, to spawn two sequels, with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (set in the Bahamas, Jack Black gets whacked) rushed out a mere 13 months later, and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (straight to DVD, no original cast, may not actually exist) following in 2006. 2021 saw the inevitable (and unwatchable) TV redux in the form of an eight episode series on Amazon. Now it’s 2025, legacy sequels are in vogue, and we have the just-as-inevitable requel that sics a new Fisherman on a new coterie of privileged kids, with a few franchise veterans sprinkled in to supply nostalgia and ironic commentary.
Which is a long way of saying that not expecting too much from the 2025 I Know What You Did Last Summer is understandable. It’s a franchise that tops out at a generous three stars, and frequently sits much lower. Happily, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) subverts those lowered expectations at every turn. What could have been a lazy cash-in is instead smart, funny, and at times spectacularly gory. Knowingly camp and enjoyably mean-spirited, the film manages to tick every box on the slasher worksheet but does so in fun and inventive ways.
Perhaps the smartest choice comes from understanding that these sort of things are a lot more enjoyable when we want our conga line of victims to die, at least to some degree, and IKWYDKS‘s protagonists are certainly a deserving bunch. They’re all shallow, self-absorbed, and blithely privileged. Lead Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) cheats on boyfriend Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) at any opportunity. Real estate heir Teddy (Tyriq Withers) uses his powerful father’s connections to cover up the inciting accident. Pampered new age princess Danica (a hilarious Madelyn Cline) is barely smart enough to understand what’s going on, floating through life in a bubble of wealth and magical thinking. No one stands out as a villain but Robinson, writing with Sam Lansky, takes pains to depict their baseline amorality. Only Sarah Pidgeon’s Stevie, a former rich kid fallen on hard times, comes across as sympathetic.
Which means that when the bodies start to pile up, there’s a lot of delicious schadenfreude to lap up along with the blood. The kills are imaginative, superbly constructed and surprisingly gory. Story-wise, he have to go through some contortions to bring in Freddie Prinze Jr’s Ray (runs the bar where Stevie works) and Jennifer Love-Hewitt’s Julie (uni lecturer and Goth MILF), but the central mystery is engaging and well-handled. I Know What You Did Last Summer never colours outside the lines, but there’s an arch tone and a playfulness here that keeps things peppy. It just about functions as parody of slashers more than anything else – subtler than Scary Movie, perhaps, but still reveling in the essential silliness of the genre.
I Know What You Did Last Summer is in cinemas now.
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