I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson — Screenplay by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Sam Lansky.

I often mention that my parents let my sister and me watch horror films when we were very young. We grew up watching and enjoying many of these, including especially the Kevin Williamson-written slasher flicks Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Luckily, subsequent sequels and later legacy sequels of Scream have been very satisfying experiences for me to watch. Now, they’re trying to resurrect I Know What You Did Last Summer with its own legacy sequel from director (and Thor: Love and Thunder co-writer) Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. However, it pains me to report that, unlike the Scream legacy sequels, I found the reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer to be a disappointing and often dreadful experience. It’s the movie this year that made me check my watch the most times, and also the worst film I’ve seen in a theater so far in 2025.

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer follows a group of friends who, after an engagement party on the Fourth of July, decide to drive to a specific spot to watch the yearly celebratory fireworks show. However, when one of the people in the friend group fools around on the highway (Teddy, played by Tyriq Withers), a car driving by swerves and crashes, knocking out the unidentified driver. Though they try to stop the car from going over the side of the road, they are unsuccessful, and, as a result, the car, along with the driver, falls off a cliff. In an attempt to steer clear of public responsibility, Teddy has his father, Grant (played by Billy Campbell), a politician who has connections within the police department, cover up their involvement. When, one year later, one of the friends gets a card that reads ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and people close to them are murdered, they reach out to Ray (played by Freddie Prinze, Jr.) and Julie (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt), who have experience being hunted by murderers with hooks.

So, as you can tell, you already know what happened ‘last summer.’ This is such a formulaic film that you know from minute one everything that is going to happen. That it sticks too closely to the formula isn’t all that shocking for a legacy sequel, but when you pair it with every other issue with this film, it becomes a genuine point of frustration, as there is absolutely nothing fresh about this film. Those hoping for the legacy characters to be treated well will likely be disappointed, if not outright incensed, given what happens here. Yet, the film is also surprisingly afraid of having a bite.

For one, the main group of friends is not quite as culpable as the characters were in the original 1997 hit. I assumed this was to make the characters — a young cast that also includes Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, and Sarah Pidgeon — more likable, but it doesn’t accomplish that either, as these characters are either paper-thinly drawn or speak in tongue-in-cheek lines that make the whole ordeal feel less significant. At one point, a character who has just lost their significant other is more concerned about being a hot widow than the fact that they’ve just lost someone, and, a few scenes later, they’re right back together with an ex they had previously dumped. Secondly, the film also has a couple of death scene fake-outs, one of which is treated as a joke.

Some will argue that it is intentionally being tongue-in-cheek, and while I get that this may be what they were going for at one point, the film is lopsided and tonally uneven. There are scenes in the first half of the film with cheesy lines or cuts that have a dark sense of humor, but then the film forgets this element for most of the second half, which treats the material far more seriously. That is, until the final two or three scenes — the final of which felt tacked on — when it suddenly wants to be cheesy and tongue-in-cheek again. But the effect it has is that the characters are even more unlikable than before, and the events of the film are far less significant. One of the last lines of the film also feels a bit too much like a desperate attempt to quote an online meme about therapy, which, however, doesn’t make narrative logical sense given the actual reason for the events that transpired (either the film completely missed its own point or they want us to roll our eyes at the people in the scene). It also doesn’t help that the film appears to preempt criticism with a couple of meta-lines that almost feel like the film is writing your review for you (e.g., “nostalgia is overrated,” “zero out of ten,” “who cares?”).

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is an uninspired, unoriginal, and borderline legacy-staining modern follow-up to the Kevin Williamson original. It is tonally uneven, trite, and features hackneyed, lazy, or flippant dialogue. It doesn’t do a good job of honoring the original films, as it instead feels like a copy that is, however, too predictable and features bland horror sequences (too many annoying jump scares). It is, unfortunately, a misfire and one of the least engaging legacy sequels that I’ve seen.

2 out of 10

– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.