I Know What You Did Last Summer

"It's like it's 1997 again," says a character in Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's "I Know What You Did Last Summer," the fourth and latest installment in the horror franchise that started that very year. "Nostalgia is overrated," is the reply, which is meant to be tongue-in-cheek but unfortunately ends up being proven all too true by the very existence of this completely soulless and oppressively pandering attempt at rebooting IP that should've stayed dead. It's a line that the movie is just begging for reviewers like me to use as ammo against it; I'd be more worried about not being very original in using it as a critique if the movie was worried about being very original in literally anything that it does.

The concept of the original was never that spectacularly complicated: a group of friends cover up a fatal accident and are stalked by a hook-wielding killer one year later. But other 90s-era gore-fests like "Scream" and "Final Destination" have taken similarly straightforward concepts and had far more success, even in 2025. This new version of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" tries to go back to basics by returning to the exact same original premise and sprinkling in actors from the original, a move that must've checked all the boxes among producers looking to capitalize on millennial nostalgia. However, the first half is SO identical to the original, all the way down to the astounding number of grunge rock needle drops, that you have to wonder what the point is.

Ava (Chase Sui Wonders, of The Studio fame) is our moral center, a well-intentioned young woman who goes to the engagement party of her ditzy BFF Danica (Madelyn Cline). You can tell that we are in trouble almost right away, as both characters are constantly narrating what is happening, a painful exposition crutch that lasts the entirety of the movie. Danica's fiance, Teddy (Tyriq Withers), Ava's ex (Jonah Hauer-King) and the crew's old estranged friend (Sarah Pidgeon) are introduced in quick fashion, and the group gets in a car to go watch July 4th fireworks from the top of a large hill. Some painfully stupid clowning around leads to a car veering off the road and smashing into the rocks far below, and the group decides not to go and see if the driver is still alive or even stick around to talk to the police. They do decide to inexplicably tell Teddy's wealthy real estate mogul father in an attempt to make their involvement "go away" (even though they could have just as easily...not told him?), and everyone agrees to never breathe a word of this again.

A year later and someone is murdering people with a hook again, sending concern throughout the community, because yes, we are in the same exact town where the events of the original movie took place. From here, Ava decides it'd be a good reason to quiz the survivors of the original attack (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.), because they apparently have valuable insight. Some fans might just be happy to see Hewitt and Prinze Jr. on screen again, but their inclusion is a logic-defying move that is solely designed to try and build onto the barely-there lore of the original. Both characters even repeat "catchphrases" from the first movie, which comes off a lot more sad than fun.

The blood begins to spill, and none of the chases or kills are particularly memorable; there's only so much you can do with a hook. The story barely even tries to convince you of who the killer is, not even putting in more than the bare minimum of effort to create any red herrings. When the mystery is finally revealed, it makes a vague hand gesture towards class motivation that will barely cause an eyebrow to raise even a little bit. Some other barely-there commentary is made at the expense of the police and rich real estate guys, but none of it really registers as coherent.

To top it all off, Robinson and co-screenwriter Sam Lansky pepper in a mountain of "jokes" that use modern mental health speak as punchlines. There's even an utterance of "men would rather do X than go to therapy" that doesn't make any sense in how it was used, nor is it supported by the events of the movie. The dialogue is beyond clunkly throughout, and it's hard to shake the feeling that AI may have been involved somewhere along the way in the writing process.

Basically, I am hard-pressed to think of a single thing that worked in this movie. The twists and reveals come in bunches, each making less sense than the last. The acting may have been the strongest point in that it was unremarkable at best across the board, but it would be hard for even the best actors to do much with this material. I heard one moviegoer gasp "they still look so good!" when Hewitt and Prinze Jr. were on the screen, and that may be the movie's only highlight. If the first movie was dumb but at least kind of fun, this one is just plain dumb.