Strange as it sounds, moments like this one are the saving grace of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Based on the 1973 novel by Lois Duncan, the story itself has little to distinguish it from countless other thrillers. The movie follows a group of (mostly) privileged teens in a seaside North Carolina town who run over a fisherman while driving home from a drunken night of celebration. The quartet decides to throw the fisherman’s body into the sea and keep the secret among themselves. But a year later, a fisherman, possibly even the fisherman, begins taunting and tormenting the teens.
The overly convoluted whodunnit plot, with its cast of pretty but vacant stars, including, Freddy Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe, seemed destined to be forgotten. And yet, decisions such as getting input from a kiddo give the movie enough character to be distinctive. The film spawned a 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which features a ridiculous turn from Jack Black as a dreadlocked weed enthusiast. A new cast was recruited for a low-budget direct-to-video sequel in 2006 and for a 2021 series for Amazon Prime Video.
Neither of these reimaginings managed to make much of an impression, but they lacked Hewitt and Prinze as Julie and her boyfriend Ray. That’s not a mistake that director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and her co-writer Sam Lansky intended to make for their legacy sequel, also called I Know What You Did Last Summer. While the 2025 version gives the Fisherman fresh victims with a new set of attractive and regretful partiers, led by Madelyn Cline of Glass Onion, the movie also brings back Julie and Ray.
The new movie’s trailer presents Ray and Julie as grizzled veterans who give the new kids survival advice. And of course, the clip ends with a close-up of Julie, who whispers a challenge to her assailant: “What are you waiting for?” Hopefully that contest-winning kid is getting residuals, or he might have to don fisherman gear and hunt down the filmmakers.
I Know What You Did Last Summer slashes back into the theaters on July 18, 2025.