I want my money back.
Hollywood has learned all the wrong lessons from the legacy sequel boom. Case in point: I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025), the latest attempt to breathe new life into a horror franchise that probably should have stayed buried alongside its hook-wielding killer. And unlike Scream, which managed to reinvent itself for a new generation while respecting its roots, this movie just replays the greatest hits on a broken turntable—and adds absolutely nothing of value.
The premise? Identical to the original. Fourth of July. Young adults do something dumb. Someone gets hurt. They cover it up. And then—shocker—they start getting picked off one by one with ominous messages declaring, “I know what you did last summer.” The issue isn’t the familiarity. It’s that this movie doesn’t even try to do anything new with it. It’s a copy of a copy of a copy, dumbed down to the point of absurdity.
Characters make decisions so bafflingly stupid, it feels like a parody of horror logic. People wander off alone in the dark. They don’t carry weapons. They show almost zero emotional response when friends or fiancés are brutally murdered. You could practically hear the collective eye-rolls in the theater as the main cast repeatedly acted like they were in a TikTok skit, not a deadly situation.
There’s one decent kill early on that almost fools you into thinking there might be some inventive slasher fun ahead—but nope. The rest of the kills are forgettable, uninspired, and often poorly staged. This thing flatlines fast.
The cast is trying—kind of. Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders do their best with what they’re given, but it’s impossible to shine through a script this bad. These characters aren’t people. They’re tropes in designer clothes. Tyler Withers, playing the Ryan Phillippe knockoff Teddy, is maybe the only one who stands out, and even that’s because they practically cosplay him in a white sweater at the gym like it’s a cosplay tribute to the original.
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. return—and honestly, that’s the real tragedy here. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they’re completely wasted. You waited 25+ years for a story worthy of bringing back Julie and Ray, and this is what you came up with? This is the reunion we get?
By the time the final act rolls around, the audience wasn’t gasping—they were laughing. The climax is pure AI-generated fan fiction nonsense. The killer reveal makes zero sense and leans on motivations that feel like they were cobbled together during a bathroom break in the writers’ room. And just when you think it can’t get dumber, the film tosses in a mid-credits scene so hilariously tone-deaf it might as well be a Scary Movie parody.
It’s not all on the director, to be fair. There are glimpses—just glimpses—of style. But this isn’t a directing issue. This is a script problem. A story problem. A vision problem. This film doesn’t understand its own franchise, its audience, or the emotional stakes it should be working with. And worse—it doesn’t care. It treats its legacy like baggage instead of a foundation.
At best, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is a missed opportunity. At worst, it’s an insult to fans of the original. Nostalgia bait with no heart, no teeth, and no hook.
I Know What You Did Last Summer = 31/100
