Movie Review – I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

I didn’t know what to think about this remake or reboot or whatever they were thinking this was supposed to be. Someone used the word requel, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t a word so I’ll just refer to this as a sequel.

Ava returns to Southport for her best friend’s engagement party. Her friend, Danica is marrying her high school sweetheart, Teddy. Ava worries about hooking up with her high school boyfriend, Milo. After the party, these four want to go watch the fireworks on the nearby roadside cliff and they collect their estranged friend Stevie who happens to be working for the catering of the party. Teddy plays in the road on the cliff and a truck nearly hits him before swerving off the cliff. These kids decide to call the police and leave the scene without helping. Because of course they do.

A year later, Ava returns again for Danica’s bridal shower but Danica is engaged to another guy. The reason for this is a pointless plot point about Teddy and her breaking up for some unexplainable reason the screenwriter decided to leave out. Danica gets the famed note about someone knowing what they did the previous summer, and for the next hour or so, the bodies hit the floor. Teddy and Milo do some dumb things and neither of them are all that likable so its a relief when they are gone.

Also in town is podcaster Tyler who is investigating the original 1997 murders since the town has essentially erased any evidence of it from the internet. How, you ask? The internet is eternal. Who knows, but the movie says so. Tyler is one of those characters meant to add some cool to a film full of pretty rich young people. Problem is, Tyler dies early on which is weird since she has no connection to the accident beyond meeting Ava on the way into town. I would have loved to see the movie told from her perspective. Give something new to this franchise.

Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt reprise their roles from the original film. They are divorced now. Julie James is some kind of professor somewhere outside of Southport and Ray owns a bar in Southport. Stevie works for him. I know Sarah Michelle Gellar originally stated she would not return, but Helen Shivers returns in a dream sequence – though she is digitally de-aged.

There is also a cult like church in town. It is given a few minutes of attention halfway through the film and the leader of the church is set up as a red herring killer. It’s such an obvious set up that I just rolled my eyes at it. The church was not part of the film until halfway, so why would this guy be the killer?

With the help of Julie and Ray, the remaining girls – Stevie, Ava, and Danica – try to survive. They end up on a yacht with the killer and when this killer is revealed, I was not surprised but I wasn’t bothered by it either. It actually made sense. And the killer also needs help so the second killer wasn’t a shock either. I actually was on board with it. Nice twist.

This film isn’t perfect. I have the same issues with it that I did with the original. The male characters are not likable and do stupid things. Pacing is also an issue. That said, I liked the same things about this film that I did with the original. The female characters are just about perfect (except for Tyler who should not have been there given that she dies right away) and the set up to the murder spree is good.

There is talk in this film that the town turned itself into the Hamptons of the south and that it no longer feels like a fishing town. What I would have loved to see is an eat the rich plot where the killer is actually targeting the rich families who put the fishermen out of business and, in the killer’s eye, ruined the town. It would have been far more poignant in today’s society to lean into the downside of the gentrification of small town America instead of retreading the former film’s plot. They could have used Tyler’s podcast to tell the story of a fishing community torn apart by tourism as she investigates the old murders. Would have been a cool update to a franchise that really didn’t need a sequel.

That said, I found this film to be surprisingly watchable even for its issues. While not perfect, it has some good kills and there is a point where two characters are put on display like dead game fish after a fisherman catches them – hanging on display over a dock like trophies. That alone was worth the ticket price. It also does not rest on the nostalgia of having the legacy characters in play so that earned it an extra half star.

3.5 out of 5 stars.