Review: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER Knows What You Want This Summer
But was the Fisherman's return to Southport worth the wait?
There are probably more remakes and reboots of bad horror movies than good ones, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I Know What You Did Last Summer is the genre’s latest to receive an update. While I won’t spoil exactly how, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s 2025 film qualifies as much as a legacy sequel as it does a reimagining of the superficially intriguing premise of the 1997 original — in fact, the director and co-writer’s “why not both?” approach manages to rank among its biggest virtues.
Juicy appearances by original cast members Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. offer a more mature counterpoint to the youthful, appropriately frantic turns by Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline and the rest of its young-adult cast, while Robinson’s cheeky, self-aware handling of the material keeps the tone buoyant even when, you know, people are getting murdered with a fisherman’s hook.
Wonders (Apple+’s The Studio) plays Ava, who returns to the sleepy coastal North Carolina town of Southport for the impending wedding of her best friend Danica (Cline) to longtime boyfriend Teddy (Tyriq Weathers). Reunited at the celebration with her ex-boyfriend Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), the four of them drive up to a nearby bluff to watch the town’s Fourth of July fireworks, inviting estranged high school friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) along for the ride. In the darkness, a car speeds by while Teddy is horsing around in the middle of the road, breaking through the guardrail and smashing on the rocks below. Panicked, the five of them report the crash to authorities but make a pact to never speak again about the incident outside of the group. A year later, Danica and Teddy have broken up and she’s set to marry someone else, but at the engagement party she receives a mysterious card that says “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.”
After eliminating the possibility that a jealous Teddy might have sent the letter in a moment of vindictiveness, the quintet becomes convinced that someone is trying to punish them — a belief confirmed after the brutal death of one of their loved ones. Yet when the local cops refuse to investigate further to avoid the risk of damaging the town’s reputation, Ava and her friends uncover the hidden history of murders in Southport, and reach out to Julie James (Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Prinze), the only people who might be able to help them make heads or tails of their predicament before they’re all murdered by a figure wearing a fisherman’s slicker and brandishing a very big and sharp hook.
