I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) | Review

Twenty-eight years after Sarah Michelle Gellar first ran screaming through those rain-soaked streets, the Fisherman returns with all the subtlety of a slasher wielding a meathook at a vegan convention. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s 2025 reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer arrives like that friend who shows up to your party uninvited but brings really good wine—you didn’t ask for it, but you’re glad it’s here.

Let’s address the giant anchor in the room: yes, this is another legacy sequel in an era where Hollywood treats nostalgic properties like a slot machine that occasionally pays out. But Robinson, who previously proved she could dissect teen social dynamics with Do Revenge, understands something crucial about the original material that many horror reboots miss entirely: these films were always more soap opera than slasher, more guilty pleasure than genuine terror.

The setup remains as ever. Five friends accidentally turn someone into roadkill, decide covering it up is preferable to, you know, calling the authorities like functioning adults, and then act shocked when someone in a rain slicker starts turning them into human confetti exactly one year later. It’s a premise so absurd that it’s practically immune to logic, which is precisely why it works.

Robinson’s cast, led by Chase Sui Wonders and Madelyn Cline, brings enough charisma to sell the inherent ridiculousness. These aren’t the wide-eyed high schoolers of the original; they’re twenty-something adults who should theoretically know better, which makes their poor decision-making feel less like teenage stupidity and more like a commentary on how social media has weaponized our capacity for self-destruction.

For me, though, the real standout in the cast was someone who does not achieve final girl status, and that’s the fashion-challenged podcaster, Tyler Trevino (Gabbriette Bechtel). Tyler is a true crime groupie who’s obsessed with the 1997 Southport massacre, and she’s in town to get the scoop for her show, “Live, Laugh, Slaughter.” Needless to say, she gets the scoop—and the stab, and the slash. (And, needless to say, she DID get caught dead in that awful outfit!)

The real coup is bringing back Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Julie James and Ray Bronson, now older and presumably wiser (though still magnetically drawn to Southport’s apparently cursed coastline). Hewitt, in particular, seems to relish playing a character who’s graduated from final girl to weary professor, like Laurie Strode if she’d chosen academia over alcoholism. Their presence elevates what could have been cheap cameos into genuine emotional anchors.

Speaking of the original, let’s give a nod to Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel, which spawned this entire franchise. Duncan’s book was a genuinely creepy piece of young adult fiction that got repeatedly bastardized by publishers who thought adding GPS and texting to the hoary text would somehow make it more “relevant.” It’s literary necromancy at its most cynical, like giving Shakespeare’s ghost a TikTok account. (Not that I’m comparing Duncan to the Bard, but you get it…)

Robinson’s script, co-written with Sam Lansky, tries to inject some contemporary humor through guided meditation jokes and astrology references, but it feels more like checking boxes than genuine wit. The film works better when it leans into its inherent campiness rather than trying to be the smartest person in the room.

The kills themselves are suitably gnarly and gruesome. This is properly R-rated material that doesn’t shy away from the chum. Robinson may be more comfortable with the soapy mystery elements than pure horror, but when the Fisherman shows up to do his thing, the results are satisfyingly visceral. The daylight finale robs some scenes of atmospheric punch, but the reveals are so unhinged that you’ll likely forgive the tonal inconsistencies.

There’s something charmingly deranged about this kind of hyper-specific service. Robinson crafts a film that feels like elaborate fanfic written by someone who genuinely loves the source material, complete with a mid-credits sequence so bonkers it deserves its own psychological evaluation. But in an era of nostalgia overload where everything from Clueless to Urban Legend is getting the reboot treatment, the director finds a way to make her attempt feel unpretentiously pleasurable rather than cynically necessary.

I Know What You Did Last Summer succeeds because it understands what made the original work—not the scares, but the absurdity of watching attractive people make consistently terrible decisions while someone in weatherproof gear hunts them down. It’s fish-sticks comfort food for horror fans, familiar enough to feel like docking at a well-known port but different enough to justify braving these particular waters again.