‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (2025) Review – Sleep-Inducing Slasher Lacks Singularity

How far have we fallen from the Halloween (2018) tree? What was once a slasher reboot that many argued over in terms of quality now effectively feels like the gold standard in a genre that has completely lost its way. All of these movies feel the same nowadays – sluggish, unaware, and thin – the latest incarnation of I Know What You Did Last Summer is more of the same for the most part, if not, in some places, worse.

For a franchise that was never all that big to begin with, Last Summer coming back onto the scene more than a half-decade after the slasher reboot craze began was a bold move, to say the least. In spite of returning stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., this one has been plagued with a distinct tinge of pointlessness since the first trailer. The final product embodies that, recycling genre tropes from multiple movies found in other corners of the space in an effort to come up with something that will work for the target audience. The mishap is, ironically, found in the film’s failure to properly identify the people it wants to appeal to. The slasher crowd has changed since 2018, and it seems clear that I Know What You Did Last Summer missed the memo.

This film, much like the 1997 original that it wants to spiritually reassemble, documents a summertime tragedy caused by a group of unwitting teenagers, most of whom only have their own best interests in mind. As the story goes, one summer later, somebody comes back for revenge… because they know what the kids did, or perhaps more accurately didn’t do, a calendar year beforehand. Naturally, shenanigans ensue; blood spills, people scream, and someone(s) lives to tell the tale. In this case, specifically, awkward inspirations are drawn from the likes of recent Scream and, as was already mentioned, Halloween installments. Where those legacy sequels pulled from in-house iconography, if you will, given the standalone popularity of their own franchises, Last Summer can’t take much from its own namesake. In being forced to borrow from better movies, you end up with the worst kind of result.

It’s a stitched-together, Frankenstein-like sub-sequel that exists and operates in the same way that a parasite does: feeding off of larger, more singular entities in order to survive, even if just barely. Much can be said about the original Last Summer, but it is, at the very least, harmless. The reboot at hand is much more offensive and derivative in equal parts; it’s the sort of thing that demands a negative response in order for the genre to learn from it. Everything that slasher movies don’t need to be, though have unfortunately become, can be found here.

Characters are invincible, dialogue is synthetic, and keen self-awareness is completely thrown out the window, backed over, and then driven into the dirt once more. As the narrative unfolds, bending backward onto itself and twisting into incoherency, you’ll quickly begin to realize that any thematic weight or relevance present is buried deep beneath the pastiche tendencies and cosmetic insanities glaring on the surface here. It isn’t a bad-looking movie, not by any stretch; it’s just that it looks like the last 101 horror movies that came before it. The best that can be said about the film’s palette is that the blocking and editing can be occasionally spirited. It also appears to be dramatically lit to some extent, which, in an era of blockbusters blasting backlights at stars and calling it a day, is unexpectedly nice.

But that’s about where the compliments end, as it’s all just so tired and washed out. You’ve got your main character, Ava, played admittedly well by Chase Sui Wonders, who stands out because she’s not as bad a person as all her friends are. There’s also the jock guy, the glitzy girl, the mysterious ally, and the questionable outsider. All their roles are defined from the first time they appear on screen; you’ll never have to wonder where the story and people within it are going to go, and with each subsequent cheap jump scare put in place of tangible tension or patient set-pieces, you’d be lucky to find anything to grab onto at all.

Truly, this is a textbook miss at the movies. It’s a case of what not to do in a genre that has unfortunately suffered many such similar ailments as of late. It’s not a complete disaster, although oftentimes, sour disappointment stings worse than outright, blatant failure. The fisherman may know what you did last summer, but so long as you don’t see this movie this summer, you should make it out alive.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is currently playing in theaters courtesy of Sony Pictures.