I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (NETFLIX) (2025)

SYNOPSIS: When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer…and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.

MOVIE REVIEW:

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) serves not only as a reboot of the nearly three-decades-old franchise but also as a direct connection to the 1998 sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Hollywood has always been predictable, and this instalment absolutely meets all the criteria of the slasher formula except offering anything remotely new.

Set 27 years after the original murders in Southport, a group of friends including Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) gather for their friend Danica’s (Madelyn Cline) engagement party. Along with their estranged friend, Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), who has just gotten out of rehab, the group decides to watch fireworks along a cliff-side road. Danica’s fiancé Teddy (Tyriq Withers), while high and intoxicated, causes another car to swerve off the cliff. The friends swear never to tell the truth and eventually go their separate ways. However, a year later, a killer dressed in fisherman garb and wielding a hook begins murdering people connected to the group and his next targets are the friends themselves.

In all honesty, director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson delivers a serviceable take on the franchise. There is a certain mystery element that keeps the plot moving, even though at times it feels like a live-action Scooby-Doo episode with more gore and violence leading to a less-than-satisfying conclusion to the central mystery.

While it certainly lacks tension and genuine surprises, the entire cast, especially Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders, give it their all with committed performances. Even the returning original stars, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt, aren’t relegated to mere cameo roles. In fact, it’s refreshing to see them return after so many years.

With a runtime of nearly two hours, there’s hardly any room to breathe between the constant guessing, chasing, and killing. For newcomers to the franchise, this might actually work. However, longtime fans of the slasher series may not find this new instalment particularly refreshing. Like the rebooted Scream films, which blend a new cast with legacy characters, it takes more than nostalgia to keep a franchise alive. And if Sony keeps repeating the same formula, you already know what audiences will do to this series in the coming summers

MOVIE RATING:

Review by Linus Tee