It all started with young adult author Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel, which spawned a franchise of movies twenty-four years later and a straight-to-streaming Prime video series. “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (2025) is the fourth film in the franchise set in Southport, North Carolina, the original site of The Fisherman’s original 1997 vengeful slashing spree. Almost thirty years later, most of the residents of Southport have forgotten about the massacre, but a group of young twentysomethings discover the hard way that if you do something wrong, someone will know about it, especially if it happens on July 4th. Can a new generation figure out who has a vendetta against them before becoming the next victim? Maybe with the help of one of the original survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt).

Out of all the rebooted slasher franchises, for this old head, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997) is probably the least likely to translate decades later with a whole new cast. The original cast was stacked with big names that brought their fanbase to the franchise: Sarah Michelle Gellar, The Vampire Slayer, Jennifer Love Hewitt from Fox Television series, “Party of Five,” Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr., aka Mr. Vampire Slayer. Even if they just seem like a random collection of fresh faces ready for their close up, to a new generation, this cast is stacked too.

This group of former high school best friends have a penchant for grand, swanky gatherings at one of their capacious beach houses with reunions in the form of nuptial based milestones like engagement parties or bridal showers. Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline) is always a bride, never a wife, and is so into woo woo stuff that her beau of the day, usually a big drinker built like a quarterback, echoes her sentiment and encourages self-care. Cline fans know her from the Netflix series “Outer Banks,” but the rest of us may vaguely recall her from “Glass Onion” (2022) as Dave Bautista’s character’s love interest. Ava Brucks (Chase Sui Wonders) is Danica’s best friend. It is not Wonders first slasher rodeo. That first round happened when she appeared in “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (2022), but she also gained critical acclaim for appearing on AppleTV’s “The Studio.”

Ava had a thing for Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King), a DC political mover and shaker, and Milo’s best friend, Teddy (Tyriq Withers), the son of the most influential man in town, Grant Spencer (Billy Campbell), has an on-again/off-again thing with Danica, heavy emphasis on the prior. The men are the eye candy of this production finding any excuse to go shirtless. If the movie was realistic, Teddy would have dispatched the Fisherman, who is fond of black slickers, hooks and harpoons, in the first act, but alas, then there would not be a movie. Don’t forget about Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon, who has an Eva Green quality) like the other four did when she became poor, and they ran off to college. Well, they all chose a bad time to become reacquainted and contribute to some poor soul’s demise, but their culpability does not touch the hem of the original’s manslaughter evasion.

Apparently while we were not looking, the formula for final girls and guys changed to make them a lot less ready for battle and more relatable to the audience with dialogue laden with armchair psychology terms gleaned from Tik Tok educating us, offering meditation apps and book reading suggestions like Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” One person’s superficiality is another person’s fabulousness with even the straights adopting queer slang. Cowriter and director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, cowriter Sam Lansky and co-story conceiver Leah McKendrick had their fingers on the pulse knowing exactly how many pop cultural references they could mix without sounding like a random AI generated mix of non sequitur references. There is a shoutout to a line from Nicole Kidman’s iconic AMC commercial, which crossed the generational divide. It also appeared that the writers had an idea who the box office competition would be with a blink and miss it reference to Superman. There are so many homages to the initial cast embedded in the story, including a Scooby-Doo joke and a couple of cameos. There is a post credit scene that teases another sequel that aims to appeal more to the original audience’s tastes than this installment.

Thanks to three enthusiastic fellow viewers, I got a peek into the demographic that “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is geared towards, and they did not see it as a rip-off of the “Scream” franchise’s method of introducing a new cast with Hewitt and Prinze , who both look better than ever and are aging like fine wine, instead of Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox functioning as the bridge between the film’s target demographic. To these moviegoers, these characters genuinely seemed like three-dimensional real people who cared about each other, which was frankly a surprise though I’ll agree because the denouement does the stick the landing of fierce friendship. As the movie unfolds, the chemistry becomes more apparent even though all the on-screen characters are staggeringly shallow and devoid of most qualities that would help the average person in a more quotidian setting. Apparently, the Fisherman’s personal vendetta is preferable to the random kills of other notable psycho killers.

To my jaundiced eye, these five characters seem completely unrelatable with not a care in the world, conspicuous and judgment free consumption of people and things. If there was not a killer, there would be almost zero narrative tension. The killer is a manifestation of their guilt over their good fortune, their ability to coast through life and rejection of accountability without being exploitive sociopaths. By demanding vengeance, the killer becomes worse than them, someone envious of their good fortune and incapable of enjoying the simple joys of life without dwelling on the negative. Corruption and manslaughter are more tolerable than killjoys in this world because they feel bad whereas the killer is strident and psychotic in their grievance. We are made to feel sympathy for the people who would be the bad guys in the real world. It is a bit twisted, but it largely works and makes me sad for society. The only way to stay happy is to not dwell on righteous grievances because then it will make living impossible. Hurt people hurt people.

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” is not a good movie, but with the right mindset, it could be a fun one though real horror fans may find the kills lacking. I did not hate it. This sequel reboot could be the perfect intergenerational film to appeal to parents who want to have a movie marathon with their teen and young adult child, who also are into the franchise after being introduced to the concept via streaming. There are better horror films out there, but this one is for the parents of divas who need to find some common ground with their children.