I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Movie Review
Nathan Swank
July 18th, 2025
In 1996, the entertaining and clever horror film SCREAM blew up the scene, immediately creating one of the most iconic slasher villains in Ghostface. It also gave a greenlight for teen horror films to saturate the market. One year later, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER rode the success wave with four young stars in a rather poor knock off and forgettable villain that wears a rain coat and holds a hook. Nearly 30 years later, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) is riding the SCREAM reboot wave again and is trying to trick audiences into jumping on board with a much, much poorer version of an ill-remembered horror franchise.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) is exactly like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997). If you are unfamiliar with the story, five friends are out on a fairly vacant road, when they accidentally run a driver off a cliff. The group inexplicably (at least not sensibly explicably) choose to keep things quiet rather than tell the police, except for our hero Ava (Chase Sui Wonders who recently has an incredible performance in Apple TV’s The Studio). Alumni from the original (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.) have important roles too, as they seem to be the only ones in town who remember the horrific events. The rest of the group includes: Danica (Madelyn Cline) who brings most of the energy and comic relief as the only character written to have fun in a slasher film, Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) whose character only serves a single purpose, Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), a sad-sack beta fellow, and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), a Patrick Mahomes look-a-like.
Please understand that my reviewing history is very open-minded. I like most things to some degree. And I can be very forgiving to dumb horror movies that are in for group laughs, scares, and bloody kills. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) is void of all these things. I was trying and I was laughing, but I was always laughing when the film was trying to be tricky, scary, or funny… and not in the way the filmmakers intended. The characters and story are bland and predictable. I’ll spare you the answer to the mystery, but I thought it was pretty obvious early on while also not making a whole lot of sense. However, the worst crime of IKWYDLS is that the kills are completely uninventive and the killer’s look of a seaman carrying a hook is forgettably boring for a serial killer.
Admittedly, I was not a fan of the originals, but I actually went into I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) hoping to have a good time at a probably bad movie. I love cheesy, bloody, b-horror films with dumb characters and gruesome kills. My early screening was full of young influencers who probably had not seen the original, but looked as though they were ready to have fun. To my surprise, the theater was mostly quiet, besides me giggling trying to make the best of it. Unfortunately, the music cues weren’t powerful enough, the deaths were a bit boring, and the dialogue and forced exposition were a bit too painful to overcome. It begs the question, why pull old characters and even famous lines back into the film when the original wasn’t very good to begin with? IKWYDLS even teases a sequel that I’m not sure anyone is asking for. My favorite thing about the movie experience, was that the paper seat placer had my name with a neatly drawn hook. Plus, the nice old lady sitting next to me who was worried about being scared (spoiler alert, she never was), weirdly offered me some of her popcorn. Bless you, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) screening guest and I’m sorry you never got that scare.
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