(Photo by Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection. I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.)
After seeing the explosive and eye-popping success of Saw X and Final Destination Bloodlines, the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise hook-scratched its chin and said, “Why not me? Ow.” After all, if torture porn degenerates get to bask in legacy sequel glory, then how about some reversal of fortune in kind for this dormant teen slasher, just like its Scream ilk in 2022.
Based on the Lois Duncan school library mainstay, the original I Know What You Did Last Summer grabs the novel’s mystery & suspense plot and dices it into a bloody affair, getting the killer to drop the gun and pick up a fishing hook to stick it to the victims, real personal-like. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr., they portray recent high school graduates who enter a pact of silence after their reckless driving leaves a pedestrian dead. But now, a cloaked stalker terrorizes the group with a sharp blade and mash notes of threats and vengeance.
Released just before Halloween 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer was the first major teen slasher after Scream jolted the genre awake for the decade in 1996. Summer beat Scream 2 to release by a few months, and then got its own sequel in 1998 with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. The 2006 direct-to-DVD I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer makes it a trilogy, crucially.
Over 25 years after their last appearances, Hewitt and Prinze Jr. return for 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer to guide the next generation of piss-poor drivers, co-starring along Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, and Sarah Pidgeon. (Alex Vo)
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