Latest news with #Danica
Indian Express
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
I Know What You Did Last Summer: 10 burning questions the ending finally answers
The hook is back, and this time, it's personal and cuts deep. The 2025 reboot of the 1997 horror I Know What You Did Last Summer pulls a new group of friends into the same nightmare. Writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and co-writer Sam Lansky bring in Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), a fresh batch of twenty-somethings who make a fatal mistake and bolt. What starts as a direct reboot turns into darker, messier, and way more twisted, packed with returning faces and brutal betrayals. Let's break down that wild ending with 10 burning questions. Spoilers Ahead Ava, Danica, Milo, Teddy, and Stevie are a group of friends living in Southport, N.C. One Fourth of July night, they cause a accident while over-speeding when a truck swerves to avoid them, crashes through a guardrail, and falls off the cliff with the driver inside. They try to help, decide to call cops, but panic and run. Teddy's dad, Grant (a powerful real estate guy), uses his influence to bury it. The story begins a year later when all those friends are now nearly estranged. However, once they arrive back in Southport, Danica gets a note: 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.' Soon after, people around them are murdered by a Fisherman, just like in the original two stories, with a hook and speargun, mimicking the 1997 killing spree. Also read: Wall to wall ending explained: Who's the real noise maker in Kang Ha Neul's Netflix psychological thriller? The friends run to the survivors of the original attacks. Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) reprise their roles. Meanwhile, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Helen also has a small cameo when she appears in Danica's dream to warn her. Wyatt (Danica's fiancé), true-crime podcaster Tyler, Pastor Judah, along with Teddy, Milo, and Grant, are among those who were killed. This season we've got two hook-wielding pyschos, Stevie and Ray. Stevie's motive is driven by revenge after she finds out the driver they accidentally killed was Sam. This is the same person who helped her post rehab, her pseudo boyfriend. She didn't realise it at first, but rage drives her to become the Fisherman. But the bigger jaw-dropper is the involvement of Ray. Years of repressed trauma, being ghosted by Southport, and watching the town erase the past make him go insane. Stevie's grief starts to feel personal to him, and together they plot the same massacre. Ava and Danica try to escape on a boat, only for Stevie to make the big reveal she had been hiding from her friends. At first, Stevie plans to spare Ava, considering she was the only one at the time of the accident who argued that they should stay and help the victim, but she changes her plan as she attacks Danica, stabs her, and she falls off the boat. But just then, Ray shows up, pretends to save the day, even 'shoots' Stevie, and takes Ava back to the bar. Back at his bar, Ava finds Ray with a new bandage exactly where the Fisherman cut himself earlier. He attacks Ava and just in time, Jennifer Love Hewitt shows up. When Ray stabs Ava, Julie confronts him, demands answers, and even throws back her iconic 'What are you waiting for?' line. And, then Ava harpoons Ray from behind. Also read: I Know What You Did Last Summer movie review: A slasher sequel that can't escape its past No. After getting shot and tossed overboard, her body vanishes. That's horror code for: still out there. Danica is alive somehow washes up on shore. Last we see, she and Ava are on the beach, bruised, hungry, and cracking jokes about hunting Stevie down. Mid-credits, Julie visits Karla Wilson (Brandy), another survivor from the old sequel. Next we see Karla's face is crossed out in a photo with a threatening note. She asks, 'Who do we have to f— up this time?' Then credits roll. No sequel announcement yet but it might happen soon.
Time Magazine
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The finale has plenty of twists in store this time.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for I Know What You Did Last Summer. In the idyllic seaside town of Southport, N.C., young people are prone to grave errors in Fourth of July night judgment that result in horrible accidents. At least, that's what the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise would have you believe. Nearly 30 years on from the 1997 original, a new I Know What You Did Last Summer from writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge, Someone Great) and co-writer Sam Lansky (a TIME contributor and author of The Gilded Razor and Broken People) introduces a whole new group of friends—Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon)—whose coverup of their involvement in a seemingly deadly roadside incident leads to them being stalked by a killer decked out in a fisherman costume. If we had a nickel for every time that happened, we'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. This time around, rather than hitting someone with their car while speeding around the Southport bluffs—and then dumping their victim's body in the ocean, as in the first movie—the crew of 20-somethings cause a driver to wildly swerve to avoid them and subsequently smash through the curve's guardrail. While the group attempts to pull the truck back from where it's dangling over the cliff edge, it ultimately ends up plummeting to the rocks below with the injured driver still inside. The friends then decide to call the cops but flee the scene, and later rely on Teddy's rich and powerful real estate developer father Grant (Billy Campbell) to ensure they aren't implicated. The following year, once the now-somewhat estranged pals are all back in Southport, Danica receives a mysterious note reading, "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER," and the violence begins. After they realize their friends and loved ones are being brutally murdered by a hook and speargun-wielding Fisherman in a pattern that mirrors a local killing spree from 1997, the friends turn to the survivors of those long-ago attacks, former couple Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), for help figuring out who's behind the disguise. Sarah Michelle Gellar also reprises her role as murdered pageant queen Helen Shivers in a dream sequence in which she appears to Danica to warn her about the consequences of her and her friends' misdeeds. Here's how the legacy slasher sequel, now in theaters, ends. Read More: The Filmmakers Behind the New I Know What You Did Last Summer on What They Changed This Time Around Who is the killer in the new I Know What You Did Last Summer? In the wake of Danica's fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), true-crime podcaster Tyler (Gabbriette), off-putting pastor Judah (Austin Nichols), Teddy, Grant, and Milo all being brutally killed off by the new Fisherman, Ava, Danica, and Stevie attempt to flee to safety on Teddy's boat. However, unfortunately for Ava and Danica, it turns out their old friend Stevie may have been keeping a few secrets from them. Once they're out at sea, Stevie turns the tables on the pair by revealing that the victim of their accidental manslaughter was actually her pseudo-boyfriend, Sam Cooper, the only person who had been there for her when her friends had previously deserted her in the wake of her father's abandonment. She strangely hadn't recognized the car or realized it was him at the time, but once she found out who was behind the wheel, her intense grief and rage pushed her to make a plan to seek revenge and take on the mantle of the Fisherman. The only person involved in the accident who she was considering sparing was Ava, since she had argued they should stay and try to help the driver. But Stevie has since scrapped that idea. After Ray arrives on a smaller boat and Stevie stabs Danica, causing her to fall overboard, Ray ends up shooting Stevie to stop her and she also falls into the ocean. Ray then takes Ava back to his bar, where he sets the scene for his own big reveal. Turns out, this time around, there were two Fisherman committing the murders—and Ray himself, Stevie's boss and mentor, was one of them. Traumatized Ray was driven to this heel turn by the fact that the powers-that-be of Southport were trying to erase the town's violent history in order to make it a more attractive vacation destination. Ray makes Ava question whether he even shot Stevie and also stabs her. But, luckily, Julie has put the pieces of the puzzle together and shows up in the nick of time. When Ray attacks Julie, Ava shoots him through the back with his speargun, killing him. In the movie's final minutes, Ava reunites with Danica, who ended up washing up on the beach alive, and the two discuss the fact that Stevie apparently also survived her fall into the ocean, seemingly leaving the door open for another installment. Is there going to be a sequel? In addition to revealing that Stevie is still alive, the new I Know What You Did Last Summer also features a mid-credits scene in which Julie arrives at the home of Karla Wilson (Brandy), her fellow final girl from the original 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, to ask for her help dealing with any future attacks. Karla quickly gets on board and the final credits roll. But, according to Robinson, the potential for a sequel is still firmly in fans' hands. "If the audience shows up and people love this movie, we would love to make more," she says.
The Advertiser
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
This fun remake of a 90s classic lets the old stars shine bright
I Know What You Did Last Summer MA, 111 minutes 3 stars Is this a reboot? A remake? A remodelling of the 1997 hit slasher film of the same name? I'm gonna call it an exhumation, as in fact this film of the same name is actually a continuation of that original and quintessentially 90s horror. Thankfully, I haven't seen the original since opening week way back when and could not remember for the life of me who lived and who died, so it's like I was watching and learning about two films at the same time. This version, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's 2025 version, begins with some entitled late teens going for a drive on the hairpin turns of the rugged coastal roads around the fictional Carolinas town of Southhampton. They've been partying, an engagement party in fact for Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), a fun but vacuous pair whose announcement celebration has brought home pals Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), former partners, from college. The party is over, but the friends want to see the midnight fireworks, and as they notice their former wild-child party-gal friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) is working for the caterers, they talk her into coming along for the drive. But on the ocean road, a tragedy occurs, with Teddy joy-larking on the dark highway and forcing a driver to swerve off the clifftop and plunge to his death. A year later, Ava is quite clearly not handling the psychological toll of the death the teens caused and covered up, but reluctantly comes back to Southport for another of Danica's bridal showers. Teddy and Danica's relationship didn't survive the previous summer drama, and so when an anonymous note is opened by Danica with the familiar words, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', the friends think it's a jealous and bitter Teddy playing mind games. And just to interrupt the synopsis here, it was right up to this point that I still thought this was a remake, so similar was Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick's 2025 screenplay to Kevin Williamson and Lois Duncan's 1997 original. But it is at this point that the action veers. The friends are pointed to a true crime podcast that details their own hometown's decades-earlier real-life crime where a serial killer sporting a fisherman's raincoat and hat and a giant fish hook sliced and diced his way through a number of teens guilty of a similar crime. When Danica's new fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin) meets the pointy end of the tall and mysterious fisherman's hook, and has his body left with an enigmatic message painted in blood, we understand that possibly someone is emulating the old killer's modus operandi, and Ava reaches out to one of his only known survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), for advice. There's a ton of winking at the camera from director Robinson, my favourite moment being our big reveal of Hewitt, giving her famous red carpet over-the-right-shoulder look, all very camp. The best parts of this film, in fact, are the moments of fandom to the original, especially Freddie Prinze Jr coming out of retirement to bring back his original character Ray Bronson. The photogenic young cast here may well wish Prinze Jr and Hewitt weren't exhumed for this film, because they show the kids what acting looks like, a talent that seems to have overlooked most of the young paid line-deliverers, who cannot make us care for their characters, or their fates. But I might be a little unkind to the cast here, because the real enemy of our attention spans are director Robinsons and her editor Saira Haider, who do not let a moment sit, so that it feels like nothing bears any emotional weight. Also notable: the beautiful blue skies of the Illawarra stand in for North Carolina in this latest chapter, the Australian government's investor-friendly filming rebates drawing the producers to our shores to film this American horror. I Know What You Did Last Summer MA, 111 minutes 3 stars Is this a reboot? A remake? A remodelling of the 1997 hit slasher film of the same name? I'm gonna call it an exhumation, as in fact this film of the same name is actually a continuation of that original and quintessentially 90s horror. Thankfully, I haven't seen the original since opening week way back when and could not remember for the life of me who lived and who died, so it's like I was watching and learning about two films at the same time. This version, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's 2025 version, begins with some entitled late teens going for a drive on the hairpin turns of the rugged coastal roads around the fictional Carolinas town of Southhampton. They've been partying, an engagement party in fact for Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), a fun but vacuous pair whose announcement celebration has brought home pals Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), former partners, from college. The party is over, but the friends want to see the midnight fireworks, and as they notice their former wild-child party-gal friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) is working for the caterers, they talk her into coming along for the drive. But on the ocean road, a tragedy occurs, with Teddy joy-larking on the dark highway and forcing a driver to swerve off the clifftop and plunge to his death. A year later, Ava is quite clearly not handling the psychological toll of the death the teens caused and covered up, but reluctantly comes back to Southport for another of Danica's bridal showers. Teddy and Danica's relationship didn't survive the previous summer drama, and so when an anonymous note is opened by Danica with the familiar words, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', the friends think it's a jealous and bitter Teddy playing mind games. And just to interrupt the synopsis here, it was right up to this point that I still thought this was a remake, so similar was Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick's 2025 screenplay to Kevin Williamson and Lois Duncan's 1997 original. But it is at this point that the action veers. The friends are pointed to a true crime podcast that details their own hometown's decades-earlier real-life crime where a serial killer sporting a fisherman's raincoat and hat and a giant fish hook sliced and diced his way through a number of teens guilty of a similar crime. When Danica's new fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin) meets the pointy end of the tall and mysterious fisherman's hook, and has his body left with an enigmatic message painted in blood, we understand that possibly someone is emulating the old killer's modus operandi, and Ava reaches out to one of his only known survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), for advice. There's a ton of winking at the camera from director Robinson, my favourite moment being our big reveal of Hewitt, giving her famous red carpet over-the-right-shoulder look, all very camp. The best parts of this film, in fact, are the moments of fandom to the original, especially Freddie Prinze Jr coming out of retirement to bring back his original character Ray Bronson. The photogenic young cast here may well wish Prinze Jr and Hewitt weren't exhumed for this film, because they show the kids what acting looks like, a talent that seems to have overlooked most of the young paid line-deliverers, who cannot make us care for their characters, or their fates. But I might be a little unkind to the cast here, because the real enemy of our attention spans are director Robinsons and her editor Saira Haider, who do not let a moment sit, so that it feels like nothing bears any emotional weight. Also notable: the beautiful blue skies of the Illawarra stand in for North Carolina in this latest chapter, the Australian government's investor-friendly filming rebates drawing the producers to our shores to film this American horror. I Know What You Did Last Summer MA, 111 minutes 3 stars Is this a reboot? A remake? A remodelling of the 1997 hit slasher film of the same name? I'm gonna call it an exhumation, as in fact this film of the same name is actually a continuation of that original and quintessentially 90s horror. Thankfully, I haven't seen the original since opening week way back when and could not remember for the life of me who lived and who died, so it's like I was watching and learning about two films at the same time. This version, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's 2025 version, begins with some entitled late teens going for a drive on the hairpin turns of the rugged coastal roads around the fictional Carolinas town of Southhampton. They've been partying, an engagement party in fact for Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), a fun but vacuous pair whose announcement celebration has brought home pals Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), former partners, from college. The party is over, but the friends want to see the midnight fireworks, and as they notice their former wild-child party-gal friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) is working for the caterers, they talk her into coming along for the drive. But on the ocean road, a tragedy occurs, with Teddy joy-larking on the dark highway and forcing a driver to swerve off the clifftop and plunge to his death. A year later, Ava is quite clearly not handling the psychological toll of the death the teens caused and covered up, but reluctantly comes back to Southport for another of Danica's bridal showers. Teddy and Danica's relationship didn't survive the previous summer drama, and so when an anonymous note is opened by Danica with the familiar words, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', the friends think it's a jealous and bitter Teddy playing mind games. And just to interrupt the synopsis here, it was right up to this point that I still thought this was a remake, so similar was Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick's 2025 screenplay to Kevin Williamson and Lois Duncan's 1997 original. But it is at this point that the action veers. The friends are pointed to a true crime podcast that details their own hometown's decades-earlier real-life crime where a serial killer sporting a fisherman's raincoat and hat and a giant fish hook sliced and diced his way through a number of teens guilty of a similar crime. When Danica's new fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin) meets the pointy end of the tall and mysterious fisherman's hook, and has his body left with an enigmatic message painted in blood, we understand that possibly someone is emulating the old killer's modus operandi, and Ava reaches out to one of his only known survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), for advice. There's a ton of winking at the camera from director Robinson, my favourite moment being our big reveal of Hewitt, giving her famous red carpet over-the-right-shoulder look, all very camp. The best parts of this film, in fact, are the moments of fandom to the original, especially Freddie Prinze Jr coming out of retirement to bring back his original character Ray Bronson. The photogenic young cast here may well wish Prinze Jr and Hewitt weren't exhumed for this film, because they show the kids what acting looks like, a talent that seems to have overlooked most of the young paid line-deliverers, who cannot make us care for their characters, or their fates. But I might be a little unkind to the cast here, because the real enemy of our attention spans are director Robinsons and her editor Saira Haider, who do not let a moment sit, so that it feels like nothing bears any emotional weight. Also notable: the beautiful blue skies of the Illawarra stand in for North Carolina in this latest chapter, the Australian government's investor-friendly filming rebates drawing the producers to our shores to film this American horror. I Know What You Did Last Summer MA, 111 minutes 3 stars Is this a reboot? A remake? A remodelling of the 1997 hit slasher film of the same name? I'm gonna call it an exhumation, as in fact this film of the same name is actually a continuation of that original and quintessentially 90s horror. Thankfully, I haven't seen the original since opening week way back when and could not remember for the life of me who lived and who died, so it's like I was watching and learning about two films at the same time. This version, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's 2025 version, begins with some entitled late teens going for a drive on the hairpin turns of the rugged coastal roads around the fictional Carolinas town of Southhampton. They've been partying, an engagement party in fact for Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), a fun but vacuous pair whose announcement celebration has brought home pals Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), former partners, from college. The party is over, but the friends want to see the midnight fireworks, and as they notice their former wild-child party-gal friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) is working for the caterers, they talk her into coming along for the drive. But on the ocean road, a tragedy occurs, with Teddy joy-larking on the dark highway and forcing a driver to swerve off the clifftop and plunge to his death. A year later, Ava is quite clearly not handling the psychological toll of the death the teens caused and covered up, but reluctantly comes back to Southport for another of Danica's bridal showers. Teddy and Danica's relationship didn't survive the previous summer drama, and so when an anonymous note is opened by Danica with the familiar words, 'I Know What You Did Last Summer', the friends think it's a jealous and bitter Teddy playing mind games. And just to interrupt the synopsis here, it was right up to this point that I still thought this was a remake, so similar was Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky and Leah McKendrick's 2025 screenplay to Kevin Williamson and Lois Duncan's 1997 original. But it is at this point that the action veers. The friends are pointed to a true crime podcast that details their own hometown's decades-earlier real-life crime where a serial killer sporting a fisherman's raincoat and hat and a giant fish hook sliced and diced his way through a number of teens guilty of a similar crime. When Danica's new fiancé Wyatt (Joshua Orpin) meets the pointy end of the tall and mysterious fisherman's hook, and has his body left with an enigmatic message painted in blood, we understand that possibly someone is emulating the old killer's modus operandi, and Ava reaches out to one of his only known survivors, Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt), for advice. There's a ton of winking at the camera from director Robinson, my favourite moment being our big reveal of Hewitt, giving her famous red carpet over-the-right-shoulder look, all very camp. The best parts of this film, in fact, are the moments of fandom to the original, especially Freddie Prinze Jr coming out of retirement to bring back his original character Ray Bronson. The photogenic young cast here may well wish Prinze Jr and Hewitt weren't exhumed for this film, because they show the kids what acting looks like, a talent that seems to have overlooked most of the young paid line-deliverers, who cannot make us care for their characters, or their fates. But I might be a little unkind to the cast here, because the real enemy of our attention spans are director Robinsons and her editor Saira Haider, who do not let a moment sit, so that it feels like nothing bears any emotional weight. Also notable: the beautiful blue skies of the Illawarra stand in for North Carolina in this latest chapter, the Australian government's investor-friendly filming rebates drawing the producers to our shores to film this American horror.
New York Post
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Does Sarah Michelle Gellar come back in the ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' sequel?
Warning: spoilers below! And we thought Buffy was slain. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played murdered pageant winner Helen Shivers in the 1997 teen horror flick 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' actually has a surprise cameo appearance in the new sequel, in theaters Friday. So, did Helen make a miraculous recovery, soap-opera style, even after being clearly shown as a corpse on ice at the bottom of the killer's boat in the original movie? 4 Sarah Michelle Gellar starred as Helen Shivers in the original 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.' ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Nope. Helen, who was fatally stabbed by the Fisherman in an alley as a scream-muffling parade passed by, is very much six feet under. Gellar, 48, comes back thanks to somebody's traumatized imagination. During a nightmare sequence, college girl Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline), the seaside town of Southport, North Carolina's reigning Croaker Queen, comes face to face with her foremother. 'You're the girl from the picture!' Danica, who just got a nasty head injury from the Fisherman before falling unconscious, says to Helen. 4 Helen was brutally killed by the Fisherman, so she returns in the sequel in a dream sequence. ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection 'I mean, I do have a name,' Helen's ghost, with the Fisherman's hook in hand, dryly replies. 'Helen Shivers!' chirps Danica. The 'Buffy the Vampire' star snaps back, 'And don't you forget it.' Gellar's one-off scene won't have anyone shielding their eyes in terror. The bit is played mostly for laughs. 4 She comes face to face with Danica (Madelyn Cline), Southport's new Croaker Queen. ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection 'I was Southport's Croaker Queen way back in, well, I shouldn't date myself,' she says. 'Nineteen ninety-six,' Danica quickly adds. 'Careful, sweetheart. I have the hook.' Helen ultimately imparts a chilling warning to Danica, whose group of friends is being chased by yet another bloodthirsty maniac in a spooky black raincoat. 4 Gellar attended the film's premiere with husband Freddie Prinze Jr. Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/MEGA 'You're gonna die, Danica,' she says. 'Stay in the dream as long as you can.' Gellar's part in the new 'I Know What You Did Last Summer,' which also features her former co-stars Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., had been denied for months. Sort of. 'I tried, OK? I harassed her! But she is dead,' writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson told People back in April. 'I tried to pitch some crazy s–t too. I was like, 'What if it's like you weren't dead and you're actually alive, but in hiding?' And Sarah's like, 'I was on ice. I was the most dead a person could be. You can see my frozen body.' I was like, 'Yeah, but what if?' And she said, 'I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.'' Robinson wasn't lying. Gellar's Helen is dead. But it turns out not having a pulse didn't disqualify her from donning her old Croaker Queen crown one last time.
Time Magazine
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The Filmmakers Behind the New I Know What You Did Last Summer on What They Changed This Time Around
There's officially a new entry in the enduring horror subgenre of "really beautiful people doing bad things and being punished for them." At least, that's how writer-director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge, Someone Great) and her I Know What You Did Last Summer co-writer Sam Lansky (a TIME contributor and author of The Gilded Razor and Broken People) describe the category of films that their legacy slasher sequel belongs to. (Think cult classics like Jawbreaker, Prom Night, and The House on Sorority Row, for example.) Now in theaters, I Know What You Did Last Summer follows in the footsteps of the 1997 original by setting its group of privileged 20-somethings on a crash course for serial killer vengeance in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, N.C. This time around, rather than accidentally hitting someone with their car while driving back from the beach on Fourth of July night, as in the first film, the friends—Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon)—cause an accident that leaves an injured driver dangling over the side of a cliff before his truck plummets to the rocks below. Instead of remaining at the scene of the crime and waiting for the cops to arrive, the group flees and calls on Teddy's rich and powerful father to cover up what they did. If you're at all familiar with the franchise, you'll know what comes next. The following year, when the guilt-ridden and now-somewhat estranged friends reconvene in Southport, Danica receives an ominous note: "I know what you did last summer." And thus, an even more brutal murder spree, orchestrated by a mysterious new Fisherman wielding more than just a hook, commences. "A reference that we talked about was David Fincher's Se7en," Lansky says of the leveled-up violence. "There is an element of performance to these kills in the world of the movie that is not present in the original." While it wasn't a critical darling, the 1997 I Know What You Did Last Summer, directed by Jim Gillespie and written by Scream's Kevin Williamson, coasted to a strong box-office showing (earning over $125 million worldwide) and cult-favorite status, largely on the strength of the chemistry between its then-up-and-coming core cast members: Jennifer Love Hewitt (who plays Julie James), Sarah Michelle Gellar (as Helen Shivers), Freddie Prinze Jr. (as Ray Bronson), and Ryan Phillippe (as Barry Cox). "There is a depth and poignance to the friendships in that movie that transcends what most films of that era were able to do. You really feel it in a pretty deep way," Lansky says. "Julie and Helen and Ray and Barry are your people. So when things start to unravel, it's heartbreaking." Now, nearly 30 years on, Robinson and Lansky are aiming to give a new generation of horror fans that same feeling, that these gruesome attacks are "happening to your friends." "We wanted to make sure we assembled a cast that felt like it could be as bright, shiny, and wonderful as the original," Robinson says. "That was always the North Star—not necessarily to replicate it, because we didn't want to go one for one with any of the characters, but to replicate the feeling." The new film also brings back Hewitt and Prinze Jr., who previously returned for the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer alongside Brandy as the iconic Karla Wilson, but were absent from 2006's I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer and the 2021 TV adaptation of the story, which was canceled after one season. "You don't want to lose the thread of fun while realistically addressing how massively traumatized somebody would be after going through what Julie [and Ray] did in those first two movies. There's a reason there's a joke about The Body Keeps the Score in like the first five minutes of the movie," Lansky says of what he and Robinson hoped to convey about the lives of their legacy leads. "We wanted to be conscious of how serious and horrific what these characters experienced was, while also making sure it didn't feel heavy-handed or self-serious. Fun was the imperative for us the whole way through." Just as the 1997 movie was held up against the original Scream, the reboot is bound to draw comparisons to the latter franchise's recent two "requels," which both achieved critical and commercial success, grossing a combined total of nearly $309 million globally. While I Know What You Did Last Summer is tracking similarly to the original in terms of initial critical reception, it's looking solid heading into its opening weekend, with an anticipated $17 million at the domestic box office on a reported budget of $18 million. The movie's association with the Scream series is something Robinson says she feels "agnostic" about. "I love those movies. They're really fun," she says. "I would hope ours feels like it stands on its own and is its own thing." As for what she believes allows a horror reboot to accomplish that feat, Robinson says it's all about getting audiences hooked on your new take on a tried-and-true premise. "It's about rooting every choice, every twist and turn and death, in the specific story you're telling rather than trying to retcon or figure out how to make something fit," she says. "The homages in this film are woven in in a way where you don't have to know anything about the original movie to enjoy this one. There are Easter eggs and jokes that will play on multiple levels if you have a deep familiarity with the canon. But if you don't, it's still a blast." In the end, fans will simply have to decide for themselves whether they're on board with this fresh stab at a franchise revival. As Julie James would say, "What are you waiting for, huh?"
