Latest news with #requel
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is back. How does the original tie into the new movie?
The 2025 film features the return of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and even Sarah Michelle Gellar. Is director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's new slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer a reboot of the 1997 original or a sequel? To borrow a term from 2022's Scream, it's a 'requel' — that is, something in between. Which means you'll see some legacy characters in addition to fresh faces, and once again, everyone's life is threatened by a slasher in a fisherman's slicker. Hooked yet? Warning: Major spoilers for the movie ahead. The 1997 movie of the same name, loosely based on Lois Duncan's novel, follows a group of friends in Southport, N.C., who commit a hit-and-run and are stalked by the person they thought they had killed — a man named Ben Willis (Muse Watson). The original movie starred Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, all of whom return for the new film. (Yes, even Gellar, whose character, Helen Shivers, didn't survive the first movie.) But don't think these old characters are just here for nostalgia: While a new generation of actors drives the action, the stars of the first film show that the past is far from buried. A new crew — and a new crime The new film follows a group of 20-something friends, led by Ava (Chase Sui Wonders). Ava is back in the touristy seaside town of Southport for the engagement party of best friends Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), which is tough because she is still harboring feelings for her high school boyfriend and best man, Milo (Jonah Hauer-King). Rounding out the crew is Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), a high school friend who lost touch with the gang after a scandal involving her father led her down a dark path. After the engagement party, the crew decides to go to the coastal 'Reaper's Road' to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. Teddy, however, gets too high and starts fooling around in the middle of the street. Teddy's actions cause a speeding car to swerve, leading it to plummet down the side of the mountain with the driver alive inside. Instead of going to help, or even waiting for the cops to show up, Danica and Teddy — whose father is a real estate developer and ultra powerful in Southport — convince the group to leave. So, yeah. That is what this group 'did last summer.' One year later, Ava still carries guilt about what happened. But when she returns to Southport the following summer, the real trouble begins: People close to the group are getting murdered, and as threatening notes tease, it's connected back to that car accident. A familiar face reluctantly returns to help So how does the original crew, who experienced a very similar situation back in the '90s, come into play? They act as mentor-like characters to their younger counterparts … but with a twist. Hewitt's character, Julie James, the original film's final girl, is now a professor at a nearby college, teaching students about PTSD and how trauma can sometimes turn you into an entirely different person. (This will come back later!) When Ava learns that Julie survived the murder spree that mirrors the one happening now (twice, actually!), she turns to Julie for advice on how to make it out alive. Julie suggests figuring out how the person they (sort of, kind of) killed in that car last summer ties back to the murders that are happening now, sending the gang on a mission to connect the dots. … And then, there's Ray Along the way, the gang is (seemingly) helped by another OG Summer character: Ray, played by Prinze, who is now Stevie's boss at a local restaurant where she works. Fans of the original movie will recognize him as Julie's boyfriend and a fellow survivor of the '1997 Southport massacre.' Except now, Ray is Julie's ex-husband, and they're not on the best terms. He scolds Julie for trying to help Ava but also for suppressing their past trauma and leaving Southport. At first it seems like Ray is aiding Ava and her friends in solving the mystery of who the new "fisherman killer" is. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In the final moments of the movie, it's revealed that Ray's trauma from 1997 really has changed him: He's been working with Stevie this entire time to kill off the group. Stevie was close with the guy who died in the car accident that night, hence her need for revenge, but Ray had a different motive: He's pissed off that the world forgot what happened to him and his friends, so he helped Stevie re-create the murders to make everyone remember. Fortunately, Julie's still a final girl: She rescues Ava from Ray just in time, and Ava kills Ray with a harpoon. Helen Shivers forever! Gellar (who, fun fact, is married to Prinze in real life!) played Helen Shivers in the original movie. Her character, a beauty queen, has long been a fan favorite — mostly for her infamous death sequence — and though she can't literally return to Southport, she can in spirit. It's clear that Cline's character, Danica (also a Croaker Queen, IYKYK!), is the modern-day version of Helen, which is why it's Danica who interacts with her directly in the movie — albeit in a dream sequence. Unfortunately, it's not a happy dream: Helen tells Danica she is going to die in the creepiest way possible. Stick around for the post-credits for one more fan favorite If you were wondering how the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequels would come into play, you're in luck: The movie brings in a character from the second film, in a post-credits scene that sets up another possible sequel. The scene shows Brandy, who played Julie's college roommate Karla in the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer — and was also stalked and nearly murdered by the killer from the first two original films — watching the Southport news at home with her husband. Then there's a knock on the door: It's Julie! Julie and Karla hug, but Julie isn't here for pleasantries: She got a threatening letter accompanied by a photo with Karla's face crossed out. It seems these two women will have to team up once more in order to take down another killer. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is back. How does the original tie into the new movie?
The 2025 film features the return of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and even Sarah Michelle Gellar. Is director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's new slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer a reboot of the 1997 original or a sequel? To borrow a term from 2022's Scream, it's a 'requel' — that is, something in between. Which means you'll see some legacy characters in addition to fresh faces and, once again, everyone's life is threatened by a slasher in a fisherman's slicker. Hooked yet? Warning: Major spoilers for the movie ahead. The 1997 movie of the same name, loosely based on Lois Duncan's novel, follows a group of friends in Southport, North Carolina who commit a hit-and-run and are stalked by the person they thought they had killed — a man named Ben Willis (Muse Watson). The original movie starred Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, all of whom return for the new film. (Yes, even Gellar, whose character Helen Shivers didn't survive the first movie.) But don't think these old characters are just here for nostalgia: While a new generation of actors drives the action, the stars of the first film show that the past is far from buried. A new crew — and a new crime The new film follows a group of 20-something friends, led by Ava (Chase Sui Wonders). Ava is back in the touristy seaside town of Southport for the engagement party of best friends Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers), which is tough because she is still harboring feelings for her high school boyfriend and best man Milo (Jonah Hauer-King). Rounding out the crew is Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), a high school friend who lost touch with the gang after a scandal involving her father led her down a dark path. After the engagement party, the crew decides to go to the coastal 'Reaper's Road' to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. Teddy, however, gets too high and starts fooling around in the middle of the street. Teddy's actions cause a speeding car to swerve, leading it to plummet down the side of the mountain with the driver alive inside. Instead of going to help, or even waiting for the cops to show up, Danica and Teddy — whose father is a real estate developer and ultra powerful in Southport — convince the group to leave. So, yeah. That is what this group 'did last summer.' One year later, Ava still carries guilt about what happened. But when she returns to Southport the following summer, the real trouble begins: people close to the group are getting murdered, and as threatening notes tease, it's connected back to that car accident. A familiar face reluctantly returns to help So, how does the original crew, who experienced a very similar situation back in the '90s, come into play? They act as mentor-like characters to their younger counterparts … but with a twist. Hewitt's character Julie James, the original film's final girl, is now a professor at a nearby college, teaching students about PTSD and how trauma can sometimes turn you into an entirely different person. (This will come back later!) When Ava learns that Julie survived the murder spree that mirrors the one happening now (twice, actually!) she turns to Julie for advice on how to make it out alive. Julie suggests figuring out how the person they (sort of, kind of) killed in that car last summer ties back to the murders that are happening now, sending the gang on a mission to connect the dots. …And then, there's Ray Along the way, the gang is (seemingly) helped by another OG Summer character: Ray, played by Prinze Jr., who is now Stevie's boss at a local restaurant where she works. Fans of the original movie will recognize him as Julie's boyfriend and a fellow survivor of the '1997 Southport massacre.' Except now, Ray is Julie's ex-husband, and they're not on the best terms. He scolds Julie for trying to help Ava, but also for suppressing their past trauma and leaving Southport. At first, it seems like Ray is aiding Ava and her friends in solving the mystery of who the new Fisherman killer is. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In the final moments of the movie, it's revealed that Ray's trauma from 1997 really has changed him: he's been working with Stevie this entire time to kill off the group. Stevie was close with the guy who died in the car accident that night, hence her need for revenge, but Ray had a different motive: He's pissed off that the world forgot what happened to him and his friends, so he helped Stevie recreate the murders to make everyone remember. Fortunately, Julie's still a final girl: She rescues Ava from Ray just in time, and Ava kills Ray with a harpoon. Helen Shivers forever! Gellar (who, fun fact, is married to Prinze Jr. in real life!) played Helen Shivers in the original movie. Her character, a beauty queen, has long been a fan-favorite — mostly for her infamous death sequence — and though she can't literally return to Southport, she can in spirit. It's clear that Cline's character Danica (also a Croaker Queen, IYKYK!) is the modern-day version of Helen, which is why it's Danica who interacts with her directly in the movie — albeit in a dream sequence. Unfortunately, it's not a happy dream: Helen tells Danica she is going to die in the creepiest way possible. Stick around for the post-credits for one more fan favorite If you were wondering how the I Know What You Did Last Summer sequels would come into play, you're in luck: the movie brings in a character from the second film, in a post-credits scene that sets up another possible sequel. The scene shows Brandy, who played Julie's college roommate Karla in the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer — and was also stalked and nearly murdered by the killer from the first two original films — watching the Southport news at home with her husband. Then, there's a knock on the door: It's Julie! Julie and Karla hug, but Julie isn't here for pleasantries: She got a threatening letter accompanied by a photo with Karla's face crossed out. It seems these two women will have to team up once more in order to take down another killer. Solve the daily Crossword
ABC News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Jennifer Love Hewitt returns for I Know What You Did Last Summer 'requel'
With most of horror's A-listers having been subjected to the reboot-sequel treatment (or 'requel', if we're adopting the lexicon of 2022's Scream) — from Halloween to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Exorcist — Hollywood is silently creeping towards the bottom of the barrel. Fast Facts about I Know What You Did Last Summer What: A group of twenty-somethings are hunted by a hook-wielding killer a year after covering up an accidental death. Starring: Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr Directed by: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson When: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Like we didn't actually need to know The original I Know What You Did Last Summer, whose cast boasts a fresh-faced Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr, offers more in the way of 90s nostalgia than blood-curdling thrills — though as someone who was born the year it came out, it's possible I lack the requisite affinity for Dawson's Creek dialogue and Korn needle-drops to evaluate it on its own terms. Yet the flimsiness of its well-loved source material is itself a genuine reason for this 2025 refresh to exist. This could have been the first transparent cash-grab requel with the potential to exceed what came before, especially considering that the original film can be retroactively viewed through the lens of cancel culture and its paranoid moral reckonings. Just like their raincoat-clad villains, these movies share a killer hook. A group of pretty, well-bred friends accidentally kill a stranger on a winding coastal road and seemingly cover their tracks, only to be tormented, shamed and picked off by a vengeful killer during Fourth of July celebrations a year later. This new batch of victims have been aged up from the college kids of the original. The charge of manslaughter gives them more to lose, none more so than Teddy (Tyriq Withers), the son of the town's influential property magnate, and his solipsistic fiancée Danica (Madelyn Cline, Outer Banks). For Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon, The Wilds), the event threatens to derail a hard-won rehabilitation from her troubled past. When it comes to Chase Sui Wonders' (The Studio) Ava, it's hard to see why such an ill-defined character agrees to keep their secret — a glaring problem, considering she's the film's protagonist. At least she's not the only final girl in town. Jennifer Love Hewitt reprises her role as Julie James, who took us through the first two fisherman killing sprees, and is re-introduced while lecturing on CPTSD at a nearby college. Meanwhile, her co-survivor and ex-husband Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr) runs the bar where Stevie works. I Know What You Did Last Summer meekly shies away from its genre's carnal pleasures, unfolding more like a trashy whodunnit than a grand Guignol slasher. The villain's iconic hook is deployed without flair, dispassionately slicing through skin and latching onto bone in quick cutaways. A late eye-gouging happens entirely off screen. Jim Gillespie's original film was hardly a gore-fest either, having turned away from the excesses of the 80s slasher, but at least dressed itself in vibrant colours and memorable imagery, like crabs scuttling along a corpse or a hide-and-seek sequence that flared up with fireworks. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) however, demonstrates a loose grasp on tension, tearing each murder to ribbons through shaky edits and tight handheld compositions. The film's sanitised sensibility also extends to its characters. Robinson and co-writer Sam Lansky lose sight of the fact that, fundamentally, these are not likeable people. Perhaps these kids don't deserve a hook to the skull, but it's not like we're primed to root for them either; when we return to them a year later, we discover the only ramification of their moral transgression is some mild alcoholism at worst. At the same time, these rich-kid archetypes are all sanded down to meet some basic standard of likeability — they're all too nice for the audience to have any fun watching them get their comeuppance. The millennial-written dialogue of its Gen Z cast (who still leave voicemails like it's 1997) toes the line between arch and irritating, occasionally approaching the orbit of Jennifer's Body with groaners like "gentrifi-slay-tion", or the sight of a character begging for his life by offering the contents of his crypto wallet. The casting of model and Charli XCX collaborator Gabbriette as a true-crime podcaster (her series being named Live, Love, Slaughter), meanwhile, reads as blatant Zoomer baiting. The joy of disposable horror sequels is in seeing how far an original idea can be stretched on a frugal budget; the spectacular misfires that can arise — like the Y2K sci-fi romp Jason X, or the gloriously gimmicky Saw 3D — are all part of the fun. No-one was exactly demanding to see Leatherface commit an Instagram Live slaughter under sleek LED strips, but part of me was glad to see one of horror's pre-eminent cross-dressers let out of the closet once more. What kills I Know What You Did Last Summer is its lack of commitment to anything other than the original film, falling short as either horror, morality play, or irony-poisoned comedy.
Gizmodo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer' Cleverly Hooks a New Generation
The new I Know What You Did Last Summer offers a bold, refreshing take on horror requels that's a worthy successor to the original film. While stars of the 1997 film Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. reprise their roles as Julie James and Ray Bronson, it's a relief that they are not the parents of any of the new gang of accidental murderers. This isn't just I Know What You Did: The Next Generation, and the fact that it isn't speaks to the new film's desire to do something more than just soothe your horror nostalgia. Instead, the 2025 reboot-quel introduces us to a new friend group of fresh-faced youths who are up to no good on the Fourth of July. After an engagement party, they decide to be on the road recklessly, leading to the death of a driver in an oncoming vehicle that almost strikes the groom-to-be, Teddy (Tyriq Withers), before he's saved by his best man, Milo (Jonah Hauer-King). Teddy's bride-to-be, Danica (Madelyn Cline), helps him convince their friends to let his rich developer father sweep what happened under the rug to save their skins. Eva (Chase Sui Wonders) and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) protest but ultimately are convinced to keep quiet. A rift develops between Eva and her friends once she leaves town, but when she returns a year later for Danica's bridal shower, there is, of course, a note with one simple message: I Know What You Did Last Summer. And we know that's never a good thing. A bloodbath quickly ensues once again in the sleepy beach town of Southport, much like the one Teddy's father scrubbed from the internet—which happens to be the very hook murderer killing spree Julie and Ray narrowly survived in the events of the first film in the series. It's a clever conceit, one that lets the new cast of characters who've moved into Southport be in the dark about its history while also satisfyingly giving I Know What You Did Last Summer's new hook-wielding killer an air of mystery. And as that mystery, and the dread surrounding it, begins to build, I Know What You Did Last Summer equally cleverly weaves in a lot of humor with the tension. In particular, Danica and Teddy keep the levity even as things get intense, and Cline and Withers' performances make you fall in love with the best friends who got everyone into the mess. Danica might be modeled after the franchise's fave dead girl, Helen Shivers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), and Teddy on the long-deceased Barry (Ryan Phillipe), but Cline and Withers steal this movie. Their relationship, like Eva and Milo's, becomes so easy to root for. You really grow to care about the bonds between the friends in this installment and don't really want to see any of them get the hook, which makes it all the more shocking when whoever gets it inevitably gets got. There's a similar deftness to how the film handles the return of its legacy stars. As the bodies start to pile up, Eva reaches out to Julie James, the franchise's original final girl, now a professor. Hewitt's return to pass the final girl mantle to Eva is such a great moment that doesn't overstay its purpose. Meanwhile, Prinze shows up in a similar capacity to offer guidance to the new crew going through similar trauma. Both act as ways to help the film's new leads come to terms with the past, rather than simply feeling like excuses to bring back familiar faces. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a fantastic slasher flick on its own terms, one that offers a refreshing new vision while not being entirely rooted in nostalgia. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson carves out a place for this reboot in the cadre of the horror genre's best for a new generation. The horror lies in the film's tension and isn't wasted on only jump scares, but propels its peril with unexpected turns (building to a legitimately killer last act that will leave you shook to your core, in so many ways). It's a smart, slick slasher that cleverly builds on what made the original film so iconic without being totally beholden to its legacy—and will get you hooked all over again. I Know What You Did Last Summer opens in theaters July 18. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
