“I Know What You Did Last Summer” Returns This Summer, But Is It What We’re Waiting For?

The 1990s marked a significant turning point in the slasher genre, as we now know it: films in which a group of beautiful yet mostly unintelligent young people are chased by a killer, usually wearing a silly mask, for some ridiculous reason that is revealed towards the end of the film. Of course, slashers came into the world even earlier, with their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, with masterpieces like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974), “Black Christmas” (1974), “Halloween” (1978), “Friday the 13th” (1980) and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984). After the golden years, the genre experienced a decline, giving rise to mostly uninspiring sequels. Then came “Scream” from 1996, which brought it back to life. It is a franchise that lives and breathes to this day: We’re still waiting for the seventh film, but the hand with the bloody knife may still be outstretched.

“I Know What You Did Last Summer” from 1998, which got several sequels and even a TV series in the following decades, is a pretty strange story. On the one hand, these are mostly silly and not scary films, which present a killer (or several different killers) far from being the most memorable in cinema history. On the other hand, some of the films were quite successful and played a key part in introducing many young people to the genre. For example, I still remember watching the first two films with friends on Friday nights in my happy high school days after renting them from Blockbuster. We laughed at the silly dialogue and the bizarre murders, tried to guess who was behind the murders and drooled over Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Most of all, the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” films gave me some quality time, which contributed to the fact that, to this day, it’s hard for me to say no to slashers.

If “Scream” reopened the door to slashers, we could say that “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies ensured that the door would stay open and let in more young horror fans. Very soon, almost three decades after the original film, the franchise is set to return with a new movie. Ahead of the franchise’s long-awaited return to our lives, it’s time to review the legacy of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and understand its place in popular horror culture and the slasher genre.

The Origin Of I Know What You Did Last Summer Movies: A Book 

Many horror fans can recite, even in their sleep, that screenwriter Kevin Williamson (who wrote several of the “Scream” films and sets to direct the seventh film) is the one who wrote the script for “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” That’s true, but Williamson based it on a 1973 book by American writer, poet, and journalist Lois Duncan. The book “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was republished in 1998, around the same time as the first film, and achieved impressive success, selling more than half a million copies. The book also received a slightly more modern edition in 2018.

The interesting point is that the book “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is a pretty slow thriller, and Williamson based the movie on it very loosely. The plot between the book and the first movie has some similarities, with a group of young people running over and killing someone, having to deal with the consequences of their actions in the years that followed. In the original book, the victim is a young cyclist, not an older fisherman, like in the first “I Know What You Did Last Summer” film. Most importantly, in the book, the confrontation is more psychological, despite some acts of violence occurring. Let’s not forget that the book’s primary target audience is “young adults” (in practical terms, the age range is 12-18). Williamson turned the basic story into a horror thriller in which someone killed the characters one after another.

Lois Duncan did not like the film adaptations of her book. One main reason is her terrible personal story, which was also expressed in other books she wrote (such as “Who Killed My Daughter?” from 1992). In 1989, her 18-year-old daughter Kaitlyn (Kate) was murdered when she was only 18 years old. She got shot to death in her car in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In what seemed like the plot of a thriller, local police described the shooting as “random” and refused, according to her mother, to investigate any other possibility, even though there was evidence that Kate got killed because she intended to report a crime she had witnessed, which may have involved police officers. “I, personally, have a problem with the stories (usually on television where action takes the place of introspection) where violence is sensationalized and made to seem thrilling rather than terrible,” she said in an interview. “I was appalled when my book, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was made into a slasher film.  As the mother of a murdered child, I don’t find violent death something to squeal and giggle about.”

Urben Legend Becomes A Horror Movie

The story of the films, or if you prefer the villain, also took inspiration from other sources. One of the most important of these is the urban legend of “The Hookman,” also known as “The Hook,” about a killer with a hook in his hand, reminiscent of a pirate, who killed a couple in their car. In some versions of this legend, the killer is presented as faceless, as an old man wearing a raincoat covering his body and most of his face – which corresponds to a certain extent with the killer in “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

The first film also drew inspiration from early slashers with teenage boys and girls, such as “Prom Night” (1980) or “The House of Sorority Row,” each of which received a much less successful remake in the 2000s.

What I Know What You Did Last Summer Movies Are There?

Currently, the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchise includes two feature films with just one year between them, a disappointing TV movie that was released directly to DVD eight years later, a TV series that brought the franchise back to life, and a highly anticipated feature film that will hit screens this July, nearly three decades after the first film.

Here is the complete list of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies in order:

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

In 1997, we got the first film in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” franchise. Scottish Jim Gillespie (“D-Tox” with Sylvester Stallone and the supernatural slasher “Venom”) directed the film from a script by Williamson.

The plot, as you may have guessed, revolves around four friends – Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt, who became a sex symbol thanks to the film), Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar, in her “Buffy” prime, after “Scream 2” and before “The Grudge”), Barry (Ryan Phillippe, “Cruel Intentions,” “Crash,” “Playing by Heart”) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr. from “Scooby-Doo,” “She’s All That” and “Summer Catch”. Oh, and he is Sarah Michelle Gellar’s husband, too). One night, they celebrate high school graduation and Helen’s winning a local beauty competition. They accidentally run over a man and understand that this killing could ruin their lives. So they decide to throw the body in the water and swear never to mention this incident again.

A year later, Julie receives a note saying, “I know what you did last summer. The guys soon start to be attacked by a mysterious figure wearing a raincoat and wielding a fishing hook, until they discover who that person is and how he is connected to the incident.

It’s hard to argue that the mystery surrounding the killer’s identity is too intriguing, even if you compare the mystery to the one we saw in “Scream,” for example, where the killer is always someone you know. As mentioned, the film is relatively thin on plot; the murders are reasonable but nothing more, but there’s still some charm here. Reviews of the first “I Know What You Did Last Summer” film were mixed, with many claiming that it was less successful or original than “Scream.” Its box office success was quite reasonable, with approximately $72 million against a relatively low budget of around $17 million.

We can argue that what made “I Know What You Did Last Summer” a successful film, some would even say a cult film, is its combination of horror (even if it’s pretty gentle), the whodunit-style mystery, light-hearted style, and of course the fact that it featured several young stars, all of whom look attractive (alongside a few older actors in minor roles, like Anne Heche). This is what many young people who visited the cinema in those years or saw the film on the home viewing platforms that existed at the time were looking for. The film focused on a reasonably basic human fear that people will know their deepest secrets and dealt with themes such as anxiety and guilt.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)

Just one year after the first film’s success, the sequel, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,” arrived. The film, directed by Danny Cannon (“Judge Dredd,” “Geostorm”) and based on a screenplay by Terry Callaway, brought back Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., the killer in the first film (no spoilers!), and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who here demonstrates a very wooden and static performance as a still photo in one shot. The sequel featured an expanded cast this time, including names like Brandi (who is better known as the singer behind her successful and Grammy-winning duet “The Boy is Mine” with Monica), Mackie Piper (who has done many films, but may be best known for appearing in the clip for “The Boy is Mine”), Jennifer Esposito, Bill Cobbs, and even Jack Black.

The plot takes place a year after the events in the previous film when Julie is trying to restart her life at college in Boston. One day, her best friend (Karla, played by Brandi) wins a radio contest while on vacation in the Bahamas, and the two go on holiday with two other friends. The problem is that the island itself is isolated because the guests left for hurricane season. Later, they will realize that they did not end up there by chance and that the fisherman is in the area trying to continue his murderous spree. The film includes a few surprises, for example, regarding the real identity of some characters, and presents some likable and surprising killing scenes.

Although “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” was a bit more bombastic than the first, with more characters and more killings (a budget of around $24 million), it’s hard to say that it managed to surpass its predecessor, and was more of a “same thing, just a little worse.

It did end with a hint of a third movie when Julie discovers that the killer is still after her, but perhaps because its box office success was mostly reasonable with around $84 million, it didn’t happen. At least not as a direct sequel.

I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006)

We’re moving forward eight years to 2006 with “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.” Expectations for this film were lower in advance. You can learn about this because the film was released directly to DVD. This honor was mainly reserved for low-budget and poor-quality films (this was long before the Netflix era when films with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars are distributed only via streaming). The budget here is low; you can see it in the anonymous cast, the problematic cinematography (including colors, sound, shaky camera), and the final result is far from being impressive.

Some will say that “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer” brought the franchise back to life, but others will note with disappointment that it almost killed it for good. The plot here is a retake of the first film, but it is a standalone film. It tells the story of foolish young people trying to prank a friend for Independence Day. They imitate the urban legend of the killer with a hooker disguised as a fisherman, but of course, things get out of hand, and there is a real murder. The friends pretend nothing happened, but at one point, they receive a text message – after all, the 2000s – with the surprising content, “I know what you did last summer.”

No actor from the original cast participated in “I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.” Instead, you will find relatively unknown actors such as Brooke Navin, David Paetkau, Torrey DeVitto, Ben Easter, and SDon Shanks (known mainly for playing Michael Myers in “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers”).

The attempt to tell a new story with new characters and context was unsuccessful. Perhaps because in the 90th minute, the original director of the film was fired, and in his place came at the last minute French director Sylvain White (“Walled In” with Mischa Barton and the super disappointing “Slender Man”), who had to do the job in a very short time. White chose not to use computer effects but to rely on practical effects since he guessed it would look more realistic. Although the film is graphic, perhaps since it came at a time when “Torture Porn” films were popular, it is very messy and mostly unconvincing.

Critics and viewers slaughtered the film – for evidence, its rating on the IMDB website is only 3.3 out of 10 – mainly because it sometimes seemed like a generic film that tried to ride on the success of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” to increase its exposure. Its primary target audience is genre fans, or people who enjoy low-budget films that’re so bad they’re good.

I Know What You Did Last Summer TV Series (2021)

In 2021, Amazon Prime Video capitalized on the wave of nostalgia for 90s and early 2000s culture, reviving the franchise in the form of a TV series. The series, with the creative name “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” consisted of one season with eight episodes, after which Amazon decided not to continue for another season.

The “I Know What You Did Last Summer” TV series more or less presents the story we saw in the first film, about young people who kill someone and try to cover it up, only to discover that someone knows about the murder and begins a murder spree of their own. The gand must find out who is after them before becoming a statistic. The cast here included several familiar faces in the young horror scene, such as Madison Iseman (“Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween”, “Annabelle Comes Home,” “Nocturne” alongside Sydney Sweeney, “Fear of Rain” and the “Jumanji” films) in a double role as twin sisters, Brianne Tju (“47 Meters Down: Uncaged”, “Uglies,” and “Scream” TV series) and others.

The series refreshed the film concept and adapted it to the social media generation, exploring themes such as digital secrets, shaming, and the disparity between our online and offline presentations. It explores relevant social themes, including gender identity. Unlike the films, there are also more explicit sex and nudity scenes, but the atmosphere remains reminiscent of the 90s slasher films.

The “I Know What You Did Last Summer” TV series received mixed reviews. On the one hand, some appreciated the change in style, the adaptation to the current period, the refreshing young cast, and the fact that the series is enjoyable thanks to the combination of violence, sex, and the like. On the other hand, there was the feeling that everything here was too messy, some characters were annoying, and the ratings were mediocre. For these and other reasons, Amazon decided to cancel the series after only one season.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

Talk of a new remake of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” has been with us for over a decade. Sony Pictures announced its intention back in 2014 when the plan was for horror wizard Mike Flanagan (“Oculus,” “Hush,” “Gerald’s Game,” “Doctor Sleep,” “Ouija: Origin of Evil,” “The Haunting of Hill House”) to write the script with Jeff Howard who collaborated with him on many of the films. The plan was to produce the film by 2016, with a budget of about $15-20 million, but production stalled at some point, and Sony Pictures canceled the project.

In 2022, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (who directed the teen comedy “Do Revenge” inspired by “Strangers on a Train,” and wrote the scripts for “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Unpregnant”) and screenwriter Leah McKendrick (“M.F.A.,” “Scrambled”) pitched an idea for a remake to Sony Pictures, which gave it the green light. Rumors quickly began to emerge about the involvement of actors from the original cast. Sarah Michelle Gellar stated that Robinson approached her, but she had declined because her character died in the original film, and she had already returned as a still image in the sequel. She will also be seen in the new movie as a still photo, according to the trailer that recently reached us, but nothing more than that. Although the director “harassed her” to appear and suggested: “What if it’s like you weren’t dead and you’re actually alive, but in hiding?”. Sarah Michelle Gellar, according to the director, responded with characteristic wit. “I am dead. I am Sarah Dead Gellar.”

Freddie Prinze Jr. stated that he had not received an offer and even hinted that the producers had spread rumors about his casting “to excite people” or “to get the fans excited.” He later claimed that he had spoken to the director and was enthusiastic about the project and the general idea but had not received a concrete offer. Jennifer Love Hewitt also sent similar messages and some hints on social media. The bottom line is that at some point, to the delight of fans, we got the news that Love Hewitt and Prinze Jr. would be part of the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” cast that was taking shape.

Robinson wrote the final script with Sam Lansky, based on the initial idea she and McKendrick had. She noted that the film, similar to the TV series, would give a central place to social media and its influence on young people. More directly, we learned that the film would continue the events of the 1998 sequel. The cast added some young names, such as Madelyn Cline (TV series “Outer Banks,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”), Chase Sui Wonders (the fun slasher “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and the TV series “City on Fire” and “Generations”), JJonah Hauer-King (“The Little Mermaid,” “Doctor Who,” “Little Women”), Sarah Pidgeon (“The Wilds”, “Tiny Beautiful Things”) and more.

Like later films in well-known franchises, such as “Halloween” and even “Scream,” we see an attempt to combine several generations here. The main plot concerns five young friends who cause a car accident, cover up the act, and receive, you guessed it, messages that someone knows – well, what they did last summer. When they start being murdered one after another by an unidentified killer with a fisherman’s hat, hook, and arrow, they realize that a similar case has happened in the past. They turn to the pair The survivors of that case, namely Julie and Ray. We hope these characters will also enter the bloody circle, or at least be directly involved in trying to discover the killer and stay alive, and not just be a gimmick to get fans of the previous films. This is the recent trailer, hinting we have something to wait for.

Robinson noted that she tried to return to the sources as much as possible. “I was like, ‘I want beautiful colors, beautiful setting, blue water, red blood.’ For me, it’s kind of like a throwback, and what I hope is that it feels like it’s fresh in its nostalgia,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I really wanted it to kind of stand on its own and have an identity visually. And I hope that that feels present in the film and makes people excited to see it.”

The film will hit screens around the world in July.

So…What Are We Waiting Fooooorrrrr, Huh?

Looking back on the franchise, we can perhaps understand why “I Know What You Did Last Summer” became a landmark among many horror fans. The films, especially the first and second, managed to reflect the atmosphere of the late 90s, introduced several actors who became significant in recent decades, and contributed to the revival of the genre (which faded a few years later but seems to be making a comeback in recent years, but that’s for a different article).

Despite the respectable place Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cleavage received in the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” films (in fact, I once read that on the set of the second film, the crew used the nickname “Romeo and Juliet” when referring to her breasts, which demonstrated no less impressive acting abilities than hers), it’s hard to argue that the film has too much depth, certainly not emotional. Still, there is a rather interesting subject here that we can identify with: the fear that past mistakes may come back to haunt us. A sentence like “I know what you did last summer” contains a particular mystery, sometimes even fear. From small lies to romantic themes (such as in the 2022 hit “I Know What You Did Last Summer” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, which, according to the singer, deals with “conversation between two people in a relationship where it’s dying, but nobody wants to admit that it’s dying) to killings people try to hide.

Over the years, we’ve seen several parodies of the film, some of which have been quite successful. One of the most memorable examples is in the horror parody “Scary Movie,” which included, for example, the scene in which Shannon Elizabeth – in a hysterical and surprisingly good acting performance – sees her boyfriend’s murder during the coronation ceremony as some Miss something competition, but the audience thinks she’s playing a character and applauses. Or the excellent scene that mocks one of the most recognizable moments in the first film, in which Jennifer Love Hewitt bursts into the “What are you waiting for” monologue that has become a cult. Of course, the terrible parody film “Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th” also includes many references to “I Know What You Did Last Friday the 13th,” but let’s not revisit this movie, please.

There’s even an episode of “The Simpsons’ that pokes fun at the film, but that’s not clever because I’m pretty sure that, over 33 seasons, ‘ The Simpsons’ also had an episode about my life story at some point. And I’m not famous at all.

In any case, the fact that we’re still talking about “I Know What You Did Last Summer” nearly three decades later, and eagerly anticipating a new film is a testament to the profound impact the film has had on horror culture and popular cinema in general. This story proves that, like the killer with the fishhook, stories of guilt, redemption, and horror never truly die. They’re just waiting for the right moment to return and haunt us again.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save