I Know What You Did Last Summer But I Couldn't Be Bothered to Watch the Whole Fucking Franchise

My love-hate relationship with teen slasher movies

I saw the original I Know What You Did Last Summer when it came out in 1997.

“A follow-up to Scream,” everyone said, “A must-see.”

It wasn’t. Scream was scary. This wasn’t.

Although in truth, I can’t really remember what happened. I could ask Chat GPT or even Google.

But does it matter?

Not really.

Hardly a movie cinophiles will drool over in 60 years’ time to dissect the plot or enjoy the protagonist’s wit.

All I remember is that four dumb college students run over someone and try to cover it up. Then a year later, one of them receives a note, saying (obviously):

The killer in this movie is a guy dressed in oilskins carrying a fishhook. A villain who was never very convincing. Or even scary.

I mean, he’s a fisherman for God’s sake. Hardly Pinhead!

Pinhead in Hellraiser

Writer and director Clive Barker conceived Hellraiser (1987) as a response to the seemingly endless churn of US slasher movies, such as Halloween and Friday the 13th.

He wanted to create a darker, psychological horror where the protagonists don’t hide from their demons but face them head-on instead of running away like cowards.

Either way, all these slasher/horror movies have provided us with endless sequels for the past forty years.

Which is why we ended up THIS SUMMER with a rehashed version of I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Reboot or Remake?

Technically, it isn’t either.

It’s actually a sequel to the second instalment, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998).

This doesn’t make any sense. It’s like having Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and then….Star Wars again.

To make things even messier, the supposed third (or is it fourth?) instalment is titled I Always Knew What You Did Last Summer.

But which summer? The first, second, or third summer?

I can’t wait for the fifth instalment.

Legacy Sequels

Movies like this are called Legacy Sequels.

This is a new word for me. It's when a studio holds onto a movie franchise for so long that everyone ends up forgetting about it.

Then, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, BANG, there’s a new version of your favourite movie.

There have been loads of these over the past ten years: Superman, Rocky, Top Gun, Mad Max, Final Destination, and Halloween.

It’s a win-win for the studios.

They draw in old-timers like me from the 80s and 90s, while at the same time, capture the younger generation whose parents say, “Oh, I remember when that came out!”

Even better, the studios can then roll out a load of sequels to the legacy sequels, and the whole cycle starts again. So that in thirty years, their kids will be saying:

“Oh, I remember when the legacy sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer came out!

Nostalgia

I grew up on these movies in the 1980s and 90s, so despite my cynicism, I have a soft spot for them.

One of my favourites was The Burning (1982).

While a lot of the slasher movies, while scary, were a bit camp and tongue-in-cheek. Take Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) with Freddie’s wisecracks like: “No running in the hall” or “How about this for a wet dream.”

The Burning doesn’t have any of this. It’s a teen slasher as dark as the night, and it makes I Know What You Did Last Summer look like a Barbie legacy sequel.

You might be asking me at this point, seeing as this is a movie review, is I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) any good?

I dunno.

I haven’t watched it. But Simon Dillon has (obviously).

Why watch movies and review them when Substack’s resident movie reviewer can do it for you?

Film Review - I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

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