Just the Ticket #195: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster Who Doesn't Know What You Did Last Summer.

I did not like these movies, Ticketholders! I mean, I liked the first two when they came out almost thirty years ago, which is why the third one disappointed me so much that I only ever watched it once and didn't even want to watch it for this review (but I watched the Children Of the Corn franchise and most of The Curse movies, so it's nothing by comparison). The second time I watched the first two movies, I thought the core four were unsympathetic, the villain reveal came out of nowhere, the second movie was obvious and stupid, and Julie James was the worst final girl of all time.

But has my opinion changed with time, book knowledge, and exposure to eight hours of Amazon-produced zoomer torture? Let's find out, and then check out this year's legacy sequel to see if it's as bad as everyone says.

Directed by Jim Gillespie (Joyride—not to be confused with Joy Ride—and Venom—not that one) and written by Kevin Williamson (using some real Shyamalan-tier dialogue that didn't make the cut for Scream) as a loose adaptation of Lois Duncan's novel, 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer stars Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party Of Five and 9-1-1) as Julie James (more strictly academic and less of a redhead than in the book), Sarah Michelle Gellar (Scream 2, The Grudge, and Dexter: Original Sin) as Helen Shivers (a more fitting surname for her beauty pageant character here than Rivers would have been, and her acting career doesn't work out as well as in the book), Ryan Phillippe (who would later do Cruel Intentions with Gellar in 1999) as Barry Cox (still a dismissive, selfish, rich asshole, which Phillippe captures pretty well, and according to cast information on Google, Barry's middle name is William, though it's not mentioned or credited in the film), and Freddie Prinze, Jr. (who would later do the live action Scooby-Doo movies with Gellar) as Ray Bronson (whom we know is a nerd here because he uses a couple of Billy Cranston words and he fights with Barry about homework one time, but the nuance of his book character is lost in the limited runtime, stilted acting, and script concessions to almost make the villain reveal work).

The movie begins with David Egan (Jonathan Quint, Boogie Nights) contemplating suicide so our leads won't look quite so reprehensible when they run him over and dispose of the body a few minutes later (or do they?). Speaking of which, Julie, Ray, Helen, and Barry fill those runtime minutes by arguing about the Hook Man so we can get Urban Legend the following year, uttering such...romantic?...lines as "I will let you impregnate me with the first of three children," and getting so shitfaced that the rest of the movie can happen.

Things progress fairly closely to the book, but for the aforementioned changes in character, Barry being hit by a car instead of shot (so the whole paralysis drama about his college football career either happens offscreen or is left out of the script, and there's one point where he just stands there and faces down the killer's car for a countable length of time like a moron), Helen's sister being played by Mortal Kombat's Bridgette Wilson (so, decidedly not the fat, less attractive one of the two, and the scant hints of a jealous relationship don't read as well, pun intended), and Julie and Ray's relationship being more definitively over than in the book. This sets up several plot changes that accommodate the incorporation of a more Scream-alike slasher mystery. This means Julie and Helen (not Ray) are the ones to visit Missy Egan (Anne Heche, who would feature in the Psycho remake the following year), setting up a convoluted reveal via internet research and a mystery red herring named Billy Blue. I didn't understand the villain reveal any of the times I watched this movie and had to do my own research to understand it, but basically, Ray (keeping his post-pact fisherman arc from the book) is Billy Blue, and the killer is random vengeful father Ben Willis (Prison Break's Muse Watson), whom the four actually hit with their car after he killed David Egan, whom he held responsible for his daughter's death. After some pointless chasing and an underwhelming fistfight, "The Fisherman" is dispatched and disarmed by a wacky Pirates Of the Caribbean setpiece (though I guess it was more WaterWorld-inspired at that point) and the surviving...couple? (Ray and Julie choose the aftermath of their attempted murders to get "romantic" for the first time since they conspired, assaulted a man, and obstructed justice at the beginning of the movie) complete the absurdity with a cheesy closeout line and some sequel bait that will be a coincidental trope (it takes three in a row to make a pattern, as any good charmer or serial killer should know) going forward.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is still and always not a good movie. It has some good setpieces (Barry's car attack, Helen's chase scene prior to her death, and everything with the boat are standouts for me) and if you can read the 90s internet fast enough, the Ben Willis twist is almost as good on paper as what the book wowed me with. But stuff like the Fisherman turning Julie's car into a Johnny Galecki-flavored crab tank, the characters' stupid decisions leading to their deaths, the baffling dialogue choices, and the goofy tone of the ending almost make it into a dark slapstick comedy.

And yes, Julie James is still and always the worst final girl ever written. Why ensure Ray's victory when she can distract him in the middle of a fight to the death? Why hide quietly when she can scream at the slightest sound or movement and alert the killer to her location? Why run when she can stand there and scream up at the man who's trying to kill her? Why did she survive this?

C-

In the year of Urban Legend and the Psycho remake, we got I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, now directed by Danny Cannon (CSI and Gotham) and written by Trey Callaway (the TV adaptation of Rush Hour), a direct sequel that still (Puns!) uses some elements of the Duncan novel, particularly Julie and Ray's off-and-on relationship as she unknowingly also kind of dates the killer. This slighty undercuts the "romantic" ending of the first movie (not that it needed any help in that regard) for the sake of having another Scream-alike slasher mystery that proves to be one of the most obvious and ridiculously impractical in cinematic history.

It turns out that the sequel bait (More Puns!) was one of two recurring guilt nightmares Julie has been having (which, I'm not sure if that's how recurring dreams work?), and she sleeps with a picture of Helen on her nightstand (which, given Hewitt's direction in this scene, is weird). Her college roommate is Brandy (Cinderella) despite this movie being known for Jennifer Love Hewitt's brief attempt at a singing career.

Things kick into motion when the girls win a trip for four to a shitty resort in the Bahamas during storm season by guessing the capital of Brazil. Which is also where things start to fall apart. Many critics and commentators in the past have talked at length about this movie's twist and the myriad ways it could have failed if anyone was intelligent (like knowing the real capital of Brazil or noticing that the killer's name is the first killer's name backwards with some Nordic flare) or had caller ID (because the killer pretended to be from a local radio station) or could do any kind of background check (to keep the son of a notorious spree killer from enrolling at the same college as one of the survivors), not to mention the plan involving a stupidly large sum of money for a fisherman's salary (and further inadequate background checks because Ben Willis apparently works at the resort and was able to pay room, board, and transportation for four at honeymoon suite rates despite being presumed dead and a known serial killer). Sorry for the spoilers, but it's been talked about so much that I don't feel that bad about it.

Anyway, Julie, Brandy, Brandy's boyfriend (Mekhi Phifer, 8-Mile), and Will Benson (who has been on a boat before, knows too much about weather patterns, had a tragic childhood, looks at Julie with "concern" whenever The Fisherman shows up, and is played by Gossip Girl's Matthew Settle) fly to the Bahamas while Ray lies unconscious in a ditch after the Fisherman killed his dock buddy (John Hawkes, who would go on to play the hotel manager in Identity and get a shit-ton of awards attention for Martha, Marcy-May, Marlene, The Sessions, and Three Billboards), and if you thought Fyre Festival and Woodstock '99 were Trainwrecks, this resort has everything: Re-Animator, no phone service, bad weather, Jennifer Esposito, a homicidal family dressed as fishermen, the Pitfall kid selling weed, 

and the Heinz-Lister; it's that thing where a voodoo priest gets murdered after blessing your toothbrush.

After the bodies stack up (literally, because old man Willis can lift a grown man single-handed like he's Jason Voorhees or something) and the twist is revealed (because Will's last name isn't mentioned until that point but Julie and friends knew it, and the combined runtime thus far had established that Julie and everyone else in this franchise is stupid), we learn that Ruger probably made single-action ten-shot revolvers in the late 90s because Julie shoots the Fisherman eight times with a snub-nose that misfired twice.

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer may have upped the ante on ridiculousness, but the music is late-90s guilty pleasure fuel, Julie is more of a badass (following the sequel rules established by Halloween, Terminator, and Alien), the cast is even more stacked, and the resort (filmed on location in Jalisco, Mexico) provides a ton of cool setpieces. The acting and dialogue are better, too, so I can actually believe Julie and Ray as a couple by the end.

B

I still and always remember being disappointed with the third entry, which wasn't conceptualized until 2000 (two years after the previous film's release) and suffered some last-minute production woes before releasing direct-to-video in 2006 (without the awesome Mandalay Pictures logo sequence, probably because it cost more than this movie). I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer was always (Puns: The Final Chapter!) envisioned as a standalone entry, and was directed by Sylvain White (whose only feature credit to that point was the direct-to-video softcore threequel, Trois 3: The Escort, but he would go on to direct Stomp the Yard, The Losers, and Slender Man), who was left with two weeks to do casting, location prep, and schedule the shoot after the previous director (Joe Chappelle, The Curse Of Michael Meyers) was fired. And the result is kind of impressive for the time he had...except that it's still and always really fucking bad.

It feels like the original entry filmed on an Asylum budget with worse acting and less charm, the sensation only magnified by the editing being aggressively, attention-deficit-ly, epileptically 2000s. The Fisherman has apparently become a widespread 4th of July urban legend in the intervening years, and despite knowing this fact, the new core four (whom I'm not going to bother naming the actors for so they can forget they were in this, too) stage an elaborate Fisherman-themed prank that results in the sensationally gory (but offscreen) death of one of their friends, and because it's fictional small-town America and they're selfish nobodies who want to be somebodies, they do what a core four in a vaguely Lois Duncan-adjacent horror movie do, and are picked off one by one, leading the audience to believe that the formula entire will persist and we're watching a slasher mystery. But nope; it's just Ben Willis' ghost now (played here by Stunt Legend Who Isn't Kane Hodder, the fatefully named Don Shanks), and nothing matters. The final setpiece was kind of cool relative to a mid-2000s direct-to-video horror movie that's 80% dark, 50% blinding orange, and one third flickery jump cuts and perspective zoom so you don't know what the fuck you're seeing, but I was done with this shit thirty minutes in, and the franchise can't possibly get any worse from here.

F

I love what I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) tried to do, and it mostly succeeded. From Moment One, I was (Puns IV: The Revenge!) hooked by writer/producer/director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson's (Do Revenge) skill at building suspense through subverting expectations at every turn and helping to craft characters who were charismatic if not outright likable, which is rare for this franchise.

The new generation of young adults with poor decision-making skills and a fictional understanding of crime definitions are Danica Richards (the Helen archetype with Julie character status, played by Glass Onion's Madelyn Cline), Ava Brucks (Rule 63 Ray, played by Bodies Bodies Bodies' Chase Sui Wonders), Milo Griffin (Danica's ex, who is there, played by The Little Mermaid's Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy Spencer (Barry Cox if he was fun and likable, played by Tyriq Withers, Him), and Stevie Ward (a cross between Max from the original and Margot from the TV series, played by The Wilds' Sarah Pigeon). When they head up to Reaper's Curve to park in the blind spot of a two-lane road and watch the 4th of July fireworks, Teddy's drunken antics cause a car to crash through a barricade and (because the group try to pull the car back onto the road instead of busting the window to pull the driver out) plummet over the edge. They call 911 and plan to give statements to the police, but Teddy's father (Helix star Billy Campbell) covers up the truth of the accident because [insert Jaws beach closure joke here]. Thankfully, someone called in a Fisherman to hunt down the party responsible and make those S.O.B.s smile! Oh, sorry; wrong movie....

But also thankfully, the grizzled legacy character with a beard and his successful love interest who broke up over personal differences in the intervening decades are back to offer guidance to the noobs and help uncover the identity of the masked killer with a meta grudge. Sorry; wrong movie again....

The only question now is, with the Willis family definitively dead and the previous sequel rendered non-canon because 2000s horror and supernatural slasher killers suck if they're not named Freddy or Jason (suppressing urge to make a "wrong movie" joke about Halloween...), who is the Fisherman this time?

And the answer is where the movie lost me. I won't give it away, aside from saying that you should be as aware of what the movie doesn't subvert as you should of what it does, and it leans into that axiom so hard as to spite its own logic and quality for the sake of a "revisionist history can be good for the economy" vs. "nostalgia-pandering sucks unless we're doing it" message that assassinates a beloved character and falls flatter than a double-mastectomy on a dead flounder. A great deal of the ending not working can be attributed to it not being the original ending (wherein Danica was supposed to die, but test screening responses led to reshoots, including a dream sequence with Sarah Michelle Gellar and the nonsensical new ending, that allegedly cut editing time down to two weeks). No further sequels have been announced, but we do learn by the end that one of the killers is still alive (despite being double-tapped in the head and falling into the ocean), Brandy's character is still alive (and she traded in Future Porter for the Old Spice guy), and the carnage isn't over yet. So if we do get a fifth film (Google's AI insists this is the fifth despite the fact that it is obviously grilled and also the fourth entry,

because AI sucks ass through both armpits with a crazy straw), I'd watch it to see Julie and Karla kick some more slicker-wearing ass.

However (because putting a period between two butts is how you get demonetized and/or go viral on OnlyFans), I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) ended up dropping the ball hard and leaving me to wonder what I had been waiting for. Huh.

D+

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Ticketmaster,

Falling Out.