It’s not a good idea to heat up old fish in public. Those leftovers almost always stink, and the smell is particularly bad if the fish was iffy to begin with. By that logic, Sony’s new “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” a reboot/sequel of the now-iconic but then-mediocre fisherman slasher from 1997, should reek like low tide. But director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson made the catch of the season with this lean, mean serial killer flick.
Set once again in the tortured coastal town of Southport, North Carolina, this sinister seafood surprise returns Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr. to a world that remembers their nautical nightmare better than we do. Kevin Williamson’s original film — about a killer fisherman and four teens involved in a hit-and-run accident — came just one year after his legendary horror comedy, “Scream.” The two titles showed the screenwriter’s range, but even with flecks of his signature wit baked into the melodrama, “IKWYDLS” didn’t feel worthy of Williamson until now.
The specter of the original backstory and its two sequels loom over the opening, but you don’t need to have seen those movies to enjoy this one. We’re thrust into the thick of wedding season with bride Danica (Madelyn Cline), groom Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and best friends Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), who are stuck in a will-they-won’t-they. They’re standing around an outrageous engagement party paid for by the groom’s father, Grant (Billy Campbell). He’s a real estate tycoon intent on pretending the 1997 Southport massacre of the first film didn’t really happen. That’s true even as his development project benefits from the fear the fisherman still casts over his community.
Now a professor of psychology, ex-final girl Julie James (Hewitt) moved away long ago, while frustrated hometown hero Ray (Prinze) won’t emerge from the shadows of a town hall for some time. The younger characters aren’t very likable, and all that wealth doesn’t make a good impression. But even compared to their working-class predecessors, you don’t hate these kids quite as much as any of the social-media-obsessive characters from Wonders’ “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
When the ill-fated friends cross paths with their estranged classmate, Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), it still seems safe for her to go with them on a weed-spiked coastal drive to catch the fireworks, although anyone should know better. This is Fourth of July weekend, when most jump scares turn out to be false alarms. But this is also “IKWYDLS.” Watching fireworks on a blind curve, the group causes a fatal accident that leaves them untouched. Teddy and his dad offer a cover-up in exchange for Danica, Ava, Stevie, and Milo’s silence.
Their cooperation proves easy to buy, but this time next year, Danica will open a card at her bridal shower, bearing the immortal words: I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It’s not long before more bodies start dropping, and the new “IKWYDLS” starts gutting its ensemble in grisly, unceremonious fashion, with one kill even directly quoting Drew Barrymore’s iconic death in the opening scene of Williamson’s “Scream.”
Blackmail and whodunits go together like wedding cake and champagne, but as a seasoned rom-com filmmaker (“Someone Great”) — and the co-writer with Taika Waititi on “Thor: Love and Thunder” — Robinson knows the difference between cheeky self-awareness and annoying self-indulgence. Robinson co-wrote the script with Sam Lansky, who was also the ghostwriter for Britney Spears’ 2023 memoir, “The Woman in Me.”
Female empowerment hums like an electric current throughout “IKWYDLS,” as references to Nicole Kidman’s beloved AMC Theatres ad and “The Body Keeps the Score” (a famous academic text on surviving trauma) fly by like book club chatter. The series’ sharpened sense of girly-pop humor lays the essential foundation for Julie to return as a mostly healed fan favorite who spends the investigation making snark at home.
We’ll see Julie sip from a mug of “The Patriarchy’s Tears” in a clunky bit of prop comedy that’s still welcome amid the franchise’s most violent murder spree — and once Julie is in action, it won’t be long until Hewitt is delivering the hell out of the famous line: “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?”
You’ll be aching to see Hewitt and Prinze on screen together as sniping ex-love interests more than you knew. But their director knows when to reel in the fan service. Even resisting the temptation to resurrect Sarah Michelle Gellar as the treasured-but-dead Helen Shivers, “IKWYDLS” knows how to honor the spirit of the Croaker Beauty Pageant Queen and the hook that killed her in razor-sharp style.
Harpoons have never been more terrifying than they are here, and Robinson and Lansky expand Williamson’s once quaint universe so dramatically that it can be shockingly hard to see the Fisherman coming. A screeching sting heralds each new attack, yanking the viewer out of a playful dialogue between editor Saira Haider and composer Chanda Deven that recommends the latest “IKWYDLS” as the main event worth remembering.
Grade: B+
“I Know What You Did Last Summer” opens from Sony in theaters on Friday, July 18.
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