‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Review: A Ho-Hum Legacy Sequel

“So here we are, it’s 1997 all over again,” one of the characters says tellingly in I Know What You Did Last Summer. That line, of course, is not from the original film in the series but rather its same-titled “legacy sequel,” which, if you’re not familiar with Hollywood parlance, basically means “Let’s see if we can squeeze more dollars out of this sucker.” Slavishly reminiscent of its predecessors, the film also features so many Easter eggs that it mainly serves as canned nostalgia.

Those throwbacks, ironically, are the most fun aspect of this new installment, which is unlikely to garner the same sort of cult following as the 1997 original. The concept remains the same, with a group of extremely good-looking young people (here in their mid-20s rather than teen years) covering up a violent death for which they were responsible. Cut to a year later, when one of them receives a note containing the ominous titular message. Not long after, a killer armed with a metal hook and clad in a fisherman’s slicker and hat begins gruesomely killing them one by one.

In this version, they’re a fairly bland group, consisting of Danica (Madelyn Cline) and her fiancé Teddy (Tyriq Withers); Ava (The Studio‘s Chase Sui Wonders), their friend who’s returned to celebrate their engagement; Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), with whom Ava has a romantic past; and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), their estranged friend from the other side of the tracks, who reunites with them for an ill-fated drive to watch fireworks from a stretch of highway accurately named Reaper’s Curve.

None of them winds up being the first victim of the stalking killer. That would be Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), Danica’s equally bland new fiancé, with whom she got involved after breaking it off with Teddy. He didn’t have anything to do with the incident that has spurred such violent revenge, but his demise serves the purpose of setting the murderous events in motion while still leaving the central cast members in play.

Not receiving help from the local police chief or the town’s chief real estate developer (Billy Campbell), who has a vested interested in covering things up, the group turns to two of the survivors of the previous rampage that took place nearly three decades earlier. They’re Ray Bronson and Julie James (fan favorites Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt), who, needless to say, are still scarred by their experiences. Julie, at least, has made good use of her past, becoming a professor who teaches her students about the nature of trauma.

For much of its running time, I Know What You Did Last Summer tediously lurches from one violent slashing to another, which would be fine if any of the kills showcased visual originality or genuine thrills, which they don’t. It’s not until the final act that the film goes seriously bonkers, throwing out so many red herrings and plot twists revolving around the true identity of the murderer that Agatha Christie would throw up her hands in disgust. It doesn’t help that the more entertainingly colorful supporting characters, including a creepy pastor (Austin Nichols) and a sexy podcaster (Gabbriette Bechtel, very amusing) whose show is called “Live, Laugh, Slaughter,” are sadly underutilized.

Fortunately, Prinze Jr. and Hewitt are on hand to provide some much-needed gravitas to the proceedings (which is not a sentence I ever envisioned writing). Both are in excellent form, providing connective tissue to the original film and its sequel. And they’re also good for some laughs, as when Ray, upon hearing one of the prospective victims announce that they should all simply flee the area and head to the Bahamas in a boat, sagely advises: “For reasons I won’t go into, I wouldn’t do that.”

Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Netflix’s Do Revenge) and her co-screenwriter Sam Lansky display clear affection for the franchise, as evidenced by some fun cameos from unbilled performers whose appearances garnered delighted screams from the audience (be sure to stay for the end credits). But they haven’t succeeded in breathing new life into a tired franchise that, creatively speaking, should have remained dead.