Pop Culture Happy Hour - I Know What You Did Last Summer

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

In the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, some very '90s teenagers are targeted by a killer clad in fisherman's garb and armed with a hook. Nearly 30 years later, a new sequel fires up a very similar plot. The movie includes a new group of young people — including Chase Sui Wonders and Madelyn Cline — and a few key survivors from the first go-'round (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.) But does it live up to the legacy of the original?Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, some very 90s teenagers are targeted by a killer after they attempt to cover up a crime against him. The original film was hugely profitable, but its sequels yielded mostly diminishing returns. Nearly 30 years later, a new sequel with the same name fires up a very similar plot, albeit with new young people and a few key survivors from the first go-round. But does it live up to the legacy of the original? I'm Stephen Thompson. Today we are talking about I Know What You Did Last Summer on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Vulture TV critic, Roxana Hadati. Hey, Roxanna. Hello. Thank you for having me on.

It is a pleasure. Also with us, freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz. Hey, Rihanna. Hey, Steven. And rounding out the panel is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to convene this panel for this most important issue. So the first I Know What You Did Last Summer brought together 1997's equivalent of the brat pack. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Geller, Ryan Philippi, and Freddie Prince Jr. All hit a shameful secret involving a fateful car accident the prior summer.

They were stalked and in some cases slaughtered by a killer clad in fisherman's garb and armed with a great big hook. Now I Know What You Did Last Summer has been sequelized with a new. gaggle of young people, led by Ava, played by Chase Sweet Wonders, and Danica played by Madeline Klein. You've got your car accident, your cover-up, your reunion a year later, all of it taking place in the same town of Southport, North Carolina, where the original murders took place. Which means, of course, that we check in on the first film's key survivors. Julie James, played by Jennifer Love-Huitt, has moved away and tried to move on, while her

ex-husband, Ray Bronson, played by Freddie Prince Jr., has stayed in town and opened a bar. Both of them are brought in to try to help and to sprinkle in Easter eggs for fans of the original movies. The new I Know What You Did Last Summer was directed and co-written by Jennifer Caten Robinson. It's in theaters now. Jordan, I have one question for you. Yes. What did you do last summer? Last summer, I bumped into Jennifer Kate and Robinson in Stamp Proper Goods on Hillhurst in Los Angeles when I think she was working on. I know what you did last summer. literally happened. And I am here to say,

I am thrilled with the fruits of her labor and apparently I'm here to fight today. You were fighting, I think, with a lot of people who have seen this movie this far. Like, most of the time I understand when I'm going to be at odds. Like, because that happens to me. And I'm like, all right, listen, I will be the defense.

But this time I'm like, how is everyone so far away from my experience of this movie? having had a great time. I'm genuinely shocked at the consensus feedback on this. You are pro this movie, to be clear. Bro this movie. Walked out and was like, what a good time.

Shocked. This is not the common experience. Well, we'll get to on what basis you feel this way. In a moment, we're gathering some general impressions. Roxanna, what did you think? Yeah, no. I'm so worried about George. on a variety of levels.

Look, I will say that I found this moderately entertaining. I think my biggest issue with it is I think that the movie itself does not know how much it is satirizing the entire idea of what it's doing versus genuinely redoing the first movie, right? So I think there's like an inherent tension with like, is this intentionally funny? Is it unintentionally funny? And I also think that a lot of this movie is also unclear as to whether it likes the characters that it has created or like if it hates young people in general and just wants to like kill them all off. I don't know. It's sort of a fascinating artifact. I am sure it's not that one. I don't know.

Listen, I will get into as the delegation who lives with a 25 and a 24 year old and that will be a part of this conversation. I'm 25 and I hated it. Yes, that's where I am. I'm in a midplace. You're in a midplace. All right, Rihanna, you maybe have tipped us off to how you're feeling. Yeah, I did not like this movie. I did not find it enjoyable.

I was rolling my eyes the entire time. I feel like this movie for me is the endpoint of the new gen franchise sequel reboot. And it's hard for me to not compare this movie to like, other franchise reboots that I liked. Like, I think this movie lacks the campiness of the scream reboot. I think it lacks the inventiveness of the Final Destination reboot. The magnitude even of, like, the Halloween reboots, I feel like, is not here. I think this movie kind of just feels disposable.

None of the cast members left a lasting impact on me. The cinematography looks like it's all, like, vertical for TikTok videos. you know, like the type of video designed to watch in like 180 parts. You know, I know what you did last summer, 2025 full movie. What bumped for me is that I feel like this movie doesn't really have any stakes from the OG car accident. You know, I think like something that the first movie, right, the 1997, I know what you did last summer as they repeated several times in the movie. What that movie did is kind of frame the characters in this sort of air of guilt. and grief that they have over hitting somebody with their car.

In this movie, the initial accident, nobody hits somebody with their car. A guy swerves off the road. They can't pull the car back to save the guy. And so they're all guilty about it. And for me, it's like, okay, like there is like a dubious culpability there that does not drive the plot effectively for me. Yeah, I agree with you completely, Rihanna. I found the whole kind of catalyzing scene to me made very, very little sense.

All the arguing that they're doing in the aftermath of like, oh, we have to keep this a secret. I'm sitting here like, why? Right. We've just heard a broad range of opinions. And my opinion is that I like and enjoy Jordan Cruciola enormously. Much like I like and enjoy film enormously, as is my role on this program. I just found this completely. I just thought this was a mess.

I thought the script was bad. I, too, was kind of constantly trying to figure out whether the filmmakers were kind of in on the joke. Kind of like with the recent Jurassic Park movies where they're centered on this concept that the public is bored with dinosaurs, and it's clearly a metaphor for people are bored with Jurassic Park movies, so why are we making one?

This has these several sequences where the Jennifer Love-Huitt character at one point is like, nostalgia just sucks. And it's like, yes, why are you here? I found it so clunky. Particularly, I thought the Freddie Prince Jr. performance was really a problem. I really liked him in this. I loved salt and pepper, grizzled Freddie Prince. I got no problem with salt and pepper or grizzle. I would be the last person who should have a problem with such a thing. I thought his lines were badly written. I thought his lines were badly delivered. I found plot-wise, especially, once you start answering some of these questions and kind of solving the hudan it, obviously,

we're not going to spoil anything. I thought the explanations made no sense at all. I found it completely unconvincing and completely silly, but not necessarily crossing over into fun bad. At times, it tips into fun bad, but compared to a fun bad movie like, say, trap, this film did not reach those dizzying highs of so bad it's good. it mostly was kind of going through the motions and it just didn't work for me at all.

I'm just so far afield from every single one of you. Well, talk about what you love. What did you love? Okay. The thing is I'm watching a summer slasher. Sure. The car crash-ish thing happens. I too was watching it being like, this actually doesn't seem like a big deal and you could explain easily like,

hey, I was out near my car in the road and somebody swerved and this accident occurred and it seemed like a pretty easy explanation. But once we moved on from the same, scene and I understand that those are the table stakes, I don't care. I was like, no, but this is the reason they're all upset. So I know that. So now we're moving forward. I can goldfish in a bowl. And like the cast, that was probably the thing I was most nervous about coming in because even when you have somebody like at the top of their game, like say everything in the production is going

great, cast chemistry from particularly from that Oth's millennial teen horror era is the thing you just cannot bottle. But like Chase Sweet Wonders has a following. I actually loved her in this. I thought she was a really good leading girl. I thought she was really dynamic in that, like, distressy, scream cream kind of role. Madden Klein gave me bimbo supremacy. We don't do great bimboes in horror that much anymore. And her as like the rich girl speaking in sort of like self-help ease, very much kind of like the most sort of stereotypical Gen Z avatar. Thought the true crime girlie was very fun. Terik Withers, I thought he was super compelling in your avatar Ryan Philippi character. I liked the whole, This Place is Gentrifying.

and that caused a problem because I was like, why are we watching a bunch of rich kids this time? It's kind of funny. But then it played out in a way it made sense. I was scared. I got scared throughout this movie. I jumped throughout this movie. I got a gay scene where Renee rapped new music was playing in this movie. This was what I went to a summer movie theater for.

I'm befuddled. I'm out of step, which as often the critical consensus, but truly the passion with which the critical consensus is seemingly blaming this movie for the entire fact of the reboot conceit has blown me clear out of those North Carolinian ocean waters. I could not be more on the other side of everything. I just said, I really, I did not think that this cast had any believable chemistry whatsoever. I really needed more. I am not a hater.

The Milo character absolutely did not register for me. Did not exist. Do not remember. Which is so funny because I think he had the only line delivery that really worked for in the scene where they are researching the 90s phenomena because a conceit of this film is that the events of 1997 have been erased from collective memory for some convoluted reason,

and they realized that, you know, things popped off back then with a note that was sent saying, I know what you did last summer. And Madeline Klein is like, oh, I got a note that said, I know what you did last summer. And the actor who plays Milo was like, yes, that's why we're here. And that deadpan delivery is the only moment where I was like, I think that this cast is in on the joke to a certain degree. But the characters were so thin for me.

The relationships did not feel lived in in any particular way. It really just made me long to watch, like, that Sarah Michelle Geller performance again from the first one. because I feel like that had something tangible that I just did not connect with with this new group. Yeah, I watched the first one right before going to the theater to watch this new one because I was like, okay, let's compare and contrast.

And I think the cast was a really big sticking point for me in both movies because I think the first one, you really get attached to these characters, you know their specific personalities. This one, the new one, it feels kind of like random kind of cobbled together personality traits. And when I was watching, like the motivations for each of the characters felt very strange and kind of unmotivated.

I particularly think of like Chase Sweet Wonders who like has two random sex scenes. You know, like I'm all for bringing sex scenes back into movies, you know, like I think we've been missing them lately. but I felt like this movie was so unnecessarily horny because it's like why is this character having sex in the middle of this movie which is part camp but also like kind of confusing for me I don't know I was just like not really connecting with what these characters were doing and why they were doing it

and it felt like often they just like cast people based on like oh we need a Freddie Prince type character okay like this guy's be Milo, you know, and it's like, all right. Yeah, I definitely felt like several of these people were sort of cast as avatars from the first film, as you guys have mentioned. Oh, for sure. My issues with this film aren't even as much with, like, the young cast and their performance so much as this script, which is so clunky and so all over the place and really feels like it's been workshopped enough times that you have a bunch of scenes that just don't go anywhere. I think when you're talking about like the sex scenes and how out of place those sex scenes, and how out of place those

sex scenes, you know, fit in this film. And I, too, I'm always happy to have, you know, movies be horny. Yeah, exactly. I love De Palma. There's a drought of effectively horny movies, so true. Right. And so that stuff is fine, but it all just feels like a jumble. It feels disjointed. Like, you're seeing a lot of scenes that don't actually have a reason to exist. Yeah. It felt very unmoored. I think what it comes down to for me is, like, by changing what kicks off the movie, by changing it from this is something they actively do. They actively choose to dump a man's body into the water and either drown him or cover up his death. By changing it from something.

They make an explicit decision in that first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They commit a crime. Oh, yeah. They commit a crime. Right. This is not they choose to do something. This is something happens to them.

And I just think changing it from like a purpose. active beginning to a reactive beginning really colors the rest of the film. I do think that there are some jump scares here. I don't like, primarily the jump scare like conceit in this film is just screeching noises and flashback to the accident, which I don't love. That really worked for me. I thought that was actually really well deployed in this one. And normally that feels like this is what you missed on saw to me. But I actually like I really liked the panic flashbacks in this. See, I feel like it goes back to the earlier point of this was a movie created to be spliced into pieces on TikTok. And so you need the flashbacks to remind people of what happened if you missed an earlier clip of the 180 clips that this movie is now in on TikTok.

And so that was an issue for me. And so it's like there are moments here that are really bloody and really gruesome and some really great images like Danica using a blood red bath bomb. Like there are some really smart things, I think. And they're just sort of weighed down by like to Stevens point to me, this script that I'm like, okay, if the villain was gentrification all along, I'd love to see the other parts of this town. I'd love to see the other people who live here. I'd love to have a greater understanding of what this is doing to this community. And the movie felt very insular for too long, I think. Like I was thinking that as well.

Like I was kind of wondering about the greater nature of the town of the movie. Like that is definitely something I was doing. I can see how if you were unsure of like how it on it are the people in this movie of like the satire of the joke or the loving winks. I just felt very bought in. I don't like to cite like the person who made this movie. But like I feel like with Jen, Kate and Robinson and she co-wrote it with Sam Lanski. You look at the stuff that she's done and was sweet vicious and with do revenge. It feels like she's such an in on the joke kind of entire sensibility.

and you look at the humor that excites her and the characters that she chooses to write. There was never a moment for me where I was going to, I think, question whether or not she loved these characters and she loved their sense of humor they were going for and their personalities. So I think, foundationally,

I wasn't having that undermining feeling that might have matriculated out throughout the rest of the movie and maybe, like, shooting holes in it the entire time. Like, that was something that was very much built in the foundation of how I was watching.

It was like understanding that for being like, yeah, I believe, she is on the same page as these characters and she knows where the humor of this is going. So I was like linked arms with her sensibility in that way. That's interesting. I feel like when it comes to the director and the way that the script is written, it's a vibe that you have to catch and I just don't catch it. Yeah, yeah, I hear that.

I hear that. I like saw that the director of this movie had directed two movies prior to this one. Do Revenge and Someone Great. Two movies that I really did not like and also would give two stars. so a great consistent filmography to me. I absolutely, that is not anything I would even try and make an argument. It's just like if it's not the vibe that you've ever caught, there's no reason why you would catch it here.

Like, if those movies didn't sit right with you, this is not going to be the one that converts you to this person. I 100% agree with that. Yeah. I want to ask two out of five or two out of ten. Like, what star level are we talking here? Your question. Your question.

I would give it, you know, I on Letterbox, they gave it a two out of five. I think I would bump it down to a one and a half out of five the more I think about it. You know, one of those things that like you sit with it and you wrestle with it and you're like, actually, I think I got to bump this down half star. Okay, my one question. As with the original, what would it be? And I know what you did last summer movie if it was not compared to scream. This is the movie's legacy.

This is the movie's bags that it carries with it. Absolutely. You said that you preferred like the direction that like the screen movies took. What was it about that in this movie's closest comp where in the movie's, the parlance of our times, one might have described in 1997, I know Jude did last summer, his screams quote unquote reheated nachos. What did you find that the revamps of scream were doing more effectively in this movie's sort of older sister kind of comparison that you weren't feeling in this one? Yeah, I mean, I think like the scream reboots, the closest analog I have is like the

campiness when you're rebooting a franchise in horror now, you know, there like needs to be an element of like being in on it. Or you have to like, subvert the formula. At this point, we've seen so many horror reboots that are about, like, trauma and trauma sticks with us. And the trauma is around and we need to acknowledge it. And I think what the Scream reboots did really well is, granted, they were, like, one of the first in recent memory to do that.

But also, they leaned into the campiness that is, like, always been inherent to the Scream franchise. I think the I know what you did last summer, the first one specifically, not talking about the brandy one, not talking about the brandy one, not talking. about I'll always know what you did last summer. Yes, the source code. Right. The first movie, I don't think it's particularly campy.

I think it has an air of dread to it. I think there's a really heavy emotional guilt that lies over the movie. I know what you did last summer is a sincere movie. Right. And I think what the screen reboots did well is tap into the camp that was in the original movie. There is really no camp in the original I know what you did last summer. And that's why if there was camp in this, because I don't know. I didn't see it, but I'm sure there is.

It did not land for me. Gotcha. Okay. I think also the new screams, actually, I don't really enjoy. I feel like they're chasing the feeling of watching Skeet, Allrich, suck fake blood off his fingers. Like, those movies to me are, like, chasing the high of that image. And I don't think that they get there. But I do agree with you that I think one of my biggest issues here was just,

tonality and the fact that it doesn't really fit what I think of the lineage of this movie, which is really about the impending doom of becoming an adult. And I just, I didn't get that from this, really. I didn't get the sense that, like, I don't know what any of these people were doing before they came back home, you know? So it just felt like that level of, like, their characters who are created to be creatively killed off. I wanted more than just like the blood that spills out of their bodies if that, you know, makes sense. Yeah. I think a movie that I really liked from this year is final

destination bloodlines because like you watch it and it's like the way that these characters are being killed off and disposed of is obviously like the main event. But when you compare something like that with the new I know what you did last summer, it's like the kills don't really land super well, because you're like, oh, okay, like, you know, maybe the hook is tired at this point. I don't know. Honestly, the best part of the movie for me is when they shot somebody with a harpoon gun.

I was like, okay, yes. That was outstanding. I was like, we need more of that. That was outstanding. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I was just looking for something that I think wasn't there. Yeah.

Gotcha. Okay. And the award for outstanding achievement in the field of harpooning goes to... All right, we want to know what you think about. I know what you think about. last summer, find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH

and on letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Roxanna Haddadi, Rihanna Cruz, Jordan Cruciola. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Thank you. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.