I Know What You Did Last Summer Trailer Brings Back Original Slasher Survivors

When the "Scream" franchise was successfully restarted in 2022 by the directing team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, fans of 1990s slasher flicks immediately began clamoring for a third trip to the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" universe — at which point they were reminded of the direct-to-DVD "I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer" from 2006, and realized this would actually be the fourth entry in the property.

If you're now scrambling to catch up with this third sequel that you either skipped or plain didn't know about prior to reading the last paragraph, a word of advice: don't bother. It's set in a different town and introduces a whole new group of characters who get stalked and offed by the hook-wielding Fisherman. Also, it's awful. Because of that, I sincerely doubt it will receive more than possibly a jokey reference in the forthcoming "I Know What You Did Last Summer," which, much like 2022's "Scream," will attempt to jump start a horror franchise that's been in mothballs for almost 20 years.

This new film will pick up some 27 years after 1998's "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" and bring back Jennifer Love Hewitt's Julie James and Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Roy Bronson. They'll be joined by fresh blood in the form of Chase Sui Wonders (who's currently killing it on "The Studio"), Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, and The Rocketeer himself, Billy Campbell! Plot details have been kept under wraps since the film was announced, but we do know the film is being directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson ("Do Revenge") from a screenplay that was initially written by Leah McKendrick ("Scrambled") and subsequently reworked by Robinson and Sam Lansky (the ghostwriter of Britney Spears' "The Woman in Me").

So, why has the Fisherman returned and, presumably, started killing again? Let's check out the brand new trailer!

Some things never change, it seems, whether it's young people inadvertently killing someone with their reckless summer escapades and covering up the aftermath (only for a wrathful hook-wielding killer in a slicker to show up one year later and begin hunting them down) or the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" franchise taking its cues from the "Scream" movies. Just as Wes Craven's original 1996 slasher smash-hit "Scream" birthed a wave of like-minded horror films led by the Jim Gillespie-directed "I Know What You Did Last Summer" a year after, the success of 2022's "Scream" has led to Gillespie's movie getting its own decades-later legacy sequel featuring a mostly new cast and the few survivors from the previous films ("I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer" aside).

Will it work? The "Scream" movies are going strong as ever for the moment (even after the hiccups that led to "Scream VII" losing most of its original creative team and "Scream" creator Kevin Williamson coming aboard to take the reins), so it's certainly possible. The "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (2025) trailer itself makes the film look fairly generic, but Robinson proved she knows how to take '90s tropes and infuse them with fresh life with the delightful Hitchcock-meets-"Clueless" pastiche that is "Do Revenge," so that's encouraging. Really, though, between landing the directing job on "Scream VII" and Robinson's movie reviving a slasher franchise that he helped launch in the first place (recall that he penned the original "I Know What You Did Last Summer" based on Lois Duncan's 1973 book of the same name), it's Williamson who's winning the '90s horror nostalgia game right now.

"I Know What You Did Last Summer" opens in theaters on July 18, 2025. Its official synopsis reads as follows:

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer ... and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.