Between the late 70s and the mid-90s, horror cinema was dominated by slashers. Supernatural serial killers who hunted down teenagers that had committed some kind of moral failing and had to be punished by the murderous headlines of their films. Becoming true icons of their franchises, the most popular are now figures of pop culture. Freddy Kruger, Jason Vorhees, and Michael Myers are fondly and passionately remembered, largely due to their immense charisma and personality. And the fact that two of them didn’t even utter a word in more than ten films.

But even the slashers that didn’t have that level of impact were based on this premise and this appeal. That the titular slasher, that mysterious and seemingly invincible killer, had a charisma that made it easy to side with him, even if the protagonists, those suffering teenagers, didn’t necessarily deserve to die. This also happened in one of the most revered franchises of the genre from the 90s: I Know What You Did Last Summer.

A long-standing franchise

I Know What You Did Last Summer was born in 1973 as a young adult suspense novel written by Lois Duncan. At the time of its publication, it received a very modest reception, and that is understandable. Although it is entertaining on the thriller side, managing to maintain suspense, the writing is not particularly brilliant and the characters lack interesting development, making everything rely on the interest of its premise and the strength of its development: a group of teenage kids receive a mysterious note saying “I know what you did last summer,” referring to what they did when they hit a boy on a bike whom they thought was dead and believed no one had seen them.

Although the novel never manages to elevate its interest beyond the strength of its premise, it is memorable enough that more than 20 years later it was revived in Hollywood. Because in 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer was released.

Directed by Jim Gillespie with a script by Kevin Williamson, who had previously written both Scream and Dawson’s Creek, they decided to base it on the novel but adapt it to their own interests. They took the basic premise we have already discussed, but the rest of the story would focus on how they are stalked by a killer with a hook who seeks to murder them in the most brutal and agonizing way possible, in true slasher style.

The movie was a success in every possible way. Costing just 17 million dollars, it managed to gross over 125. The reissue of the book for the movie’s release, which was not a great success at the time, sold 517,000 copies in just over a year. It received numerous award nominations and even though the critics did not adore it, they did not consider it an absolute failure: there was some dissent, with part of the critics tearing it apart, but another part claiming it was a good product of its time, considering that the slasher genre was in decline.

This led to a series of sequels of which only the first one is understood. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer premiered just a year later, in 1998, and, with a cost of only 24 million, it managed to gross 84 million at the box office. But without any award nominations and being absolutely panned by critics, they decided to give the franchise a break.

An interesting return to the origins

Because in 2006 they released, directly on DVD, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer 3. An even worse disaster than the second movie that seemed to condemn the film to oblivion forever: it was no longer the era of slashers. Or so it seemed until 2021 when they decided to release an adaptation on Prime Video that was more faithful to the original novel, titled I Know What You Did Last Summer, with James Wan as executive producer and belonging to the same cinematic universe. Although it was canceled in its first season, the reception was lukewarm, compared to the terrible reception of the two previous adaptations, and perhaps that encouraged them to the movie that is now coming to streaming: the definitive return of the franchise.

I Know What You Did Last Summer is not a reboot, but a direct sequel to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Taking place years later and following the surviving characters and how they lead their lives after the events of the first two films, it ignores everything that happened after those to focus on the films that were a success.

With a budget of 18 million dollars and revenues of just over 64 million at the box office, it was a modest success during its run in theaters. Critics were, once again, almost enthusiastic about the film, stating that its entire value lay in being a return to the origins of the franchise, appealing to nostalgia more than to a unique personality. Although that was precisely what captivated its fans: it is a film that knows how to capture what made the original movies interesting and replicate it in 2025, even if it doesn’t do anything particularly original with it.

If you fondly remember the franchise and want to see how good this third installment is, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is available on Movistar Plus+ since February 19. However, we recommend that you don’t do anything questionable during the summer…