I Know What You Did Last Summer director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson has spoken about the importance of its legacy characters. The 2025 movie is the fourth feature-length installment in the slasher franchise, which follows groups of teens being targeted by a slicker-wearing, hook-wielding killer. The upcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer features a new crop of teens being targeted for a vehicular manslaughter they covered up the year before, aided by returning survivors Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), who were central to the original 1997 movie and its 1998 sequel.
ScreenRant‘s own Brandon Zachary was in attendance at an I Know What You Did Last Summer trailer launch event on Saturday, where members of the cast and crew spoke about the movie during a Q&A afterward. During the conversation, Robinson shared that she “worked really closely” with both returning stars while developing the story, making sure they crafted “versions of the character[s] that felt right to them.”
She revealed that the movie will explore how the trauma of their first two battles with the fisherman killer have shaped Julie and Ray’s lives as adults. This will allow the movie to have “a real emotional undercurrent“ beneath the fun storyline and “great kill sequences.” Read Robinson’s full quote below:
I mean, there was no movie without them. [I] kind of came to both of them, told them what I wanted to do, and gave them the spiel of like, this is why I think this is fun now. This is why this movie should exist now. And we worked really closely. I worked with both Jen and Freddie really closely on making sure that it felt like versions of the character that felt right to them. And so it was a lot of conversations. It was a lot of talking, because there is like, while this movie is really, really fun and it has a lot of great kill sequences, there is a real emotional undercurrent to it.
And like we were talking about how traumatized would Julie James be? Like, you would be traumatized, and they both would be traumatized. And this movie is about how trauma kind of informs and shapes and changes you underneath all of the very fun screaming gags. So yeah, it was about figuring out exactly what these people would be like today, later in adulthood, having lived with what happened to them for as many years as they have.
What This Means For I Know What You Did Last Summer
The Legacy Sequel Could Cement A Major Horror Franchise
The fact that Julie and Ray are returning to square off against the I Know What You Did Last Summer fisherman one more time after nearly 30 years is already remarkable. In doing so, they join a heap of legendary legacy characters who have returned for major sequels in recent years, including Bludworth (Tony Todd) in 2025’s Final Destination Bloodlines, Dewey (David Arquette), Sidney (Neve Campbell), and Gale (Courteney Cox) in 2022’s Scream, and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in 2018’s Halloween.
The stars’ most recent appearances in their respective franchises prior to those legacy sequels were 2011’s Final Destination 5, 2011’s Scream 4, and 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection.
Especially if the returning characters are as carefully calibrated as Robinson promises, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer could finally cement the series as a major horror franchise. Although the first two movies were financially successful, a fully fleshed-out franchise never materialized. It only continued in spurts over the ensuing decades, with a 2006 direct-to-video standalone sequel that earned a rare 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a short-lived 2021 Prime Video television reboot that only lasted for one eight-episode season.
Our Take On The Director’s I Know What You Did Last Summer Comments
Having The Sequel Be About Trauma Makes Sense
Generally, the use of the word “trauma” when describing the driving force of a modern horror movie makes it sound to me like a generic “elevated horror” piece, given how many horror movies in recent years have specifically been metaphors for grief and trauma. However, utilizing this approach makes sense for legacy horror sequels like I Know What You Did Last Summer. Returning characters are going to necessarily be shaped by their past experiences, so hopefully Robinson and her co-writer Sam Lansky have found a way to carefully wield that element in a way that feels fresh and exciting.
