SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for I Know What You Did Last Summer. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
In the last 15 years, we’ve seen a whole lot of legacyquels – from Tron: Legacy, to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, to Jurassic World: Dominion, to Scream – and the typical approach when it comes to classic characters is to play things safe. Heroes from the 1970s/1980s/1990s remain heroes today, and there is often an attempt to echo traits that made audiences fall in love with them in the first place. That’s not a game that’s played by the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, however, and it’s a significant reason why I think the film deserved a better response than what it got when it arrived in theaters a few months ago.
Now, the 2025 movie is available to stream with a Netflix subscription – and with its arrival, I feel it’s the perfect time to share a story from my interview with writer/director Jennifer Katlin Robinson and star Freddie Prinze Jr. during the film’s Los Angeles press day this summer. As captured in the video above, I used my time with the filmmaker and the actor to dive headlong into spoilers and ask about the reveal of Prinze’s Ray Bronson as the new incarnation of The Fisherman.
Robinson explained that it was one of two things she knew that she wanted to do instantly when she was approached by Sony about the project. One of the priorities was not making an overt franchise reboot by introducing new characters and keeping them alive; in her words, she wanted to “kill basically everyone.” The other thing she wanted to do was have Ray be the killer, which was a conclusion she came to after thinking about the lives of the legacy characters. Said the director,
I knew that when I really sat down and thought about where would these people be and how could this change a person – especially knowing that they each have kind of their tethers in the movie, in the young cast –what would that look like? And so I said, 'I think Ray would be the killer. I want Ray to be the killer.' And Sony said yes. And then I was very nervous. I brought it to Freddie, and Freddie said, 'Yes.'
In the continuity of the film, Ray is a single bar owner who has long been divorced from Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James, and while he still lives in Southport, North Carolina, he is not exactly happy with the town. An effort to protect the reputation of the area, the history with The Fisherman in the late 1990s is hidden away, and it literally drives him crazy that the most traumatic event of his life would become a secret. He plans for revenge, and he teams up with his employee, Sarah Pidgeon’s Stevie Ward, to get it.
The big and surprising twist couldn’t have happened if Freddie Prinze Jr. either didn’t want to make the movie or felt overprotective of the character, but that isn’t what happened. Instead, the actor recognized that the surprise would upset some people, but he recognized the reality in it. He explained,
She took a big swing, and there's a lot of pressure that comes along with that. I know that it's gonna make some diehard fans upset because it should break their hearts. That was kind of my goal in the performance. It's why I try to play him so vulnerable and broken, in the hopes for that. That's all deliberate.
There is a legitimate emotional foundation established to have Ray become the killer for the film… but at the same time, he is a killer and a very dangerous individual who poses a real threat to I Know What You Did Last Summer’s protagonists in the third act. While Freddie Prinze Jr. is best known for his roles as good guys and romantic leads, playing this turn was something he was very excited to try. He continued,
I've never gotten to do that, ever. I've never gotten to be the man in the mask. I've never gotten to be the monster. And Hollywood is not gonna allow that ever. And when she was like, 'You get to do this, you get to be this,' I just had to know why and how, and once those questions were answered, I said, 'Yes.' And it was before the script was even written. It was just based off the idea and her thought and effort and energy that she put into Ray and where he would be now at this point in his life.
Slasher movies can be fun to watch a second time when you know who the killer is, as you can truly see how all of the puzzle pieces fit together. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a prime example, and in addition to it now being available to stream on Netflix, it’s also available for digital rental/purchase and on both 4K UHD and Blu-ray. And if you didn’t stick around for the end credits scene last time, you can check them out now!
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