The New I Know What You Did Last Summer Trailer Just Dropped — & Fine, I’ll Watch The Movie

I can practically hear what you’re thinking: Another nostalgic franchise brought back to life? Can’t they come up with anything original? And, OK, fair point. But as someone who is also a little burned out on reboots, yet also someone who is a diehard fan of ‘90s slasher movies, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been reserving judgment on the I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025 sequel until the trailer dropped. Well, it just did, and it feels like a foregone conclusion that I’ll be sitting in a movie theater in a few months, hoping that Freddie Prinze Jr. can survive another summer in Southport.

Sony Pictures released the first trailer for the newest sequel in the franchise on April 22, which introduces a fresh group of young Southport residents being terrorized by what appears to be a rain-slicker-wearing, hook-wielding homicidal maniac. Sound familiar? The casting is smart, bringing in a bunch of buzzy young Hollywood stars — Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Sarah Pidgeon (The Wilds), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), and Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid) — while looping in both Prinze as Ray Bronson and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Julie James, who were introduced in the OG 1997 film.

According to the 2025 sequel’s synopsis, it sounds like the past is indeed doomed to repeat itself in the coastal North Carolina town where the franchise takes place: “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 that 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.”

Will having Ray and Julie to lean on help the new group of teens survive, though? Wouldn’t make for much of a long-awaited movie follow-up if it did — and it’s clear from the trailer that a few newbies definitely don’t make it out alive. Still, we can probably expect that the former (maybe current??) ‘90s couple will come out looking like 2025 heroes in some regard.

In the trailer, Prinze’s Ray rushes into a crowd at one point, yelling, “This isn’t the first time there’s been violence like this in Southport!” Hewitt’s Julie James seems more reticent to get involved but gets tracked down by the teens. When asked for help, she slowly turns, saying, “I just have one question: What did you do last summer?”

Of course, even with fan favorites like FJP and JLH, this is the fourth film in a throwback franchise. Will it feel fresh enough to bring in millennials and today’s younger audience? Director Kaytin Robinson hopes so, aiming to strike the perfect balance to pull both into the theater.

“Visually, for me, it was about going back to my biggest touchstone for this movie, Jaws,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I was like, ‘I want beautiful colors, beautiful setting, blue water, red blood.’ For me, it’s kind of like a throwback, and what I hope is that it feels like it’s fresh in its nostalgia.”

My not-so-secret hope for the 2025 sequel? That, in addition to Prinze and Hewitt, one more star from the ‘90s films makes a cameo.

No, it can’t be Prinze’s wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar — Robinson swears she tried to convince Gellar to no avail (I mean, in Gellar’s defense, her character Helen for sure died). She does get a tiny nod in the trailer when a photo of Helen wearing her Fourth of July Croaker Beauty Pageant crown is shown leaning against a grave.

The person I’d love to see pop up is Brandy, who played Julie’s college roommate and best friend Karla in the 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. And although nothing has been leaked confirming as much, Brandy has already said she’d be down to bring back her badass character.

“I need them to give me a call because I survived in that movie!” she told The Hollywood Reporter last year. “I came out in the end, bloodied up, ready to go.”

Guess we’ll all find out when 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer hits theaters on July 18.