Initially, this was just another film review—one where I harp on the endless points of criticism concerning the latest reboot of an old franchise. However, I took a long pause after this latest infraction. I realized that this doesn’t begin or end with the unceremonious release of Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. The real problem lies in the oversaturation of nostalgia-heavy references that commingle with our hostile sociopolitical environment. It’s no coincidence that as our world quickly barrels into right-wing dystopia, so does our media.
Nostalgia is the ultimate killer in this slasher and our culture. Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer joins the ranks of soulless remakes, reboots, and refried stories that seem inescapable these days. This latest installment of the franchise doesn’t even try to escape its legacy or reinvent itself. Instead, it does one of the most tedious and egregious things yet: it tries and fails to outsmart its audience.
Set in the same small town of Southport, North Carolina, where it all started, there’s a new batch of young people ready to commit one of the worst decisions of their lives. After one night of drinking and vaping, they trigger one of the most unimaginative revenge plots yet. It’s been 27 years since the Southport murders took place at the hands of the hook-wielding fisherman who, oddly, goes unnoticed in a large crowd, while wielding said giant hook. To be fair, there have been a couple of iterations of this franchise that never seem to stick. There’s the odd sequel everyone refuses to acknowledge, starring Brandi Norwood, along with Jennifer Love Hewitt reprising the role of Julie James. There’s also the even lesser-known TV series from 2021.
Not much sets this one apart from the original 1997 version of the same name (they couldn’t even bother to update the title for this one). It’s still a string of naïve young college-age students played by Madeline Clyne, Chase Sui Wonders, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, and Jonah Hauer-King. Admittedly, this new cast doesn’t quite shine like the original’s stars. This explains the decision to bring some of them back from the dead, both figuratively and literally, to carry a bulk of the film. It adds to the already heavy load this new iteration is holding. So, unsurprisingly, by act two, it all falls apart into a giant mess of tacky memory-lane anecdotes and narrative dissonance.
Ultimately, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer will come and go, much like every Disney live-action remake. Every Marvel film post Iron Man, or the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, coming out in 2026. Or maybe the sequel to Freaky Friday will do the trick and stick around longer than a month (it won’t). All of this to say, remakes and reboots made a comeback with an eerie parallel to the “comeback” of right-wing sentiment.
Going into the faux comfort of the past won’t absolve us of our futures. It won’t help us face the reality that is already here in the form of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. It won’t save us from conservative reforms and legislatures meant to strip us of our rights. By silencing our voices and pushing us into financial and social corners, we’ll have a hard time gaining our freedom in the future, if there is even a future to be free in. As I sat through yet another laborious and hostile reboot in a darkened theater, hoping to find some merit in it, I realized there was none.
It struck me, in watching Freddie Prinze Jr reprise his role as Ray Bronson, that this is it. We are in an active zone of cultural war. We are going back in time and “killing our darlings” in hopes of securing a “future” that doesn’t exist. We’re not going back to learn from our mistakes. We romanticize our mistakes and forge distorted futures with them in the process. The vast “reveal” in this film is that cynicism wins in the end. That succumbing to our traumas and staying in the past is the only path towards a false sense of justice. Which is what many right-wing theories rely on. In the “good old times,” a particular image of whiteness sourced all the power. 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer only doubles down on that. It adds fuel to the proverbial fire that the film thinks it’s trying to put out.
It’s not so much our culture’s inability to move past the stories that we once held dear. It’s about taking what we know and wagging our finger at it, saying, “I told you so.” That where we were then, in comparison to now, is such a stark negative difference; maybe we should’ve stayed there in the first place. But that’s a fallacy. It’s a tantalizing fantasy that fascism sets up. That social change is futile when every new generation simply swings from one side of the pendulum to the other. But that’s where fascism thrives. In stagnation and debilitation. In holding on to itself with a white knuckle grip. And that’s what all of these films and TV shows do. They feed into the sense of nostalgia for a time that never was.
We can’t keep going back into the past if the only thing we’re willing to do is use it for our comfort. It won’t do anything more than arm the already strong forces chipping away at civil rights and tampering with the progress of others. Walter Benjamin writes, “reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us.” Simply put, our past is inherently biased by our own experiences and emotions tied to those memories. There is no reclaiming of “former glory” days when your role within the confines of modern culture and society is that of those who never experienced that glory.
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