Look this has never happen to me but it was one after another, last night was "Keeper (2025)" and now saw the most part of "I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)" during lunch at work and Im not going to sit here and pretend this movie didnt piss me off, it absolutely did because the twist with Freddie Prinze Jr being the killer had so much potential to be something really cool but they fumbled it so damn bad. The idea of trauma changing people over time is right there in front of them, they had it in their hands and instead of running with it they just threw in some weak excuse about a coworker he sees as a daughter and real estate drama that nobody asked for, come on now if you are going to turn Ray into a murderer after 27 years you better give me a damn good reason for it. The only reason Im making this posts is for other not waist their time and its a known franchise name, "Keepers" not even going to write about. Not just oh he is upset about gentrification and his employee had a bad day, thats not enough and anyone who thinks it is probably hasnt seen the original movies or doesnt remember how solid Ray was as a character back then, this whole setup feels like they wrote the twist first and then tried to work backwards to justify it without putting in the actual effort to make it believable. The movie spends so much time trying to please old school watchers with callbacks and nostalgia bait that when they drop that reveal it feels like a slap in the face instead of a smart decision, like they were more worried about getting Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie back on screen together than actually writing a story that makes sense or respects what came before it, thats a huge problem when your entire selling point is bringing back these characters we supposedly care about from 1997.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4045450/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Rottentomatoes Rating
This whole thing kicks off with a new group of friends heading out to watch fireworks on July 4th because apparently nobody in this franchise has learned that July 4th is cursed as hell for them, they pile into a car and go joy ridding up some windy mountain road where surprise surprise an accident happens and someone dies. But here is the thing that really got under my skin about this setup, in the original movie the group actually hit someone with their car and then made the choice to dump the body in the ocean knowing he might still be alive, that was messed up and gave them a real reason to feel guilty and deserve what was coming after them, it was a deliberate action they took that crossed a line and made them responsible for his death. In this new version one of the kids is goofing around in the middle of the street when a pickup truck driver swerves to avoid hitting him, the truck breaks through the guardrail and the friends try to grab it but it slips from their hands and falls off the cliff killing the driver, yes they were fooling around causing an accident although you can also argue they didnt push the guy down the cliff, for the most part they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and yeah they covered it up but even that felt forced because one of the kids dads is this rich real estate developer who owns half the town and could have easily made the whole thing disappear legally without any issues at all. So right from the start the stakes feel off, the guilt does not hit the same way, the motivation for everything that happens after doesnt hold up and it just gets worse from there as the movie goes on piling on more problems that the script cant handle or doesnt even try to fix properly, in this sense its like they almost tame down the movie motives, they get the classic I know what you did last summer note a year later and people start dying one by one with the fisherman back doing his thing with the hook and rain slicker.
Now, the podcast girl, was so over the top she basically spoiled the whole thing early on for anyone paying attention to what was happening, this character shows up in town because she hosts some true crime podcast called Live Laugh Slaughter which is already annoying but thats ok, she is there to investigate the 1997 killings from the first movie because I guess thats her content now. She is wearing a Helen Shivers shirt and acting like a walking trivia book, nobody talks like that about real murder victims even if they have a creepy podcast about unsolved cases or whatever, it felt like the writers were trying to be clever and meta by including this whole podcaster angle but they didnt know what to do with it so they just made her this cartoonish character who gets killed pretty quick anyway. The writing in this thing is just terrible all around, every conversation feels like someone reading off a script instead of actual human beings talking to each other, they explain everything three times in a row just to make sure the audience gets it even though we got it the first time, theres a scene early on where one girl is trying on a dress talking to herself about her ex boyfriend then the next scene her friend asks her about the same ex boyfriend then the scene after that the guys are talking about the same situation and its like damn do you think we all have goldfish memory? who cant follow a simple plot point without you repeating it over and over again.
The Sarah Michelle Gellar cameo was nice I guess but it felt cheap just there to make people clap in the theater and remember the good old days when this franchise actually had something going for it instead of whatever this mess turned out to be, she shows up in a dream sequence that one of the new characters has and it doesnt make any sense why this girl would be dreaming about Helen Shivers since she never met her and has no connection to her except being the new version of that character I suppose. The de aging CGI looked fine I will give them that but the whole scene felt like a waste of time and money, like they had an extra million dollars lying around and Sarah wanted to be in the movie with her husband so they crowbarred her in there somehow without thinking about whether it actually served the story at all, it does not add anything to the plot, it does not move things forward, its just there for fan service. While I appreciate seeing Sarah again because she was always the best performer out of that original cast it still felt hollow and pointless in the end, they could have used that screen time to actually develop the relationship between Ray and Julie or explain why their marriage fell apart over the years, show us how the events from 1997 broke them down slowly, but no we get a random dream sequence instead that looks cool for five seconds then we move on and never mention it again.
This franchise works best as an anthology where every movie is a new group of people dealing with a different accident and a new killer coming after them, not trying to stretch out the same story with legacy characters who should have moved on by now and be living their lives somewhere far away from Southport where all this shit keeps happening. The twist with Ray being the second killer alongside Stevie had balls but zero brains behind it, the motivation is so weak that I actually laughed when he explained it to Julie at the end, hes mad because the town tried to erase what happened to them in 1997 and also because Stevie was connected to the guy who died in the accident so he decided to help her kill the group responsible, are you serious right now. Thats the best you could come up with, Ray Bronson who was the most level headed stable character in the first two movies suddenly snaps and becomes a serial killer because of some gentrification drama and a promise he made to Stevies parents to look out for her, get the hell out of here with that nonsense. If you want me to believe that this character went down such a dark path you need to earn it with actual writing and character development, show me how the trauma from 1997 ate away at him over the years, show me how his marriage to Julie fell apart and why, show me something that makes this transformation feel real instead of just telling me thats how it is now deal with it because the movie does not do any of that work. It just drops the reveal and expects us to be shocked and impressed when really most of us saw it coming from a mile away because the red herrings were so obvious that anyone whos seen more than one horror movie could cross them off the list immediately, honestly this looks more like a money grabber than anything else, I wont say it was unbearable and the production was ok so the most I can give this movie is a 6.5/10 and thats just me because I know most people, specially anyone who have seen the original movies would just destroy it online with ratings under 5/10.
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