It was either I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) or Smurfs this weekend.  Already, you can tell that none of the choices were appealing.  However, there is more to this story that makes it worse.  I opted for I Know What You Did Last Summer because I suspected it would be the less annoying of the two.  As the opening credits rolled, I lightly chortled at the irony of one of the production companies behind the movie being called Original Film.  If you are not aware, I Know What You Did Last Summer is a sequel for a movie that came out the better part of three decades ago.  There is more.  This company is also tied to the Fast and Furious and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises, as well as a number of other unoriginal titles.  Maybe their corporate appellation is meant to be a joke?  What is decidedly not funny is I Know What You Did Last Summer, even when it is intentionally trying to lighten the mood during the sadly typical slasher flick fare.  Since this is not my usual cinematic choice, it is time for me to lean into my Faith.

The only thing into which Ava Brooks (Chase Sui Wonders) is leaning into at the beginning of I Know What You Did Last Summer is her nostalgia for being back in her coastal North Carolina hometown of Southport.  She has returned after some time away doing . . . something (college?) to attend her best friend, Danica Richards’ (Madelyn Cline), engagement party.  Danica is to marry her longtime boyfriend Tedy Spencer (Tyriq Withers), whose family are influential real estate moguls in town.  At the soiree, Ava is bound to encounter Milo Griffin (Jonah Hauer-King), her high school boyfriend who is also close friends with Teddy.  She still likes him despite the time apart.  Everyone inevitably meets, and since it is the Fourth of July, they decide to drive to the place where they used to watch fireworks.  As they are about to leave, another of their old friends, Stevie Ward (Sarah Pidgeon), is invited to come.  She had been somewhat separated from them in the intervening years, having gotten into trouble and only recently getting her life on track.  She had been a part of the staff catering the evening, but it is not long before they are all going down the road having a good time.  The shenanigans continue when they reach their spot, with Teddy dancing around in traffic and daring cars to hit him.  He is saved by Milo from one car, but as they are crossing the street, another vehicle swerves to miss them and goes into the guard rail.  The metal barrier is there to protect errant traffic from going over a cliff, and the pick-up truck is teetering on the edge.  A few try to stop it from tipping over while the others fail to get the car door open in time before gravity sends it plummeting below.  While Teddy has the wherewithal to finally call the authorities, it is also him who convinces the rest to leave the scene of the accident before the police arrive.  Ava objects, but is convinced to go when she is told that they will go to the precinct.  However, Danica drives them back to Teddy’s mansion, and there they swear each other to secrecy.  A year passes and Ava is once more returning to Southport.  On the airplane she meets an . . . um . . . friend, who turns out to be a serial killer podcaster named Tyler Trevino (Gabriette Bechtel).  She has come to Southport to broadcast about the killings that happened there in 1997, and are the subject that launched this unfortunate franchise.  My reason for tiptoeing around her relationship with Ava is because they have an amorous encounter in the airport bathroom.  This is not mere Catholic disapproval because it also does nothing for the plot.  There are other changes.  The bridal shower Ava attends for Danica features the latter about to be wedded to somebody other than Teddy, who has let his life spiral since, er, last summer.  During the festivities, Danica gets the eponymous note.  Trying to hide her surprise, she asks who wrote it, but no one volunteers.  That night, however, it is her new fiancé, Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), who is the first victim of the murderer who stalks their victims dressed as a fisherman with an ice pick.  Why nobody recognizes this attire is beyond me, but that is a discussion for another time.  As before, the Spencer family tries to keep the death hushed, not wanting to disrupt holiday tourism.  It becomes harder to ignore when Tyler, who manages to meet back up with Ava, is killed, her body strung up in public.  During the resultant public outcry, a figure emerges from the crowd, Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.), who demands the authorities do something.  He has some experience with this as he had survived the 1997 attacks.  Another person who lived through those times is Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt).  She is approached by Ava, who asks for advice on what they should do.  Julie recommends they try to find any connections between the person who died in the truck and anyone in town.  Doing so leads to a number of near misses with the ice pick wielding mad man, but they learn that the deceased had been associated with Pastor Judah (Austin Nichols).  Ava and Danica go to his church to see if they can find anything to link him to the murders, and Danica uncovers a suspicious collection of material about the deaths.  They go to the authorities, who detain them for hours.  As they are in police headquarters, the murderer offs Teddy and his father, Grant Spencer (Billy Campbell).  When their bodies are found, Ava, Danica, and Stevie also locate Milo’s rotting corpse in the back of his car.  In the chaos, Ray recommends that the girls attempt a getaway on Teddy’s boat.  Here come the big twists, though.  It turns out that Stevie had been dating the man who drove off the cliff, and she had been killing everyone out of a desire for revenge.  While at sea, she stabs Danica and throws her body overboard, but Ava is saved by Ray.  However, Ray is Stevie’s accomplice, his motivation being that he did not want his name to be forgotten from what happened in 1997. . . .  Right.  Anyway, Julie figures this out and arrives just in the nick of time to rescue Ava.  Danica washes up on shore and her and Ava walk out of the hospital some days later to get a bite to eat.

The eating scene is not the last shot of I Know What You Did Last Summer.  There is a mid-credits addition where Julie visits her old college roommate, Karla Wilson (Brandy Norwood), who had been in one of the previous entries in this franchise.  Franchises.  I suppose I should not complain as my favorite movie, Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back (1980), is part of one of the biggest set of films of all time.  Arguably, Star Wars can be given a pass because it builds upon a larger galaxy where the number and types of stories are theoretically limitless.  With I Know What You Did Last Summer, they are bound by the modes and themes of slasher films.  As a Catholic and a human being, I do not understand the appeal of these movies.  As the previous sentence suggests, they are formulaic.  Indeed, if you are familiar with any of them, you probably would not need to have read my synopsis to know what happens.  As a Catholic, I spared you some of the gory details.  And therein lies my other complaint.  Sometimes these flicks attempt to make these characters have some kind of flaw in order to “justify” their deaths.  In this case, aside from Ava, they are all complicit in not doing enough to report their involvement in someone else’s accidental death.  They also did not directly murder the person, and tried to save him.  Granted, this does not excuse them from giving a statement to the police, but I did not get the motivation for Ray or Stevie.  Ray’s is particularly ridiculous, but neither does a desire for revenge give someone a moral high ground to begin murdering people as with Stevie.  Catholicism says all life is precious and redeemable, and killing them does not give them the chance we all deserve for repentance.  As such, why do we enjoy watching people die?

Speaking of people dying, one of the reasons why Ava and Danica suspect Pastor Judah’s involvement in the murders in I Know What You Did Last Summer is when he comments on how death is part of God’s natural order.  It goes along with the creepy diary Danica locates about the deaths.  With such a character, one can make the connection to Hollywood’s apparent distrust of Christianity.  On the same token, perhaps it is wrong of me to, as a Catholic, roll my eyes when Danica goes on about astrology deciding key aspects of her life.  For people who believe in such things, I have a feeling that if one were to improperly explain Faith to them, it could align with their belief system.  After all, astrology is about patterns of stars in the sky, known as Zodiac signs, and how they supposedly influence our emotional and mental states and entire lives.  I could see where one could look at the God of Heaven and Earth in roughly similar terms, especially since He is often depicted as dwelling in the sky.  The problem with such conceptions of God is that He is so much bigger than the understanding of even the most learned theologians.  Further, some heart can be taken from two other factors of this aspect of the story.  First, Danica is depicted as a ditz, which is meant to be more comedic than a commentary on her character.  I do not wish to impute that same characterization to everyone who believes in astrology, but I would emphasize that it is a limited way of viewing the universe, with or without Faith.  Secondly, Pastor Judah turns out to not be a good person.  Often, movies use Catholicism to identify someone as Christian because you can put an actor in clericals and signal that person’s religion without needing a clunky name like “Pastor Judah.”  Granted, it is not ideal for any Christian to be vilified in this way, and you would hope that somebody with a congregation would have less of a fixation on death.  Nonetheless, I breathed a small sigh of relief when this person turned out to not be Catholic.

The fact that Pastor Judah was not Catholic is about the only relief to be had from I Know What You Did Last Summer.  This is particularly true when you consider that they seem to be planning on making more of these films.  I would also prefer a lot less blood and violence, but that is likely a lot to ask.  Overall, I would recommend seeing Smurfs instead.