‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Trailer Hooks Into the Continuation of the Beloved Franchise

We are but one month away from the arrival of Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer and the hook-handed gods have shined down mercifully upon us with a fresh trailer. The only other official teaser came out months ago, in April, so we’re beyond grateful to witness more of the undoubtable greatness that will come when the film slashes into cinemas on July 18. Featuring the return of the franchise’s final couple — Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson — the trailer sees the past and present collide on a brutally graphic scale.

The new film appears to be leaning more into a Scream-like whodunnit than the two (kind of three) titles that came before it decades ago. In the original movie, filmmaker Jim Gillespie and writer, Kevin Williamson, took audiences on a deranged journey featuring some of the hottest young names of the time. Along with Hewitt and Prinze Jr., the 1997 movie included supporting performances from Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe, both of whom’s characters met incredibly gruesome ends by the time the credits rolled. The franchise was first resurrected just one year later with the release of Danny Cannon’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which tossed in appearances from Brandy Norwood, Jack Black and Mekhi Phifer. Aside from 2006’s I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer — which isn’t considered canon — the franchise has been dead and buried for almost two decades until now.

Leaning into one of the pieces that made I Know What You Did Last Summer such a hit to begin with, Robinson has enlisted some of the biggest on-the-rise names of today for her call sheet. Included are Madelyn Cline, Tyriq Withers, Jonah Hauer-King, Chase Sui Wonders, Sarah Pidgeon, Billy Campbell, Gabbriette Bechtel, Austin Nichols, Lola Tung, and Nicholas Alexander Chavez.

How the New Movie Addresses the Cliffhangers of the Past

Fans will remember that during the final moments of the first two movies, it appears that the masked killer has won out and dragged Julie (Hewitt) and Ray (Prinze Jr.) to their watery graves. Recently teasing how the new film will honor these mysterious endings while also continuing into a rebirth of sorts, Robinson said,

“So the way that I’ve approached the franchise is that I feel like those final scenes in the first two movies live outside the cannon, because in the first movie she gets attacked through the shower, through the glass door, and in the second movie, she gets pulled under the bed. So they’re both alive and well, and what I will say is that we have continued the tradition in our film.”

Check out the latest trailer for I Know What You Did Last Summer above.