The most dangerous bend in America takes another life in this sequel to the 1997 slasher flick of the same name. They should have called it 28 Years Later.

This latest slasher rehash attempts a Gen Z parody version of the hook-wielding fisherman tale, dropping awkward references to things like cryptocurrency and podcasts, instead of actually updating the story of rich kids accidentally running someone over and not telling anyone. It might have asked what would happen to 20-somethings attempting to get away with a hit-and-run as a generation obsessed with broadcasting everything online. If the idea is to satirise the zoomers then surely that’s your hook.

But Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s “legacy sequel” has no ambition apart from making the original look good by comparison. The genre used to be notorious for recycling teenage stereotypes, but at least that gave the characters some discernible personality traits. Here the cast are a bikini-clad uniform of insipid blandness, so lacking in edge or characteristics that they probably could actually get away with murder just by existing undetected. They reunite one year later with none of the guilt that made the original even vaguely interesting, and end the movie as the same terrible people that started it.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is the already glossy original run through an Instagram filter, coddled and candy-coated until there is nothing left of Kevin Williamson’s morality play apart from Jennifer Loves Chewitts. Julie is back to provide continuity and to quip that “nostalgia’s overrated” (not judging by the reviews and ticket sales it’s not), alongside now-divorced husband Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) in a lazy retread of the embarrassing Scream sequels, while the fisherman killer has become a Ghostface copycatfish. The killer reveal is both predictable and wildly inconsistent, but at least the kills make better use of the fisherman’s tools (fish traps, harpoons) than the sole hook of the original.

The film is best summed up by one of the survivors at the end saying, “All this could have been avoided if men went to therapy,” which is rich coming from the girl who covered up manslaughter at the beginning – not to mention the fact that, spoiler alert, one of the killers was a woman. Maybe it’s self-awareness that’s overrated.