On the Fourth of July, 1996, four friends just out of high school are driving home along the coast road out of Southport, North Carolina, when they hit a man in the dark. They panic, dump the body off the pier and swear each other to silence. A year later Julie James comes home from her first year at college and finds a letter with four words in it. She pulls the group back together, and while they are still arguing about who could possibly know, a figure in a fisherman’s slicker with a steel hook starts working through them, using the Croaker Queen pageant and the Fourth of July parade for cover.

Directed and written by

Crew

Cast

The killer

SPOILER ALERT

Benjamin "Ben" Willis, played by Muse Watson

The father of Susie Willis, who died in a car crash caused by David Egan. Willis murdered Egan a year before the film opens and made it look like a suicide. He was walking Reaper’s Curve the night the four hit him, survived being thrown in the water, and came back for them.

Who dies

SPOILER ALERT

Survivors: Julie James · Ray Bronson · Missy Egan

It was written before Scream, and that changes everything

Kevin Williamson wrote this screenplay before Scream was made and could not sell it. When Scream opened in December 1996 and became a phenomenon, Columbia bought the script that was already sitting there and rushed it into production, which is why the film reached theaters barely ten months later.

That is the single most important fact about the movie. It was not conceived as a Scream imitation. It was greenlit, sold and reviewed as one.

What they did to Lois Duncan’s book

Duncan’s 1973 novel is set in New Mexico, the victim of the hit and run is a small boy on a bicycle, and nobody in it is murdered. It is a suspense story about guilt. Williamson moved it to a fishing town, aged the victim up and added a man with a hook.

Duncan objected, publicly and for years. She refused to promote the film and objected specifically to the violence. Her eighteen year old daughter Kaitlyn had been murdered in 1989, which made watching her own story turned into entertainment violence intolerable. Her line was that the producers had optioned her story, not her soul.

Casting, and the Reese Witherspoon story

SlashFilm reports that Reese Witherspoon was offered Julie and turned it down, and that she shaped the cast anyway: asked who the hottest young actor in town was, she named Ryan Phillippe, whom she was dating and had met at her twenty first birthday party. He was cast as Barry on that recommendation.

Jennifer Love Hewitt read for Helen and asked to be moved to Julie. Sarah Michelle Gellar was the last of the four cast, roughly two weeks before shooting. Freddie Prinze Jr. was rejected as too soft, screen tested about five times, cut his hair, bulked up and won it; Gillespie had wanted Jeremy Sisto. Melissa Joan Hart passed, telling people she thought it was a Scream ripoff. Hewitt suggested Johnny Galecki for Max, because the two had been childhood neighbors.

Producers said around sixty five percent of the actresses who auditioned had read Duncan’s novel as children.

Fifty days, and seven weeks of them at night

Principal photography ran about fifty shooting days over ten weeks, from March 31, 1997 to early June. Roughly seven of those ten weeks were night shoots, which is punishing anywhere and worse in small towns.

Gillespie and Denis Crossan built the whole film out of blues with almost no bright color in it, then pulled the night material down further in the grade. Gillespie also kept the blood to a minimum, which is why it plays much drier than its reputation.

North Carolina had no road dangerous enough

The accident is not in North Carolina. The filmmakers wanted a curve that looked genuinely lethal and could not find one, so Reaper’s Curve and the sunset opening were shot on the northern California coast in Sonoma County, on Highway 1 at Kolmer Gulch north of Jenner near Fort Ross. The campfire and the urban legend scene are at Schoolhouse Beach, about five miles north of Bodega Bay, and the wrecked boat prop came out of Bodega Bay.

What went wrong on set

Freddie Prinze Jr., twenty one and the only one old enough, bought beer for his underage costars. Gellar and Phillippe drove a rental car onto a beach, buried it in the sand, needed a tow truck and were terrified of being fired.

Gellar took hundreds of splinters in both hands filming the rope pulling sequence, in cold weather and very little clothing. Prinze Jr. was asked to do a dinghy stunt he was not qualified for that nearly put a motorboat over his head before a stuntman took it. He has said Gillespie made it clear daily that he had not been his choice and that he came close to walking; Gillespie disputes that and says he championed him and talked him into staying.

Hewitt could not sleep during the shoot, genuinely frightened by being chased through fog by Muse Watson, whom she barely knew. The two had, by coincidence, lived in the same Burbank apartment building before filming. She turned down a nude shower scene and it was replaced. Gelatin stood in for real ice on the boat.

Max was not supposed to die, and the ending was reshot

SPOILER ALERT

Test audiences found the film went too long without a real threat, so Max’s murder at the fish plant was shot after principal photography and cut into the first half. Hewitt broke down filming it because she and Galecki were close, and he called afterward to reassure her.

The original ending was a quiet coda: Julie a year later at her computer, a jump scare from her roommate, then an anonymous email. Audiences found it flat. The shower door attack that closes the theatrical version was shot later on a soundstage next door to the one where Hewitt was shooting Party of Five, and the unused footage was recycled into teaser material for the sequel. Sources differ on what the email said: the franchise wiki reports "I Still Know," Bloody Disgusting reconstructs it as "I Know What You Did Last Summer."

The producers wanted more blood than the director did

SPOILER ALERT

Gillespie shot Elsa’s throat being cut with no blood at all. Producer Erik Feig thought the result was medically ridiculous and ordered it redone bloodier. Gillespie’s compromise was a pickup of blood hitting the glass door from behind, which answered the note without putting the gore on camera.

The slicker, the hook and the walk

The killer is a full length yellow and black oilskin rain slicker with a deep hood and a steel gaff hook. Retrospectives report the slicker was inspired by Kevin Williamson’s own father, who was a fisherman. A joke comparing the killer to the Gorton’s Fisherman was cut so it would not puncture the tension.

Muse Watson worried the part would typecast him and drilled the walk and the movement of the hook until both were exact. He has said his favorite scene was lying in a ditch playing dead.

The most famous shot in the film was directed by a child

The street confrontation where Julie spins in the middle of the road and screams "What are you waiting for, huh?" while the camera circles her was conceived and directed by a child who had won a contest. Hewitt initially disliked the idea. It became the image everybody remembers.

Miramax sued over the poster

Columbia and Mandalay advertised the film as "From the creator of Scream," meaning Williamson. Miramax, which owned Scream, sued on the grounds that it misled audiences into thinking Wes Craven was involved. A federal judge ordered the line removed within a week of release, and Miramax won again at a hearing in March 1998 and went after damages.

Trivia

The dock set built in Southport was reused for Dawson’s Creek, Williamson’s television series, which was shooting in the same part of North Carolina at the same time. The film also has a location called Dawson’s Beach.

Anne Heche plays a character whose brother’s death is recorded as a suicide. Heche had lost a brother to suicide in real life.

Gellar and Hewitt each read for the other’s part before it was settled.

Helen and Ray only speak to each other twice in the entire film. Gellar and Prinze Jr. met here, did not start dating for another two or three years, and married in 2002.

The band at the beach party is the real surf and alternative group Southern Culture on the Skids.

Roger Ebert gave it one star and opened with "The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign."

It lost the 1998 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film to The Devil’s Advocate.

Hewitt won two Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for it in 1998 and Gellar won Favorite Supporting Actress in a horror film. John Debney took an ASCAP Top Box Office Films award in 1997.

The cardigan Julie takes off during the climax was a continuity fix, not fan service.

Harrell’s Department Store in Burgaw, which location trackers identify as Shivers, was a real shop that closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Amuzu Theater in Southport is where Helen is crowned and Barry is attacked in the balcony. It is a genuine old cinema that has since reopened as a music venue.

As of 2021 Box Office Mojo ranked it the seventh highest grossing slasher film ever made.

It was parodied in Scary Movie and in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth, both in 2000, in The Simpsons segment "I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did," and in the Boy Meets World episode "And Then There Was Shawn," which guest starred Hewitt.

How it was received

Critics were unimpressed and almost every review measured it against Scream. Ebert gave it one star. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls it "a by-the-numbers slasher that arrived a decade too late." Not everyone dismissed it: Derek Elley in Variety called it a polished genre piece with superior fright elements, and Entertainment Weekly singled out Hewitt, writing that she knows how to scream with soul. Audiences were only slightly warmer, giving it a B-.

Commercially it was a real hit. It opened at number one with $15.8 million, held the top spot for three straight weekends and finished with $72.6 million in the United States against a $17 million budget. It is generally credited, alongside Scream, with putting the teen slasher back in business for the rest of the decade, and it made stars of all four leads at the exact moment each of them was ready. It has been treated much more kindly over time, and now supports a 4K restoration, several steelbooks, a television series and a legacy sequel.

Where it was filmed

Deleted and unused

Barry and Ray talking by Barry’s BMW in the Oyster Bar parking lot, which establishes Ray’s class resentment and that Barry and Julie are both going to Boston University while Ray and Helen are going to New York.

The drive to Dawson’s Beach, with Helen standing up through the sunroof waving her Croaker Queen wand while Barry drives recklessly through Reaper’s Curve.

A hospital room scene where Julie confronts Barry about a stomach pumping incident in Boston, implying a drug problem.

The aftermath in Helen’s bedroom after her hair is cut, where she lies to her mother and to Elsa and says she cut it herself. The script described her hair as shredded to the scalp, much more extreme than what is in the film.

An exchange between Barry and Helen on the parade float.

The alternate ending, in which Julie a year later gets an anonymous email instead of being attacked.

Physical media releases

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I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Trailer #1Rotten Tomatoes Classic TrailersThe original theatrical trailer in high definition.I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER [1997] - Official Trailer (HD) | Now on 4K Ultra HDSony Pictures EntertainmentThe studio trailer, reissued for the 4K release.Commercial for I Know What You Did Last SummerChris HattingsA vintage broadcast television spot from the original run.I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1997) Behind-the-Scenes Now I Know What You Did Last SummerFilmIsNow Epic Movie ZoneThe full twenty seven minute making of that shipped on the disc.I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER - First 10 Minutes | Now Available on 4K Ultra HDSony Pictures EntertainmentThe opening ten minutes, put out officially by Sony.I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) | Kula Shaker "Hush" (Music Video)AreYouScaredHDThe tie-in cut of the video, with film footage through it.Kula Shaker - Hush (Official UK video)Kula ShakerThe band’s own upload.On Set Interview - I Know What You Did Last Summer - Sarah Michelle Gellar "Helen"Horror Movie ExtrasOn set with Gellar in 1997.On Set Interview - I Know What You Did Last Summer - Freddie Prinze Jr "Ray"Horror Movie ExtrasOn set with Prinze Jr. in 1997.Interview with the director of I Know What You Did Last Summercarrieking99An archival 1997 interview with Jim Gillespie.Freddie Prinze Jr. Reflects on "I Know What You Did Last Summer"E! Red Carpet & Award ShowsLooking back on the original.Ryan Phillippe Reflects on I Know What You Did Last SummerTMZ NowPhillippe on making the film.Freddie Prinze Jr. Talks I Know What You Did Last Summer & More with Rich EisenThe Rich Eisen ShowA long interview covering the film and the career around it.How Freddie Prinze Jr Landed I Know What You Did Last Summer …and a WifeThe Rich Eisen ShowThe casting story, and how he met Gellar.Freddie Prinze Jr Talks I Know What You Did Last Summer, Friends & More | Stress TestMen’s HealthA magazine interview segment about the franchise.I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Killer Leaves Helen a MessageScene CityThe hair salon scene.SPOILER ALERT I Know What You Did Last Summer 1997, a retrospectiveThe Bearded Horror ReviewA long look back at the original.SPOILER ALERT I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) ReviewDecker ShadoA substantial and very funny retrospective review.SPOILER ALERT I KNOW What You Did Last Summer (1997) REVIEW | The Book Was BetterDoctor WolfulaA review that compares the film to Lois Duncan’s novel throughout.SPOILER ALERT I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) KILL COUNTDead MeatEvery death in the film, counted and explained.SPOILER ALERT I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER "Chase Scene" Clip (1997)JoBlo Horror 4KThe alley chase.SPOILER ALERT I Know What You Did Last Summer | Helen’s Death Scene Deep DiveJoBlo Horror OriginalsA video essay taking apart the most famous set piece in the film.

A year after Southport, Julie James is taking summer classes in Boston, medicated, sleeping badly and unable to shake the nightmares, while Ray has stayed behind working the docks. When her roommate Karla wins a radio call-in contest for a four person trip to a resort in the Bahamas, Julie is talked into going and Ray stays home. They arrive at a nearly empty island hotel at the end of the season, just as the last boat leaves and a tropical storm closes in, and almost immediately Julie starts seeing signs that the man with the hook did not die in the Cape Fear River.

Directed and written by

Crew

Cast

The killer

SPOILER ALERT

Ben Willis, played by Muse Watson

He survived the first film. This time he is helped by his son.

Will Benson, played by Matthew Settle

Willis’s surviving son, who got close to the group as a college friend and rigged the radio contest to get Julie onto the island. His motive is his sister Susie, and his father.

Who dies

SPOILER ALERT

Survivors: Julie James · Ray Bronson · Karla Wilson

Six months from pitch to camera

Columbia moved on a sequel the moment the first film made money, and everything about this production was shaped by speed. Trey Callaway told interviewers in 2018 that filming began roughly six months after Mandalay accepted his pitch, which is an extraordinarily short runway for a studio sequel. His brief was to build it around Julie James and keep the title.

Mandalay hedged by commissioning a second screenplay at the same time, from Stephen Gaghan, reportedly set in New Orleans. Callaway’s island version won, but Gaghan’s name had already gone out and he was credited as co-writer in early promotional material and in theatrical trailers for a script that was never used. Only Callaway is in the final credits. Two years later Gaghan won the Academy Award for Traffic.

Peter Jackson was approached first

Before Danny Cannon was hired, the franchise wiki reports that Peter Jackson was approached to direct. Jim Gillespie did not return. Mike Mendez pitched a college set sequel in 1997 with Hewitt and Prinze Jr. that went nowhere. Cannon, then best known for Judge Dredd, was announced in February 1998.

The Bahamas are Mexico, and the shoot was miserable

The Tower Bay Hotel is not in the Bahamas. It is El Tecuan resort and marina on the Costalegre coast of Jalisco, Mexico, with more material at El Tamarindo in Costa Careyes. Interiors were finished at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City.

Brandy has talked about the location repeatedly and without much fondness. She has called the experience "very taxing," described being outside "in a space where it was just bugs and this and that," and said she thought at the time, "We could’ve filmed this somewhere else." She was new to film acting, most of the work was exterior, and a great deal of it was in rain.

Brandy put her survival in the contract

SPOILER ALERT

This was Brandy Norwood’s first feature. She has said she negotiated a contractual guarantee that Karla would live, on the grounds that Black characters were routinely killed off first in horror films. She was right to, and Karla is still alive twenty seven years later.

A score with nothing of the first film in it

John Frizzell’s score deliberately shares nothing with John Debney’s. Frizzell said in 1998 that it carried none of the original themes because the sequel had a different look, setting and feeling. He built it out of avant garde vocal work by Joan La Barbara and unusual acoustic instruments including a psaltery and a detuned dulcimer.

The soundtrack album came out November 17, 1998 on Warner Bros. Jennifer Love Hewitt’s "How Do I Deal" was released as a single on January 19, 1999 and became her first Billboard Hot 100 entry. Two songs in the film never made the album: "Eden" by Hooverphonic and "That Girl" by Esthero.

What the first film’s director thought of it

Jim Gillespie, asked about the sequel in 2017: "I thought it wasn’t the right story. They had a chance to do something a bit different and for me it didn’t work."

Trivia

Jack Black’s uncredited turn as Titus Telesco, the dreadlocked pool boy and drug dealer, is the most quoted thing in the film and a large part of why it has a cult following. He is billed nowhere.

The karaoke scene, where Julie sings while the on screen lyrics display the film’s own title, is the single most cited example of how knowingly silly the film is.

Danny Cannon went from here to the CSI franchise, directing the pilot and executive producing.

Jeffrey Combs was already a horror institution from Re-Animator. His casting is nearly the only genre pedigree in the production.

Muse Watson is the only performer in the first two films to play the same character in both, and the only actor to play Ben Willis on screen until 2025.

It opened at number two behind Adam Sandler’s The Waterboy and fell to number five within a week, a far faster collapse than the original, which held number one for three weekends.

The empty coffin and the hand reaching out from under the bed were setting up a third theatrical film that never happened. The next entry went direct to video eight years later with an entirely new cast.

The 2025 sequel retroactively made that final shot a nightmare.

How it was received

The reviews were savage and near unanimous. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls it "exactly the kind of rehash that gives horror sequels a bad name," and going from 47 percent to 10 percent is one of the steeper drops between a horror film and its own sequel. The common complaint was that it reran the first film in a more expensive location with no new ideas.

There were dissenters. Leonard Klady in Variety allowed that it delivers enough shocks for its audience, Dave Rickett at CNN went further and called it the better film, and Justin Kerswell at Hysteria Lives gave it three and a half out of five as an unapologetic guilty pleasure.

It opened at roughly the same level as the first film and then fell off a cliff, finishing at $40 million against the original’s $72.6 million, on a bigger budget. Its legacy is as camp rather than as horror. Jack Black, the karaoke, the hurricane and the sheer implausibility of the twist have all become affectionate touchstones, and it has aged into a genuine cult favorite in a way nobody reviewing it in 1998 would have predicted.

Where it was filmed

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I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) Trailer #1Rotten Tomatoes Classic TrailersThe theatrical trailer in high definition."I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" - Official Trailer (1998)ItWasYourTestThe trailer in its original aspect ratio.I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (1998) - Official Trailer [HD]Horror AddictA cleaner high definition copy of the same trailer.I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) Trailer HD | Jennifer Love HewittTrailerHomeAn alternate cut of the trailer.I Still Know What You Did Last Summer - Vacation CommercialEl Rey NetworkThe vacation giveaway television spot.I Still Know What You Did Last Summer - TV Spot commercial aired during Party of Five, 1998CleverkioRecorded off air in 1998, during Party of Five, which is where Hewitt was every week.Jennifer Love Hewitt - How Do I Deal (Music Video) (1080p Remaster by aTunes)aTunesThe single from the soundtrack, remastered.Jennifer Love Hewitt - How Do I Deal (Official Video 1080p)Joe SimonettaThe official promo video.Jennifer Love Hewitt At The I Still Know What You Did Last Summer Premiere (1998)TheChuckyluver1993Red carpet footage from the November 1998 premiere.SPOILER ALERT Titus (Jack Black) Is Murdered | I Still Know What You Did Last SummerCreature FeaturesThe single most quoted thing in the film.SPOILER ALERT I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) - Death on the Dock Scene (3/10)MovieclipsThe licensed clip of the dock kill.SPOILER ALERT I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) - Keep Running Scene (7/10)MovieclipsThe licensed clip of the chase.SPOILER ALERT I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER CLIP COMPILATION (1998) Movie CLIPS HDJoBlo Movie ClipsThe major scenes collected together.SPOILER ALERT I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) KILL COUNTDead MeatEvery death in the sequel.

On July 4, 2005, in the mountain town of Broken Ridge, Colorado, five friends stage a prank at the Independence Day carnival built around the local legend of a hook handed fisherman. It goes wrong and one of them is impaled on a tractor smokestack. They destroy the evidence, keep the police out of it and swear each other to silence. A year later the text messages start.

Directed and written by

Crew

Cast

The killer

SPOILER ALERT

The Fisherman, played by Don Shanks

Ben Willis, returned as an outright supernatural figure. This is the first film in the series to abandon the whodunit entirely and make the killer a revenant with no motive to uncover.

Who dies

SPOILER ALERT

Survivors: Amber Williams · Lance

Six years of false starts

A third film went into development at Columbia in August 2000 with writer Simon Barry, whose draft sent the characters on an Outward Bound style wilderness trip. It was never made.

Sony revived it in July 2005 with Michael D. Weiss writing, and weighed a theatrical release before settling on direct to video. The director changed hands just before cameras rolled, and sources disagree on who was replaced. Wikipedia says Joe Chappelle was fired. Bloody Disgusting, JoBlo and Rotten Tomatoes all name Damon Santostefano as the attached director who left in 2005.

Two weeks of prep

Sylvain White, then known mostly for music videos, took the job on a last minute phone call and had roughly two weeks of preparation against the ten he described as normal. In that time he recast the picture and rebuilt the location list and the schedule. He told Ain’t It Cool News he "simply got a last minute call as someone was fired and they needed a new director shortly," and that he wanted to "edge the visual quality and energy of the film" and make "the gore feel more real than in the previous two."

No computer generated blood, on purpose

White cut CGI gore out entirely in favor of practical effects: "I just hate CG gore because it always just looks like CG and it takes you out of the horror of the moment." He and Stephen M. Katz pushed a deliberately stylized, textured look on a small budget.

The film shot in Utah, with Park City standing in for Broken Ridge, Colorado. Moving from the coast to the mountains was deliberate. It shot under the working title "The Hook."

Trivia

It shot under the working title "The Hook."

Don Shanks, the Fisherman here, played Michael Myers in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers in 1989, and was this film’s stunt coordinator as well as its killer.

It is the only film in the series with no returning cast at all.

It is the first to make the Fisherman supernatural rather than a man with a grudge.

Utah doubled for Colorado, moving the franchise inland for the only time.

Sony seriously considered a theatrical release before choosing direct to video.

Its 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes is the only zero in the franchise.

The 2025 sequel ignores it completely and treats the 1998 film as its direct predecessor.

It did not reach Blu-ray in the United States until September 26, 2023, more than seventeen years after the DVD, and it has never had a 4K edition.

How it was received

Nobody defended it. Zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes from seven reviews with a 2.5 out of 10 average. Fangoria’s Michael Gingold criticized the pacing, pointing out that the killer "doesn’t claim his first victim until the halfway point," and objected that the supernatural twist "negates the whole whodunit aspect," while allowing that the practical gore was preferable to CGI and praising Katz’s photography. Scott Weinberg at DVD Talk called it "entirely worthy of the dismissive derision" it attracted. Audiences were barely kinder at 20 percent.

There is no box office to measure it against because it never opened. The relevant commercial fact is that Sony downgraded it from a planned theatrical release, and the franchise then sat dormant on film for nineteen years.

Where it was filmed

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I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006) Trailer #1Rotten Tomatoes Classic TrailersThe trailer for the direct to video third film.I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006) - On DVD TrailerMedia GraveyardThe home video promotional spot.I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006) - TrailerPyrkensteinAnother copy of the trailer.SPOILER ALERT The Killer's First Attack - I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006)Binge SocietyThe Fisherman’s first kill.SPOILER ALERT I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006) KILL COUNTDead MeatEvery death in the third film.SPOILER ALERT I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer Review | But It Was All Just A Waste of Time!Decker ShadoA long and unimpressed breakdown of the whole film.

A year after a night on Reaper’s Curve went wrong, five friends who caused a fatal crash and buried their part in it come back to Southport for an engagement party. The town has spent twenty seven years scrubbing away the memory of the 1997 killings in favor of tourism, and it does not want any of it raised again. Then the notes start, a figure in a slicker starts working through the group, and a true crime podcaster attaches herself to the whole thing. Cornered, Ava Brucks goes looking for the only two people who have survived this before.

Directed and written by

Crew

Cast

The killer

SPOILER ALERT

Stevie Ward, played by Sarah Pidgeon

One of the group. She is avenging Sam Cooper, the truck driver killed in the opening crash, who had been her partner from rehab.

Ray Bronson, played by Freddie Prinze Jr.

Her partner and mentor, driven by rage at Southport for erasing the 1997 murders and by twenty seven years of untreated trauma. Robinson framed the choice around trauma going two ways: Julie built a life around processing it, Ray never dealt with it at all.

Who dies

SPOILER ALERT

Survivors: Ava Brucks · Danica Richards · Julie James · Stevie Ward, who is shot off the boat and turns out to be alive

It started as a pitch, not a studio order

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Leah McKendrick took the idea to Sony in the fall of 2022, at exactly the moment the Scream relaunch had proved that pairing returning originals with a new young cast worked. Robinson’s Netflix film Do Revenge had convinced executives she could handle the late nineties register.

Deadline reported it in February 2023 with Robinson directing, McKendrick writing, Neal H. Moritz producing and both Hewitt and Prinze Jr. in talks. Sam Lansky later joined Robinson on the screenplay. Sony dated it for summer 2025 in May 2024.

Getting the two of them back took nearly two years

Robinson has said flatly that without Hewitt and Prinze Jr. "there was no movie."

Hewitt’s condition was scale. She did not want a token appearance, and told the production that if she was coming back twenty seven years later she did not want to be in it for five seconds, which created real scheduling problems against 9-1-1. What she has emphasized since is how well the filmmakers knew the original: "What was very apparent from the word Go, is how much both of them loved the original movie," and that "they allowed space for me to know her better than anyone, which was so kind because they didn’t have to do that."

Prinze Jr. said in March 2023 that he had not had a formal offer. He met Robinson, committed, and was confirmed in September 2024; Hewitt closed her deal in December 2024.

Prinze Jr. on the twist

SPOILER ALERT

He has been unusually open about it. He asked audiences to "know that I gave everything to this performance," acknowledged that fans "love Ray" and that "some people will get mad," and described the difficulty of "taking that emotional damage home with me at the end of the day" while still calling it "the most fun that I’ve had." Hewitt’s verdict: "Freddie nailed it."

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s cameo was kept off the page

SPOILER ALERT

The scene never appeared in the circulated script. It existed only as separate sheets, which Robinson described as "lock and key." Joshua Orpin, who shares the sequence, did not know what he was shooting until he was in the makeup chair, at which point Madelyn Cline told him "Oh my God, no one’s told you."

Gellar had resisted for years on continuity grounds, telling Robinson "I’m dead. I’m dead. This isn’t supernatural," until Robinson devised the nightmare framing. She wore a recreation of the Croaker Queen dress and crown and called standing in it "crazy," adding of the fan reaction, "I’ve always said, I’m dead. I did not lie."

Casting churn, and a cold open that was cut

Camila Mendes was attached and left over a scheduling clash with Masters of the Universe, reported by Deadline on September 4, 2024; Chase Sui Wonders replaced her that month. Wikipedia dates the exit to July 2024, which conflicts with the trade reporting.

On November 7, 2024 the production announced Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Lola Tung, Austin Nichols and Gabbriette. Chavez and Tung shot a sequence meant to be the film’s cold open and it was cut. Robinson explained: "I love this in a vacuum. This is a fantastic scene. But it doesn’t fit in the movie," and stressed it was not about the performances.

Southport is Sydney

Principal photography ran from October 2024 into March 2025, based in Sydney, New South Wales, with Los Angeles work in February and March, wrapping March 13, 2025. No principal photography took place in North Carolina.

The ending was changed two weeks before release

SPOILER ALERT

As shot, Danica died after Stevie stabbed her and she went into the water. Test audiences rejected it and new material was filmed in June 2025 in which she washes ashore, survives and reunites with Ava. Cline told The Hollywood Reporter in late June that she "only got the news that I was coming back about two-and-a-half weeks ago" and that "we shot all those very, very end scenes about two weeks ago." Critics widely noticed that the survival plays as bolted on.

Trivia

The first theatrical entry in the franchise in twenty seven years.

Brandy Norwood’s mid credits return as Karla Wilson is her first appearance in the series since 1998.

Sydney doubled for Southport, North Carolina.

Its opening weekend was the lowest of any theatrical film in the franchise, breaking a twenty seven year old mark held by the original.

Leah McKendrick, who shares story credit, appears on screen as a newscaster.

Isaiah Mustafa appears uncredited as Andrew.

Chanda Dancy’s score came out on Milan Records on July 18, 2025: twenty orchestral cues running fifty eight and a half minutes, including "Reaper’s Curve," "The Pact," "Harpooned" and "Final Showdown."

It is a direct sequel to the 1998 film and ignores both the 2006 film and the 2021 television series.

How it was received

Critics landed on it as competent nostalgia without a reason to exist. Thirty six percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 212 reviews, with a consensus saying it "serves up plenty of nostalgia without finding a compelling hook of its own," and a 42 on Metacritic.

The split was real rather than uniform. Alison Foreman at IndieWire gave it a B+ and called it "a lean, mean serial killer flick." Jordan Hoffman at Entertainment Weekly graded it B- and singled out "a sensational performance from Madelyn Cline." Against that, Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com gave it one star out of four, and Frank Scheck at The Hollywood Reporter credited the returning stars’ gravitas while diagnosing creative exhaustion.

Commercially it underperformed. Tracking in late June projected a $19 to $28 million opening; by July 11 that had been cut to $15 to $24 million. It opened to $12.8 million and finished around $32 million at home and $63 million worldwide against an $18 million budget, which is profitable but nowhere near a relaunch. Streaming was the better story: it hit Netflix on October 16, 2025 and was in the United States top ten at number six within a day.

Where it was filmed

Deleted and unused

A cold open shot with Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Lola Tung, cut entirely from the film.

Four deleted and extended scenes on the Blu-ray, running seven minutes fifty nine seconds together. No reviewer has published their individual titles.

The original ending, in which Danica died after being stabbed and going into the water.

Physical media releases

Pictures

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Watch

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