I Know What You Did Last Summer Trilogy Recap: Story So Far

No discussion of classic 90s slasher movies is complete without mentioning the I Know What You Did Last Summer movie franchise, loosely inspired by the novel written by Lois Duncan. Although, except for the original, first entry—which became a cult classic by introducing the fisherman killer and his weapon of choice, the ice-hook—none of the sequels made a mark in the long run, the movies have remained relevant in teen-horror discourse nevertheless. Like numerous other old-school horror franchises, this one has gone through a reboot, and later next week, the latest adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer will hit the theaters. Before that, let’s catch up with the earlier entries to get a better idea about what to expect and possible references.

The first movie opens on a coastal cliff off Southport, California, on 4th July, 1996, as a certain David Egan is seen reflecting on his tragic past, holding his late fiancée, Susie’s locket in his hand. Exactly a year ago, David lost Susie at the same spot in a car accident, and sitting on the edge of the cliff, a distraught David almost seems to be contemplating taking his life. 

The narrative focuses on Julie James, the central protagonist of both the first installment and its sequel. Julie; her boyfriend, Ray; her best friend Helen; and Helen’s boyfriend, a rich jerk named Barry, celebrate Helen being crowned the latest Croaker Pageant Competition winner. At their high school farewell party, their batchmate, Max, who has a crush on Julie, ends up engaging in a minor scuffle with Barry. Anyway, the quartet soon leave for a nearby beach in Barry’s car to fool around and speculate about the course their lives will take. On their way back home, the teenagers get a bit carefree and reckless, and while driving, Ray ends up running over a man. Panic ensues as the man, whose face has been disfigured in the accident, appears to have died. Going against Julie’s advice they reveal everything to the authorities, Barry convinces Ray and Helen to dispose of the body and take this secret to their graves—in fear of their promising future getting maligned by the repercussions of their action. Max passes by in his car, and they somehow manage to cover up the incident from him. As they later proceed to dump the corpse into the sea, the person in question appears to be alive still. However, the quartet ends up disposing of him anyway and makes a pact never to disclose anything about the incident to anyone. 

As the story shifts to a year later, none of the teenagers have their lives settled in the ways they wanted, and especially Julie, who left Southport to pursue college and also to leave her past behind, has suffered from her guilty conscience. Her relationship with Ray has run its course as well, as she could never digest the fact that Ray agreed with Barry’s cover-up plan. Julie returns to Southport to be with her family during summer break and finds a letter addressed to her, with the anonymous sender mentioning they are aware of what she did last summer. Julie’s fear and guilt overwhelm her mind, and she decides to meet Helen to discuss the situation. Both of them go to Barry, who speculates that Max had probably witnessed their act that fateful day and is trying to blackmail them. Barry threatens Max and assures Julie and Helen that he will not bother them again. Ray, who has followed his father’s footsteps and is working as a fisherman, tries to reconcile with Julie, to no avail. 

Max is brutally murdered by a raincoat-wearing mysterious killer who uses a large ice hook to dispatch him. The same night, the killer tracks down Barry and severely injures him by driving Barry’s car into him. It becomes clear that Julie’s fears are not misplaced, and the friends start speculating about the identity of the assailant. Julie reveals that, a year ago, they ran over a certain David Egan, as his body was recovered from the ocean a couple of days later. The friends decide to approach David’s only surviving family member, his sister Missy. 

As Julie and Helen visit Missy’s place with the excuse of their car breaking down nearby, they learn that one of David’s friends, who introduced himself as Billy Blue, had visited her to pay his respects after David’s passing. While Julie and co. have trouble finding someone of that name, the fisherman killer continues to torment them in different ways. The killer sneaks inside Helen’s place and cuts off her hair at night, dumps Max’s body with some crabs inside the trunk of Julie’s car, and sends a threatening letter to Ray. As fear starts mounting up, Julie decides to come clean to Missy about the past and asks Helen to attend this year’s 4th of July parade to lure the killer out. 

Julie learns from Missy that her brother, David, had contemplated taking his own life that day, as his guilt and regret had pushed him over the edge, and he’d left a suicide note, which corroborates that. However, upon seeing the note, Julie recognizes it to be sent by the mysterious killer who has been stalking them. She looks up details about Susie’s death on the internet and suspects Susie’s fisherman father, Benjamin Willis, to be the culprit in question. 

Unfortunately, before Julie is able to warn her friends, the killer dispatches Barry right in front of Helen’s eyes during the annual Croaker Pageant Competition. Helen tries her best to direct the authorities to the killer but fails to do so. As a cop escorts Helen back to her place, he is murdered by the killer as well. Helen flees and takes refuge in her family’s garment store, where her irritable sister, Elsa, becomes the next victim of the killer. Helen almost manages to escape but ends up getting caught and killed by the assailant in the end. 

Julie goes to meet Ray and reveals her speculation that David Egan indeed drowned and was not killed in the collision; instead, Benjamin Willis wanted to take revenge for his daughter’s death and killed David, leaving a threatening note before doing so. However, she sees the name of Ray’s fishing boat, Billy Blue, and mistakenly considers him to be the killer. The real killer in question, Ben Willis, offers to help Julie and knocks down Ray before starting the boat. Eventually, Julie realizes that she has been trapped by the serial killer, as Ben blames her and her friends for leaving him for dead a year ago. Ray chases the ship in a speedboat, is able to board the ship, and following a prolonged scuffle, manages to throw Ben into the ocean, cutting off his hand using the ship’s rigging. Julie and Ray reconcile as she realizes that Ray took the guise of Billy Blue to absolve himself to some extent by comforting Missy, as his guilt over accidentally killing David prompted him to do so. Ben’s body is not recovered, but the authorities assure Julie and Ray that they will eventually find his corpse. 

Julie’s fate remains in question by the end of the first movie, as a year later in her college dormitory, she comes across a message in a windowpane—where someone has left a threatening note about still knowing about her past actions. As the movie comes to an end, someone breaks through the windowpane, leaving a massive cliffhanger. 

The cliffhanger of the first movie doesn’t amount to anything, as Julie is enjoying her college life. However, lingering effects of PTSD from the past events are still present in her mind, and she has opened up about it to her new best friend, Karla. Viewers meet Karla’s boyfriend, Tyrell, and a mild-mannered Will Benson, who seems to be infatuated with Julie. Ray is stuck in his fisherman job and can’t get much time off from work to visit with Julie; still, their bond seems to be rock solid. 

Karla wins in a quiz competition on a local radio channel by merely answering one question and gets a free trip to the Bahamas with a luxurious stay in a secluded island resort for four persons. Julie wants to bring Ray along with her, but his busy schedule leaves his presence in question. However, Ray decides to go to the Bahamas anyway to surprise Julie, taking a diamond ring with him as he plans to propose to her. As Ray sets off with his friend, Dave, they come across the infamous fisherman killer, who murders Dave in a brutal fashion. Ray somehow manages to escape with his life but ends up losing his senses after falling into a ditch. 

Finding Ray missing, Karla and Tyrell decide to take Will along with them and reach their resort in the Bahamas. The resort manager, Mr. Brooks, reveals that they are the only tourists present at the resort at the moment and warns that the island remains inaccessible during severe storms. Things start to go awry when Julie finds a similar threatening message to the one she came across last year in the resort’s karaoke machine. One by one, several attendants of the resort—Darick and Olga—are murdered by the fisherman killer. Ray is found by the authorities and gets admitted to the hospital. However, after gaining his senses, Ray escapes and trades his diamond ring in for a gun in a pawn shop. 

Julie comes across Darick’s corpse, but the killer hides it before she is able to show it to her friends and resort manager, prompting them to believe Julie is losing her mind. However, as the killer continues their murder spree, taking down a supplier named Titus and Mr. Brooks, the horrid situation eventually comes to light. The communication line to the island is disrupted as well, which makes it impossible for Ray to warn Julie either. Ray coerces a ship captain to take him to the island as a severe storm hits the island. Julie, Karla, Tyrell, and Will search for the only surviving elderly attendee of the resort, Estes, and visiting his room, they find evidence of him performing black magic on them. However, Estes meets with them and clarifies that he was actually trying to protect them, as he had figured out that the friends were tricked by the radio quiz. Estes reveals Ben Willis used to be an employee of this resort, and had two kids—a son and a daughter. Ben had allegedly killed his wife, Sarah, after suspecting her to be in an affair and has not been heard of ever since. Estes believes that Ben has returned and is trying to hunt down Julie and co. Eventually, Tyrell and Estes fall victim to the fisherman killer, and Nancy, a bartender whom the friends tried to rescue, meets the same fate. Will lies to Julie and Karla about being attacked by Estes, only to completely isolate Julie and later reveal that he is Ben’s son, who planned with his father, who survived his fall into the ocean in the first movie, to win Julie’s trust and take revenge on her. In the nick of time, Ray arrives and holds Ben and Will at gunpoint just as they are about to kill Julie; however, Ray’s gun jams, allowing Ben to overpower him. Ironically, Ben ends up killing his own son while trying to attack Ray. Julie gets her hands on Ray’s gun and shoots Ben to death. Karla appears to have survived the rampage of the two killers as well, and the three survivors end up getting rescued by the authorities. 

Some time later, Ray and Julie are seen happily married, when another fisherman killer attacks Julie at their place, and once again her fate remains in question. However, as Julie is seen alive in the trailer of the rebooted I Know What You Did Last Summer, it seems, once again, the ending cliffhanger tease goes absolutely nowhere. 

The third and arguably the weakest installment, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, features a totally new cast and a different tone compared to the previous two entries, as the grounded slasher thriller theme gets superseded by supernatural elements. Viewers are taken to the small town of Broken Ridge, where the legend of the fisherman killer is quite popular. On the eve of 4th July, a bunch of teenagers—Zoe, Roger, PJ, Amber, and her boyfriend Colby—try to pull a prank by staging a supposed assault of the said killer in the town carnival. PJ, who was supposed to pull off a trick using his skateboard on a rooftop to escape from Roger disguised as a fisherman killer, ends up impaling himself on a pole and dies. Remorseful, the friend quartet decide to keep the truth of the incident a secret in fear of drawing the ire of the townsfolk, although Amber, the lead of the narrative, wanted to reveal the truth.

A year later, none of their lives have gone the way the friends intended, and Amber returns to Broken Ridge, only to learn that her boyfriend, Colby, never left the town, contrary to what he made her believe. Lance, PJ’s cousin, has feelings for Amber, but he can’t muster the courage to profess them to her. A dejected Amber is approached by local cop, Deputy Haffner, who seems to be interested in her as well. Later, Amber receives multiple threatening messages on her phone, similar to what Julie received all those years ago—and she wastes no time to inform the rest of the group about it. Aside from Zoe, who at present performs as a lead vocalist in a band and regrets being separated from Amber, Colby and Roger don’t believe Amber’s words and, as usual, consider her fear to be misplaced. 

Roger, who works in an industrial welding workshop, is suffering from guilt and remorse since that fateful day, and upon learning Amber’s account, he tries to kill himself using the prop hook he carried with himself that night. Roger becomes the first victim of a newly emerged fisherman killer. Amber finds herself stalked by the killer as her bicycle tires get slashed, and on her way back home in a ropeway cart, she gets attacked by the hook-wielding fisherman killer. The friends consider Roger to have taken his own life, but as the fisherman killer continues to torment them by threatening them with messages and stalking them, the rest of the group agree that Amber’s warnings were not unfounded after all. At one point, Sheriff Davis, PJ’s father, is considered to be a suspect as well, as the group nearly ends up confessing the truth to him by approaching Haffner, only to retreat later. Julie finds out the connection of the fisherman killer and the day of 4th July, as she learns about past murder incidents involving Ben Willis. Amber surmises their sin of covering up PJ’s death has resulted the restless spirit of Ben Willis to haunt them. 

As 4th July approaches, the friends decide to stick together, but Zoe needs to perform at a concert, and as Amber decides to be present for her, the rest of the group agrees as well. Following Zoe’s performance, the fisherman killer attacks them and murders Zoe. Sheriff Davis and Colby meet the same fate, and the only survivors, Amber and Lance, come across Deputy Haffner while fleeing from the scene. Haffner reveals that he is aware of what happened last summer, as a remorseful Roger had confessed everything to him, but he kept it a secret to cover for Amber, as Haffner has feelings for her. He implores Lance and Amber to enter his police vehicle, but they mistakenly believe him to be the fisherman killer after seeing Zoe’s body in his vehicle. The real killer, the ghost of Ben Willis, attacks and brutally kills Deputy Haffner using a forklift. Amber finds out that the prop hook, which belonged to Roger, for some reason harms Ben Willis. After a prolonged chase, she is able to save Lance from the fisherman killer by dragging the ghost of Ben Willis by using the hook and throwing him inside a wood chipper. Lance and Amber turn out to be the only survivors of the harrowing series of incidents. 

A year later, Amber is seen driving alone through the desolate freeway of Nevada when all of a sudden her car tires get punctured. Amber steps out of the car and feels that time has suddenly come to a halt when the screen fades to black and the infamous fisherman killer is hinted to have killed her off screen.