The ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Franchise Came Surprisingly Close to Becoming Its ‘Simpsons’ Parody
After the box-office successes of Scream and Halloween, I Know What You Did Last Summer has become the latest decades-old horror franchise to spawn a belated legacy sequel that, confusingly, has the exact same title as the original movie.
Judging from the trailer, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer finds yet another group of drunken rich kids covering up a fatal hit-and-run, only to be terrorized by a hook-wielding serial killer with a penchant for obsessive note-sending. And only Jennifer Love Hewitt can help them for some reason.
It looks pretty goofy, to be honest — but not as goofy as the 1999 Simpsons parody.
Don’t Miss
Two years after the original hit theaters, “Treehouse of Horror X” included the segment “I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did,” in which Ned Flanders is run over by Marge on a foggy night. He seemingly dies, but then returns with a hook and a fisherman’s slicker to get his revenge.
“You can’t kill the undead, silly,” Flanders tells the Simpson family after finally revealing himself.
It turns out that shortly before he was hit by the Simpsons’ sedan, Ned was bitten by a werewolf, giving him supernatural powers.
This is obviously a stark deviation from the first movie and its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, neither of which contain any supernatural elements whatsoever. In the first movie (spoilers for a 28-year-old slasher movie), it turns out the hit-and-run victim, Ben, wasn’t actually dead, and was already a murderer. In the second movie, Ben returns for another kill-spree but is finally shot in the head at the end, putting an end to — no wait, there’s a third movie.
2006’s I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, which starred none of the original actors and was released straight-to-DVD, similarly featured the fisherman killer. How? Well, we eventually find out that Ben is now some kind of a zombie-like creature who just terrorizes teens for the fun of it, I guess.
Again, neither of the first two movies contained any otherworldly plot points. This would be like if one of the Scream sequels randomly introduced the concept of unicorns. I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer didn’t even bother to explain how or why this character came back from the dead — meaning that the Simpsons parody, which gives us a flashback illustrating exactly how Ned became a werewolf, actually makes more sense than the third movie.
We’re not saying that The Simpsons predicted anything (because that’s stupid), but the fact that the franchise ended up becoming as ridiculous as its cartoon parody after just three movies wasn’t a great sign.
The new movie is reportedly ignoring the third installment, although it’s unclear if it will involve lycanthropy or not.
Source link
