I Know What You Did Last Summer Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson on That Killer Ending

Warning: Spoilers for I Know What You Did Last Summer ahead.

When Jennifer Kaytin Robinson first saw 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, she was ushered to the theater in secret. “I got snuck in by my babysitter. I was, like, nine years old,” she tells Vanity Fair over Zoom. “It was an experience.” The terror of that screening faded over time, but Robinson’s fascination with the pulpy horror film, starring some of Hollywood’s freshest three-named actors of the era (Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Jennifer Love-Hewitt) lingered.

“Middle school sleepovers,” she begins, “that’s where I was forged as a lover of cinema. And this was a sleepover banger. I mean, it was an all-timer. You had to go to a specific person’s house to watch it because not every mom was going to let you watch I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream, or The Faculty.” Watching an R-rated movie underage wasn’t the only thrill on offer: “I also have a vivid memory of being drawn to the cover of I Know What You Did Last Summer at Blockbuster. Because everyone’s so hot.”

That eye-catching tradition carries over into Robinson’s new entry into the franchise, as led by Ava (The Studio’s Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Outer Banks’ Madelyn Cline), Milo (The Little Mermaid’s Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tell Me Lies’ Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon, who has been cast as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming American Love Story). Per convention, the film opens on the aesthetically pleasing 20-somethings as they celebrate the Fourth of July in their seaside town of Southport. But their nighttime joyride to watch fireworks is halted when the friends inadvertently cause a fatal car wreck, then flee the scene.

Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, and Tyriq Withers in 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer.Courtesy of Sony

On the one-year anniversary of this traumatic event, a hook-wielding fisherman begins to terrorize the group—first via threatening messages, before graduating to full-blown homicide. These methods are identical to those of the murderous maniac behind the 1997 killings, as well as a Bahamas-set rampage in the 1998 sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. That brings two of those movies’ survivors, Hewitt’s Julie James and Prinze’s Ray Bronson, back into the fold. Neither is eager to revisit the most harrowing chapters of their lives—or be reunited with each other after a nasty divorce. “I thought someone was coming to murder me,” Julie says upon seeing Ray at her doorstep. “This is worse.”

Embarking on her first theatrically released venture after making millennial rom-com Someone Great and ’90s-inspired Do Revenge for Netflix, Robinson talks to VF about that shocking twist, box-office anxiety, and the difference between “making a movie about the internet and making a movie for the internet.”

Vanity Fair: I feel it’s only right to ask how you spent the Fourth of July.

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson: I went to a barbecue at a friend’s house. I had two hot dogs, got in the pool, felt sick from the two hot dogs, and went home. Then I watched fireworks. I live higher up in the hills, and there’s a road where you can stand and basically see the whole city. And I never drink beer, but I was, like, “Oh, I’m going to go watch fireworks with a beer.”