I Know What You Did Last Summer Shows Scream 7 Needs to Try Something New

The lackluster third act of I Know What You Did Last Summer means that Scream 7 really needs to step its game up and try something new.

I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream have an interesting history with one another. After the release of Scream, Columbia Pictures quickly rushed I Know What You Did Last Summer into production and got it out the following year. Apart from both being horror flicks about teenagers, there are a number of similarities between the two films: Both were written by Kevin Williamson, both are credited with revitalizing the slasher genre in the 1990s, etc.

With the conclusion of the new I Know What You Did Last Summer movie leaving fans largely unsatisfied, Scream 7 needs to go in a different direction and stop relying on some of the tropes these franchises have worn into the ground.

I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025 pulls a Scream, which makes for a lame conclusion

In the third act of I Know What You Did Last Summer, we initially learn that Stevie Ward, played by Sarah Pidgeon, is the new Fisherman killer. She wanted revenge for the death of her friend and decided this was how she was going to get it, except, gasp! There’s a twist!!

The twist reveals that Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson was working with Stevie the whole time, meaning the man who survived the events of the first two movies has since become a murderer. Some have complained that this feels out of character for him, but that’s not my issue with the whole thing. The opening of the first movie established that Ray is a pretty immoral guy, and he then had to watch nearly all of his friends get murdered. Decades have since gone by, and I can buy that Ray’s twisted past and inability to cope with what happened led him down this path.

While the logic might check out, that still doesn’t mean it’s a great reveal — it’s not. It’s painfully boring and obvious.

The was some mystery surrounding who the Fisherman killer was in the first I Know What You Did Last Summer; however, you’re never really led to believe that it could be someone from within the friend group. They all did this terrible thing, and now this person is coming to kill them, and they need to survive. Simple. Effective.

They ditch the simplicity in this new movie in favor of twists, turns, red herrings, and references; all things that I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t really need. By giving it a very Scream-like ending, we’re left with something that feels like it’s afraid to do anything different and, instead, relies on old horror tropes that are recycled from other franchises.

Scream 7 needs to avoid the friend killer trope the franchise created

Williamson is now directing Scream 7, which will bring back Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Scott Foley, David Arquette, and more. If this movie is going to work, we need to do something different. Not only did I Know What You Did Last Summer just do the friend killer trope that the Scream franchise popularized, but there have also been two other Scream legacy sequels — Scream and Scream VI — that have done similar things.

I want to see something completely bonkers. I want to come out of the theater feeling shocked. I don’t even need Scream 7 to be a whodunnit; the original Scream was playing off slasher movies, which were popular in the horror genre at the time. There are still new slashers being made, of course, but culture has evolved and people are interested in different things right now.

So, my dream Scream 7? A movie playing into what’s popular in the horror genre now. Maybe it’s done in the style of an A24 horror movie. Maybe they find a way to comment on all those public domain/Mickey Mouse flicks. I just really, really want to see something new that doesn’t end with, ‘And Ghostface is really just so-and-so because they’ve been lying the whole time!’

Let’s go big with Scream 7. Let’s take some bold moves. I want to see it do what I Know What You Did Last Summer didn’t.