Jennifer Love Hewitt defends I Know What You Did Last Summer twist (SPOILERS)

There’s a new sequel to the 1997 slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer (watch it HERE) and its 1998 follow-up I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (watch that one HERE) in theatres now (JoBlo’s own Tyler Nichols gave it a 4/10 “dumpster fire” review that can be read at THIS LINK). Jennifer Love Hewitt, who played heroine Julie James in the first two films, and Freddie Prinze Jr., who was Julie’s boyfriend Ray Bronson in those films, reprise their roles – and they’re facing off with a new “Fisherman” killer that’s stalking a whole new cast. The movie features a twist that has been upsetting a lot of fans of the original movies, though, and in an interview with Variety, Hewitt took the opportunity to defend that twist. So we’re going to have to dig into SPOILER territory before we get to her defense.

Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) directed the film from a screenplay by Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.), which has received some rewrites from Robinson and journalist Sam Lansky. McKendrick told Collider a while back that the new sequel would reckon with “some big ideas about hero and villain, right and wrong, how your skeletons come back to haunt you. And in the age of the internet and the age where fame is such a revered concept, the creation of TikTok and social media, who is Julie James in a world where there are no secrets anymore?” McKendrick also said that when she went in to pitch her take to Sony, the most important things they wanted to hear about were “the accident, the event that kicks it off, and who the killer is.“

Here’s the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel’s synopsis: When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer… and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help. As you can tell from the synopsis, Hewitt and Prinze (who did film scenes together, despite theories to the contrary) are not the leads this time around. They are joined in the cast by Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks), Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta), Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer), model / musician Gabbriette Bechtel (making her feature film acting debut), and Austin Nichols (The Day After Tomorrow). At one point, Lola Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty) and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story) were going to be in there as well, for what was meant to be the opening scene, but they were cut out.

Now we venture into SPOILER territory: Prinze’s character Ray turns out to be a slicker-wearing, hook-wielding killer this time around, a twist that didn’t go over well with some fans. When Variety asked Hewitt about that twist, she replied, “There’s a real split here with how people feel about the storyline, and I totally get it. I was shocked until I took a minute, and I really thought about it, and I went back and looked at the other movies, and I get it. I really get it. If you look at who Ray was, even from that first movie, he was, for five seconds, a starry-eyed, young lover on a beach. The rest of the time, he was this sort of dark and brooding guy, who took on a lot of dislike for Southport — for the way that people were treated there, for the way that he was treated there, for the way that he was looked at, for the way that things were handled. That was always who he was. So, ultimately, it’s a believable storyline. It’s wild, but if you’re going to come back 27 years later, are you not going to do wild? I think it’s kind of brilliant, and as shocked as I was, I do ultimately think that it makes sense.“

Have you seen the new I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel? If so, what did you think of the twist? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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