WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise.
Final Girls are the bread and butter of the horror genre. The sole survivors of slasher films, they battle masked killers and bear the trauma of their loved ones’ deaths. The term was codified in 1992 by Carol J. Clover in her seminal Men, Women, and Chainsaws, describing characters dating back to ’70s horror. But the idea of a final girl has evolved over the years as the genre itself has changed. This beloved archetype was reborn in the mid-90s as meta-slashers reinvigorated the format. While Scream’s Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) rightfully dominate this period of feminist empowerment, one final girl often goes overlooked.
Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) stars in Jim Gillespie’s I Know What You Did Last Summer, a slasher released in the wake of Scream’s unprecedented success. Loosely based on a YA mystery by Lois Duncan, the film follows the aftermath of a horrific accident on the 4th of July. Through two films, we watch Julie and her boyfriend Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) evade a mysterious man in a black rain slicker intent on making them pay for their secret crime.
While I Know What You Did Last Summer and its over-the-top sequel both have their staunch defenders, Julie James is frequently left out of conversations about the genre’s favorite final girls. But why is she so often forgotten? She’s an empowered heroine with a strong moral compass who survives multiple attacks from a bloodthirsty killer. She’s even got her own iconic catch phrase. However, her story is marred by a frustrating man who repeatedly drags her back into danger.
When we first meet Julie, she’s a high school graduate looking forward to a bright future. Headed off to college, she plans to maintain a long distance relationship with Ray while her friend Helen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) seeks fame and fortune with her boyfriend Barry (Ryan Phillippe). But a cruel twist of fate derails these plans. While joyriding down a winding, cliff-side road, the reckless teens run over a stranger who stumbles in front of their speeding car. Fearing the consequences of vehicular manslaughter, Barry pressures the group to conceal the accident and go on with their lives as if nothing has happened.
One year later, they are worse for wear. Both couples have split and all four former friends live under a shadow of disappointment and depression. But someone insists they pay for their crimes and bombards the group with ominous notes. Even worse, a mysterious fisherman with a razor-sharp hook proceeds to pick them off one by one.
Determined to survive, Julie begins investigating this man’s identity, but discovers that Ray has secrets of his own. This distrust sends her into the clutches of the actual killer, a local fisherman named Ben Willis (Muse Watson) and the man they hit and left for dead. Julie finds herself trapped on Willis’s boat and frantically tries to stay alive while discovering the frozen bodies of her murdered friends. Ray rushes aboard and manages to save her in the nick of time, sending Willis—minus a hand—flying into the darkened sea.
With the killer and his actions revealed, Ray and Julie again choose not to disclose the earlier accident, claiming they know nothing of the killer’s motives. They rekindle their relationship, but cannot shake the weight of this lie by omission. In the final scene, we cut to a healthier Julie making passionate plans with Ray when she spies a familiar message on a bathroom mirror. The fisherman bursts headfirst through the glass, enveloping us all in his sinister shadow. This impossible stinger harkens back to the jarring final attacks of Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and should not be taken as a literal plot point. However, it does cast an uncomfortable light on a future romance between Julie and Ray.
Danny Cannon’s 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer follows Julie further into her college career as she continues to deal with this complex trauma. Her roommate Karla (Brandy Norwood) urges her to rejoin the world and perhaps cozy up with her shy classmate Will (Matthew Settle). But Julie is still committed to Ray despite their increasingly rocky relationship. He still works on the Southport docks, a location Julie finds extremely triggering. Ray grows impatient and asks for space, turning down a romantic weekend in the Bahamas and once again sending Julie into the arms of the killer.
Despite its flaws, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is a charming slasher with a stand-out cast and impressive kills. Though it failed to kickstart a larger franchise, Cannon does finally give Julie an empowering turn. Presumably buried at sea, Willis returns to exact his revenge, this time employing a second killer. Will turns out to be the fisherman’s son and Julie finds herself in a stormy cemetery with two dangerous men. Though Ray is instrumental in this climactic fight—causing Willis to kill his own child—it’s Julie who strikes the final blow. She unloads a pistol into the murderous fisherman and sends him into the grave he dug for her. Ray and Julie rekindle their romance but once again, stress darkens their domestic bliss.
The second film ends with another implausible stinger as Julie senses danger inside her home. She spies Ben hiding under the bed just seconds before he attacks, dragging her backward as the camera fades. Taken symbolically, these imagined attacks reveal the depths of Julie’s lingering trauma and shed uncomfortable light on her relationship with Ray. Both scenes begin with romantic moments: an upcoming weekend visit and a night together in their newly bought love nest. But on both occasions, the specter of what they’ve done hangs in the air, ruining any future intimacy. Though it seems she has moved on with Ray, Julie cannot escape the weight of their collective guilt and it’s him, not Willis, who continues to trigger these frightening visions. Perhaps Julie’s body is telling her not to move forward with a man so closely linked to her unresolved trauma.
Maybe this is the reason Julie never rises to the ranks of our favorite final girls. In addition to being overshadowed by Helen’s truly spectacular chase/murder sequence in the original film and the real-life marriage of Gellar and Prinze, Julie’s story feels forever linked to Ray. And, while both actors are likeable enough, we rarely see the couple on stable ground. A few short scenes on a moonlit beach are all we get before the accident casts a permanent shadow over their love. Until the first film’s final scene, Julie avoids time alone with her former flame and outright believes he might be the killer. Ray is similarly sidelined in Cannon’s sequel as he rushes to find Julie at an island resort. When they do reunite, it’s only in the shadow of the fisherman’s death, implying that he’s the one poisoning their otherwise healthy relationship and not a shared history of terror and death. We never see a constructive conversation about moving forward on healthy ground nor does Ray apologize to Julie for coercing her silence. The majority of both films see the couple either formally broken up or on the outs, making it difficult to embrace them as a heroic team.
But Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s new I Know What You Did Last Summer finally breaks Julie out of this frustrating cycle. When a new group of teens face a similar threat, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) reaches out to Julie, who now teaches trauma theory at a nearby university. Catching up with the assertive professor, we learn that Julie did in fact marry Ray, but their relationship has since fallen apart—not surprising given their tense and troubled past. We don’t learn the details of this split except for vague mentions of Ray’s denial, but Julie has vowed to stay away from Southport where Ray now owns a dock-side bar. Ava’s friend Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) reaches out to the man for similar help and the former spouses have an awkward reunion in Julie’s home. While Ray urges the teens to protect themselves, Julie’s advice is more proactive. Remembering her own climactic moment in the second film, she tells Ava that the only way to survive is to hunt down the fisherman and kill him first.
Though Julie wants nothing to do with Ray, he once again drags her back into danger. When Stevie turns out to be the killer, we learn that Ray has been helping her exact revenge. It’s a refreshing turn for this troubled franchise and something legacy sequels have long resisted. Though our favorite final girls frequently return, directors seem hesitant to paint them as villains. Here, Robinson builds upon a pattern of distrust first established in Gillespie’s original, breaking Julie and Ray up once and for all. And let’s not forget that Ray was behind the wheel all those years ago and a driving force behind the group’s vow of silence. Though clearly an accident, Ray is directly linked to Julie’s trauma and at least partially responsible for decades of pain. Though far from perfect, Robinson’s I Know What You Did Last Summer sees Ray as an unsupportive boyfriend and husband before transforming him into an outright killer.
Though Stevie is driven by simple revenge, Ray’s motivation is much more complex. He’s frustrated that Southport has covered up the fisherman’s original killing spree and swept his friends’ deaths under the rug. He may have gotten away with vehicular manslaughter, but he’s been unable to escape the unresolved guilt. When the fisherman murders begin again, Ray barges into a town meeting, insisting they acknowledge the town’s unsavory past. As the undiscovered murderer, he would benefit from this collective denial, but Ray seems to crave justice more than anything else. He can’t forget what he did that long-ago summer and has orchestrated a way to punish himself. Either he will kill an approximation of his younger self by helping Stevie kill her friends, or he’ll die trying to kill Julie, finally atoning for the original accident.
Once again, Julie survives long enough to be saved as Ava shoots Ray in the back with a speargun. Though hardly the most empowering ending, this allows Julie to finally step out of Ray’s shadow. She reconnects with Karla and the former roommates agree to team up and hunt down any remaining threats. To her credit, Julie never blames Ray for the horrific events they’ve both survived, and we should probably follow her lead. When they first reunite in the original film she gives a brutally simple explanation for breaking things off. While standing near the scene of their crime she says, “I don’t hold you responsible. No, I’m responsible for my own actions and I don’t blame you. But I don’t want to know you either.”
Perhaps Julie had it right all along in separating herself from Ray. As a single college professor standing on her own two feet, she finally seems to have found happiness after moving past the mistakes of her troubled youth. Robinson allows the audience to catch up with this empowerment promising an exciting new chapter for the forgotten final girl.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is now available on Digital at home.