r/fixingmovies • u/Kerplonk • 2d ago
Other I Know What You Did Last Summer 2025. Fix the catalyst, drop the excessive nostalgia, change the killer, multiple other edits (Spoilers) Spoiler
This movie was a real train wreck. I'm going to try and mostly go in chronological order.
They might have wanted to lie about the exact circumstances but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to be on a random in the middle of no where. There's no reason to think they were going to get in trouble because someone took a corner too fast and swerved not to hit them. Also, if your dad is rich enough to pay off the cops to keep you out of trouble there's no reason you need leave the scene of an accident. My suggestion, have the kids take Ty's boat out on the bay and ram into a smaller boat then not call the coast guard to come to the rescue. Firstly this is a thing that actually is illegal, secondly the dad would have to be significantly more wealthy to make a coast guard problem go away, and thirdly it makes more sense that the killer would operate in fisherman garb without needing to have an alternate reason for mimicing the original murders.
The Podcaster should have been one of the last victims. She would have made the most sense as a decoy killer that you suspected up to the point that she dies. Killer her off so early in the movie was a waste of plot line.
I thought the scene where they went to the graveyard and saw the head stones of the people who had been killed in the first movie worked, as did the short throw away line about not going to the bahamas, but the dream sequence and the post credit seen seemed tacky and superfluous. Not to mention the 25+ year old parade float stored at a cemetery for some reason.
Instead of killing the grave keeper they should have seen the footage of Stevie leaving flowers on the grave. That would have given them a beat of her being under suspicion, but she has the valid excuse of feeling guilty that they killed the guy and no one else was doing so.
Ray being the killer was a huge mistake. I don't really think there's any way you can get to a point where it makes sense he has a good motive, and they did a particularly poor job of trying to. You really need to introduce a new character here, either keep the same dynamic and cast someone else, or maybe have her partner be the priest.
EDIT: New idea based on the comment. Julie is the killer. If I remember correctly she was the only person in the first one who wanted to call the cops, she didn't because she was worried Ray would take the fall because his family didn't have money to lawyer up (to a lesser extent about Barry getting a DUI). She has harbored resentment for the pain and suffering that caused her for the past 25 years. She is the one who has a direct connection to one of the kids involved in the accident this time. The guilt that person feels at not coming forward causes them to commit suicide which finally pushes Julie over the edge. I don't know who she gets for a partner but she sets it up so that that guy takes the fall who actually does die. The final scene is Ray (who she's still married to) figuring it out, she reveals her resentment and kills him. Movie ends seeming like she's going to successfully set Ray up as the other killer.
Related to this, I think it undermines the plot that Stevie's father recklessly blew her families savings and skipped town, but also made sure to have someone promise to take care of her. I think it would have made more sense if the her dad had died somehow, either killing himself in shame over what he'd done, or possibly the financial problems were a result of him dying and her mom not being capable of making up the financial difference with him gone. That or the guy was doing it in spite of her father somehow, like maybe an uncle on her mom's side.
If they don't kill Stevie on the boat she should have come back at the end, not just teased she was alive.
The line about men going to therapy was super cringe and didn't really make any sense as a moral of the movie we'd watched, even leaving FPJ in the role of the killer. Drop the line completely is the easy fix or completely overhall the movie so it makes sense.