I Know What You Did Last Summer’s Most Famous Moment Was Written and Directed by a Child

I Know What You Did Last Summer might be the most fascinating of the late 1990s slasher movies that followed Scream. Not necessarily because it also comes from Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson, nor because it features a cast of hot young ’90s stars (including Scream 2‘s Sarah Michelle Gellar). Rather it’s fascinating because of the weird choices the movie constantly makes, elevating what could have been little more than a TV movie thriller into an entertaining oddity.

Take the movie’s most famous moment, in which aggravated protagonist Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) challenges the killer by standing out in the open and asking, “What are you waiting for, huh? What are you waiting for?!” She punctuates her questions with a little spin, looking more like a child turned frantic by boredom than Arnold Schwarzenegger calling out the Predator.

There’s a reason for this. The scene was written and directed by a child. No, really.

Speaking with US Weekly in 2018, Hewitt credited a lucky kid with masterminding the movie’s most famous sequence. “That scene was actually directed by a kid who won a contest to come on and create a moment for the movie,” Hewitt recalled. “I have no idea where he is but he’s like, ‘I want her to stand in the street and turn around and just scream what are you waiting for, huh?’” By her own admission, Hewitt didn’t see the child’s vision: “I was literally like, ‘Are you kidding me right now? This is what I’m gonna do? OK.'” And yet, Julie’s challenge to an invisible killer resonated with fans.

Strange as it sounds, moments like this one are the saving grace of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Based on the 1973 novel by Lois Duncan, the story itself has little to distinguish it from countless other thrillers. The movie follows a group of (mostly) privileged teens in a seaside North Carolina town who run over a fisherman while driving home from a drunken night of celebration. The quartet decides to throw the fisherman’s body into the sea and keep the secret among themselves. But a year later, a fisherman, possibly even the fisherman, begins taunting and tormenting the teens.

The overly convoluted whodunnit plot, with its cast of pretty but vacant stars, including, Freddy Prinze Jr. and Ryan Phillippe, seemed destined to be forgotten. And yet, decisions such as getting input from a kiddo give the movie enough character to be distinctive. The film spawned a 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which features a ridiculous turn from Jack Black as a dreadlocked weed enthusiast. A new cast was recruited for a low-budget direct-to-video sequel in 2006 and for a 2021 series for Amazon Prime Video.

Neither of these reimaginings managed to make much of an impression, but they lacked Hewitt and Prinze as Julie and her boyfriend Ray. That’s not a mistake that director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and her co-writer Sam Lansky intended to make for their legacy sequel, also called I Know What You Did Last Summer. While the 2025 version gives the Fisherman fresh victims with a new set of attractive and regretful partiers, led by Madelyn Cline of Glass Onion, the movie also brings back Julie and Ray.

The new movie’s trailer presents Ray and Julie as grizzled veterans who give the new kids survival advice. And of course, the clip ends with a close-up of Julie, who whispers a challenge to her assailant: “What are you waiting for?” Hopefully that contest-winning kid is getting residuals, or he might have to don fisherman gear and hunt down the filmmakers.

I Know What You Did Last Summer slashes back into the theaters on July 18, 2025.