The Best Movies and TV Shows Like I Know What You Did Last Summer

The coastal resort town of Southport is still reeling from a tragic, alcohol-fueled hit-and-run accident that left a local pedestrian dead. Wracked with guilt, four college friends—Julie, Ray, Helen, and Barry—made a dark pact to dump the body in the ocean and keep the secret buried forever, hoping to salvage their promising futures. Exactly one year later, however, their carefully constructed lie begins to unravel in the most terrifying way possible. Julie receives a chilling, anonymous note in the mail containing just five words: "I know what you did last summer." Panicked, she reunites the estranged group, but their attempts to brush it off as a sick prank are quickly shattered by a relentless wave of terror. A shadowy figure clad in a slicker and wielding a sharp fisherman’s hook begins stalking them through the fog-drenched streets. Barry is the first to be hunted down and brutally murdered at his own home, escalating the paranoia and fear among the survivors. As the body count rises, Julie and Helen realize they are dealing with a vengeful killer who knows every intimate detail of their past crime. Motivated by a twisted sense of poetic justice, the stalker methodically picks off everyone close to the terrified friends. Helen’s sister and boyfriend are brutally slain in the town’s annual Croaker pageant, leaving Helen utterly devastated. Desperate to uncover the truth, Julie discovers that the person they hit a year ago was actually David Egan, a local young man with deep ties to the area. However, the mystery deepens when Julie stumbles upon a horrifying revelation: David Egan was already dead when they struck him, murdered by Ben Willis, a local fisherman seeking vengeance for a past tragedy involving his own daughter. The man hunting them is not David, but the vengeful fisherman himself, Ben, who has returned to exact a bloody toll for the cover-up. In a heart-pounding, claustrophobic climax, Julie is trapped aboard a commercial fishing ship, hunted through the dark, blood-soaked hull by the relentless killer. Just as Ben corners her, Ray arrives to rescue her, engaging in a brutal struggle that ultimately sends the fisherman plummeting into the churning ocean waters. Though the authorities search the sea and find nothing, Julie and Ray are left emotionally scarred, haunted by the lingering trauma of their actions. The movie closes with a chilling final image: Julie, back at college, staring at a steamy, fogged-up shower door, realizing that secrets of this magnitude can never truly stay buried, and the past always comes back to claim its due.