When I Know What You Did Last Summer arrived in theaters in October 1997, it looked like the next big thing in teen horror.Released less than a year after Scream, the movie reunited screenwriter Kevin Williamson with the horror audience that had made his previous film a hit. But while Scream played with the conventions of the slasher genre, I Know What You Did Last Summer embraced them. It had four attractive teenagers, a terrible secret, a mysterious killer and a hook-wielding figure stalking them through a small coastal town.The movie was a major commercial success. Made for roughly $17 million, it went on to earn over $125 million worldwide.Nearly three decades later, the movie remains one of the defining teen horror films of the late 1990s. For viewers who grew up with it, the images are inseparable from that era: Jennifer Love Hewitt screaming in terror, Sarah Michelle Gellar running from the killer, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr. as the other members of the doomed friend group, and the Fisherman dragging his hook behind him.That nostalgia has only grown with time. But there is an uncomfortable part of the movie’s history: Lois Duncan, the author of the 1973 novel on which it was based, hated what Hollywood had done to her story.Related: The 35 Best Slasher Movies of All Time, Ranked
I Know What You Did Last Summer Was Very Different From Lois Duncan’s Book
Lois Duncan in 1981Denver Post / Getty Images
Duncan’s novel was not a slasher story.
The basic premise survived the adaptation. Four teenagers are involved in an accident, agree to keep what happened a secret and eventually receive a threatening message from someone who knows what they did. But Williamson’s screenplay transformed that relatively restrained suspense story into a full-fledged slasher.
The movie added the Fisherman and introduced graphic murders that had no equivalent in Duncan’s novel. The result was much closer to the kind of teen slasher that had dominated horror in the 1980s than the book Duncan published in 1973.
For audiences in 1997, that transformation was part of the appeal. Scream had demonstrated that theatrical horror could become a major mainstream success again, and I Know What You Did Last Summer quickly became another recognizable title from the same late-’90s horror boom.
For Duncan, however, the changes came as a shock.Related: The Best (And Worst!) Classic Horror Movie Remakes of All Time
Lois Duncan Wasn’t Told What the Movie Had Become
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997)Colombia Pictures
Duncan later recalled that she had almost forgotten she had written the book when she learned it was being turned into a major motion picture. She was excited to see the adaptation.
Then she went to the theater.
“I went to the theater, bought my ticket and popcorn, and found a seat,” Duncan recalled in a Q&A published in her book. “Then onto the screen came an insane fisherman carrying an ice hook. He wasn’t in my book.”
For a moment, Duncan thought she might have walked into the wrong theater.
The title eventually appeared on screen, confirming that she was watching the adaptation of her own novel. But what followed was almost entirely foreign to her.
“I was so horrified I couldn’t even open my popcorn,” she recalled. “It was quite a shocker.”
Duncan also said the filmmakers had kept her away from the production because they were apparently concerned about how she would react to the changes.
Asked whether she was more upset that the movie had become a slasher or that it had changed so much of her story, Duncan’s answer was simple: “Well, both.”
“It was my characters and my plot gimmick, but then it went in all directions,” she said.
She pointed out that the book’s double-identity twist, which she considered crucial to the story, had been removed. But the violence bothered her even more.Related: 7 Classic Horror Movies That Are Still Shocking Today
The Movie’s Violence Had a Much More Personal Meaning for Duncan
Muse Watson in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997)Columbia Pictures
Duncan’s reaction to the movie’s graphic violence was shaped by a tragedy that had happened years earlier.
In 1989, Duncan’s 18-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, was shot and killed while driving in Albuquerque, N.M. Duncan spent decades investigating her daughter’s death and wrote about the case in Who Killed My Daughter? That experience made the movie’s treatment of violence especially difficult for her.
“Several years earlier my own teenage daughter, Kait, had been chased down in her car and shot to death,” Duncan said. “I had seen, right in front of my eyes, what real violence is.”
She found it disturbing to watch audiences react to the movie’s fictional killings as entertainment.
“To have people screaming and laughing about it did not go down well,” she said.
Duncan continued searching for answers about Kaitlyn’s death until her own death in 2016.
In 2021, Paul Apodaca confessed to killing Arquette and two other women in New Mexico in the late 1980s. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison in 2024. Duncan never lived to see that resolution.
I Know What You Did Last Summer Became a Hit Anyway
Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr. in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997)Columbia Pictures
There is an irony to Duncan’s complicated relationship with the movie.
She disliked what the adaptation had become, but she also recognized that having her book turned into a successful movie brought renewed attention to her work. In the same interview, she acknowledged that the movie made her backlist “suddenly very popular.”
So I Know What You Did Last Summer left Duncan, who is widely regarded as a pioneer of young adult fiction, with two very different legacies.
The film became a nostalgic touchstone for a generation of horror fans. Its cast became closely associated with the late-’90s teen-horror boom, its Fisherman became an instantly recognizable slasher villain and the movie’s success helped establish the franchise alongside Scream as one of the era’s defining horror properties. The movie spawned three sequels, including a 2025 revival, as well as a TV adaptation.
But Duncan’s experience with the film remained fundamentally different from the one shared by its audience. She had expected to see her novel brought to the screen and instead watched its characters, plot and tone transformed into something far more violent. Her reaction is an unusual footnote to a movie that became a defining part of 1990s horror.
Related: We Ranked the 160 Best Horror Movies of All Time, From ‘Halloween’ to ‘Get Out’
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