“It’s 1997 all over again,” says one character toward the end of I Know What You Did Last Summer, a new horror-film sequel premiering in theaters nationwide on July 18. It’s a reference, of course, to the gory events of the hit 1997 film that started the franchise—also called I Know What You Did Last Summer, and very loosely based on a 1973 YA novel by Lois Duncan. The movies are straightforward slasher films in which a silent murderer, clad in a black raincoat, dispatches teens in various ways with a large fishhook; the book is a low-key suspense tale, with decidedly less violence. The new movie goes even further afield, but fans of the previous films are sure to be entertained.

The novel’s opening gimmick is a good one: Four teenagers, driving home after a night of drinking and pot-smoking, accidentally hit a young boy on a bike, and flee the scene. Soon afterward, they anonymously call the police, but it’s too late: The child is dead, and the friends—Julie, Ray, Helen, and Barry—make a pact never to tell anyone what happened. One year later, Julie receives an ominous, unsigned note in the mail that reads: “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER.” Her friends soon receive similar messages—and when an unknown assailant shoots one of them, it becomes clear that someone is dead-set on revenge.

Duncan’s book was notably dark for a YA novel in the 1970s, but all the main characters survive the story, and there’s not a single fishhook to be found. It was the 1997 adaptation, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Julie and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Ray, that transformed the story into a gorefest; it was quite a change, but one that makes creative sense in hindsight. The premise of secret-keeping teens was, and is, a natural fit for the slasher genre; 1980’s Prom Night, for instance, has a similar setup.

The 1997 movie was a huge hit, spawning multiple sequels, including 1998’s I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. In the latest entry, the main players are a new batch of 20-somethings who similarly cause the vehicular death of a stranger; one receives the eponymous threatening note, and soon the pals are being picked off, one by one, by what seems to be the raincoated, hook-wielding assailant from the previous films. The terrified troop seek out Julie and Ray—played again by Hewitt and Prinze—for advice on taking on the killer.

Director and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge, Sweet/Vicious) is clearly a fan of the ’90s films, as she includes several amusing callbacks and cameos. For instance, Ray shoots down the Gen-Zers’ plan to flee to the Bahamas—which, as fans know, was the setting of the 1998 sequel—and Julie satisfyingly repeats an iconic line of dialogue from the original movie in a whole new context. References to Duncan’s book, though, are nonexistent—a classic case of an adaptation displacing an original work in the popular culture.

Late in the movie, Julie pointedly notes that nostalgia is overrated. However, it’s fair to say that only viewers with fond memories of the earlier installments are likely to enjoy this one. On its own merits, it’s a fairly mediocre slasher; the pacing is sluggish, the twists are predictable, and the scenes of violence aren’t especially frightening—due, in part, to the jokiness of the script, which undercuts the urgency at every turn. City on Fire’s Chase Sui Wonders, as Ava Brucks, gets the most to do as a prominent member of the friend group, but the main characters are generally a shallow and interchangeable lot—even more so than usual for a slasher film. Hewitt and Prinze, as the traumatized survivors of the earlier series entries, give far more engaging performances; many viewers, in fact, will wish that Julie was the main character, instead of Ava and company. Fortunately, as with all slasher movies, there’s always the possibility of a sequel.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.