“Nostalgia is overrated,” states the returning Jennifer Love Hewitt during the climax. I agree with her, but I don’t think this clumsy legacy sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer shares that same sentiment. While horror franchises like Scream and Final Destination have found clever ways to return from the dead, this saga stumbles like a decaying zombie that should’ve stayed in its grave. The original film was little more than a dumb teenage slasher, and this continuation offers even less than that.

The biggest mistake with a movie like this is that it forgets to make you care about any of the characters being targeted. It’s hard to feel for the plight of the latest batch of characters who unwittingly committed manslaughter and didn’t answer for their crimes. We meet Danica (Madelyn Cline) over concerns about what dress to wear to an event, and her uncertain romantic feelings for the timid Milo (Jonah Hauer-King). The two spend little time generating any chemistry when they meet up with their engaged mutual friends of the astrology-believing ditz Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) and her buff bonehead nepo baby, Teddy (Tyriq Withers). The only likable character that joins them on a roadside joint-smoking session is the poor Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), but don’t expect the film to treat her any better than her snobby high school friends.

Keeping with the cyclical tragedy of Southport, the friends accidentally end up killing a man on the road and are haunted by him one year later. Of course, the killer arrives in his trademark fisherman attire and sharp hook, maintaining the port theme. The mysterious killer starts by sending notes and quickly progresses to writing those notes in blood with their butchered victims. But for a killer brandishing hooks, fishing wire, and spear guns, the brutality is very limited. Only so many times can you show that hook – caressing flesh or clanging against metal – that the chilling effect grows numb.

Those lukewarm lacerations would be fine if there were at least a compelling mystery. The story has plenty to work with, given the gentrification of Southport, the scummy history of cover-ups in the community, the questionable presence of religion, and the obsession that comes with murder in the true-crime era. Most of these aspects and motives are ignored in favor of finding the killer and killing them, thinking little of the reasons why. The revelation of the killer is so stock that even the remaining characters think little of the reasoning behind the murders, merely delivering dead-on-arrival punchlines like “I hate the 4th of July” and “This summer is a 0/10.”

This is why it’s so baffling that the latest ensemble enlists the help of Last Summer alumni Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr., both arriving with close-ups and swelling music, hoping the millennials recalling the first film will gasp and clap (nobody did in the theater). What insight could these survivors possibly offer? The best they can tell them is to find the masked killer and kill them first. I waited for the young characters to retort with “That’s it!? That’s your advice!?” Alas, that would require some smarts from a slasher that never veers out of the dumb lane. A better film might’ve played up the dumb nature of the characters for better laughs, but, to quote Glass Onion, “It’s just dumb!”

I Know What You Did Last Summer is such a tedious retread sequel that it doesn’t even bother with a different title. This is a lifeless horror film with unlikable characters, bland mystery staging, and kills that rarely pack a gruesome impact. It’s a real shame considering that this film had a chance to be something better, where it could’ve been more astute or absurd than its predecessor. Instead, it falls back on all the boring aspects of a mindless slasher and stumbles hard with an ending that, perhaps unintentionally, warrants rich brats killing poor folks ravaged by capitalism. That’s some gross messaging for a film that wanted little more than stabbings from a serial killer. The film might want you to be disgusted by how many times the villain can strangle, gut, and pierce these victims, but the opulence surrounding these heroic rich kids running for their lives in huge houses and spacious yachts, with zero lessons learned by the film’s end, is far more disgusting.