Hooked on a masked killer with a grudge? Same.
Some horror movies don’t need elaborate mythology or apocalyptic stakes. Sometimes, all it takes is a secret, a killer, and a summer that refuses to stay buried.
Released in 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer is part slasher, part morality tale—a coastal-set teen thriller where a group of friends cover up a hit-and-run, only to be stalked by someone who knows the truth. But what gives the film its lasting power isn’t just the hook-wielding killer in the rain; it’s the fear of consequences. The guilt. The slow unraveling. The sense that running won’t save you.
The Essence of I Know What You Did Last Summer
What made I Know What You Did Last Summer cut so deep? It wasn’t just the fisherman’s hook; it was the perfect storm of teen guilt, coastal dread, and the chilling idea that consequences always come back, no matter how fast you run.
The film bottled the ‘90s slasher revival into something irresistibly watchable: a group of flawed but relatable teens, a sun-drenched summer town hiding secrets, and a killer who weaponized their shared trauma. Its blend of glossy aesthetics and psychological suspense redefined post-Scream horror and created a blueprint for thrillers that mix youthful recklessness with moral comeuppance.
25 Horror Movies That Will Hook You
If IKWYDLS scratched your itch for teen paranoia, small-town secrets, and stylish bloodshed, these are the films you need to watch next…
This list dives into 25 films that echo that fear. Some are cult classics, others are underseen gems, but all of them share the same bone-deep chill of being hunted for what you thought you got away with.
1. Campfire Tales (1997)
Starring: James Marsden, Amy Smart, Christine Taylor, Ron Livingston
Directed by: Martin Kunert, David Semel & Matt Cooper
Plot: A late-night car crash strands a group of teens deep in the woods, where they pass the time telling scary stories around a fire. But their tales of urban legends and bloody comeuppance bleed into something more sinister—each one crackling with danger that feels a little too close.
Why It Scares: This is pure oral-tradition horror, where rumors fester, guilt simmers, and vengeance gets passed down like ghost stories. IKWYDLS whispered threats from the water; Campfire Tales screams from the trees.
2. The Faculty (1998)
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Elijah Wood
Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
Plot: At Herrington High, the teachers are acting weird. Like… extra weird. When students discover that a mind-controlling alien parasite is infecting their school, they become the last line of defense against a full-scale invasion.
Why It Scares: Like IKWYDLS, it’s the fear of losing control over your secrets, your friendships, and even your body. Add teen angst, small-town suspicion, and some razor-sharp commentary, and you’ve got paranoia with a pulse.
3. Disturbing Behavior (1998)
Starring: James Marsden, Katie Holmes
Directed by: David Nutter
Plot: Something’s wrong in Cradle Bay. The honor roll kids are suddenly robotic, squeaky clean, and terrifying. As Steve unravels the brainwashing conspiracy turning his classmates into Stepford teens, he realizes fitting in might be deadlier than rebellion.
Why It Scares: IKWYDLS made secrets deadly—Disturbing Behavior makes perfection the real threat. It’s body-snatcher dread for the late-’90s teen, with trauma polished into a preppy smile.
4. My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Starring: Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier
Directed by: George Mihalka
Plot: In the mining town of Valentine Bluffs, a forbidden Valentine’s Day dance reignites an old tragedy—summoning a masked killer with a pickaxe and a bone to pick.
Why It Scares: Isolation. Regret. Working-class trauma. It’s IKWYDLS in a coal-stained jumpsuit, fueled by buried grief and blood-slick revenge.
5. The Fog (1980)
Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh
Directed by: John Carpenter
Plot: On the eve of Antonio Bay’s centennial, a thick fog rolls in from the sea—along with the restless, rotting crew of a ghost ship betrayed a hundred years ago.
Why It Scares: This one chills you to the bone. A town built on a lie. A curse is creeping in from the coast. IKWYDLS has a hook, but The Fog has centuries of silence and saltwater fury.
6. Terror Train (1980)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson
Directed by: Roger Spottiswoode
Plot: A New Year’s Eve costume party on a moving train turns into a bloodbath when someone starts picking off students one by one, each death tied to a cruel prank they thought they’d left behind.
Why It Scares: You can run from guilt, but not in a train car; the claustrophobia and masked killer echo IKWYDLS beat for beat—except there’s no station stop on this ride to hell.
7. Student Bodies (1981)
Starring: Kristen Riter, Matthew Goldsby
Directed by: Mickey Rose
Plot: A killer called “The Breather” stalks teens at Lamb High—but this time, the film’s laughing with you. It’s a meta-horror parody that gleefully shreds slasher clichés before Scream ever did.
Why It Scares: Behind the gags is a real sense of dread. It’s every fear that slasher films made famous—sex, secrecy, survival—turned absurd and somehow even more unsettling.
8. Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou (1987)
Starring: Wendy Lyon, Lisa Schrage, Michael Ironside
Directed by: Bruce Pittman
Plot: Killed in a prom-night fire in 1957, Mary Lou Maloney returns three decades later to possess a modern student and finish her vengeful rampage.
Why It Scares: It’s teen horror with a supernatural snarl. Vengeful ghosts, repressed secrets, and high school politics all tangled in a glam-gore bow. Think Carrie meets IKWYDLS with a lipstick-smudged scream.
9. Pieces (1982)
Starring: Christopher George, Lynda Day George
Directed by: Juan Piquer Simón
Plot: A boy kills his mom with an axe. Years later, women start disappearing at a Boston college—one body part at a time. The killer is building something, and it’s grotesque.
Why It Scares: Brutal, bloody, and bathed in sleaze, Pieces is pure slasher madness. Like IKWYDLS, it thrives on repressed trauma and mounting dread—you just get more chainsaws and fewer alibis.
10. Deep Red (1975)
Starring: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi
Directed by: Dario Argento
Plot: A pianist witnesses the murder of a psychic and becomes obsessed with solving it, falling into a surreal web of mirrors, dolls, and buried secrets that refuse to stay dead.
Why It Scares: Less scream queen, more giallo nightmare. But it’s that same fear: the past clawing through the surface, clues just out of reach, and a killer who’s always one step ahead.
11. Scream (1996)
Starring: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette
Directed by: Wes Craven
Plot: A self-aware slasher that mocks and honors the genre in equal measure, Scream introduces Ghostface—a masked killer picking off teens in a town with a bloody past. Sidney Prescott is the heart of it all: grieving, traumatized, and hunted.
Why it scares: It rewrote the rules while still playing by them. The fear here isn’t just in the kills—it’s in how close they hit to home, the paranoia of friends turning into suspects, and the idea that your trauma has an audience.
12. Urban Legend (1998)
Starring: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart
Directed by: Jamie Blanks
Plot: A killer turns schoolyard folklore into a blood-soaked syllabus, murdering college students in ways that echo famous urban myths. Natalie, haunted by her past, starts to see the fatal pattern before it’s too late.
Why it scares: It taps into the stories you laughed about in the dark—until they start coming true. That whisper-down-the-lane suspense becomes real, with a killer who weaponizes cultural paranoia.
13. Final Destination (2000)
Starring: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith
Directed by: James Wong
Plot: You can’t stab fate. After a premonition spares them from a plane crash, a group of teens discovers that death doesn’t like to be cheated—and it’s coming back with creativity.
Why it scares: The villain is invisible and inevitable. There’s no masked killer here—just pure dread, engineered into every ordinary moment. It’s the fear that your number is up, no matter what you do.
14. Cherry Falls (2000)
Starring: Brittany Murphy, Jay Mohr, Michael Biehn
Directed by: Geoffrey Wright
Plot: In this subversive slasher, virgins are the target. A killer turns a sleepy town upside down, forcing its teens into a frenzied (and awkward) attempt to survive by losing their innocence—literally.
Why it scares: It flips the horror rulebook and makes purity a death sentence. Add in a town hiding twisted secrets and Brittany Murphy’s nervy intensity, and it’s a slasher that cuts deeper than expected.
15. Lovers Lane (2000)
Starring: Sarah Lancaster, Riley Smith
Directed by: Jon Steven Ward
Plot: Hook-handed killer? Check. Teenagers making bad decisions at a secluded makeout spot? Double check. A local legend turns real as a group of teens becomes prey to an escaped madman with a grudge.
Why it scares: It’s IKWYDLS with a rustier blade. The fear here lies in how predictable—and preventable—the danger is. You scream at the screen not because it’s surprising, but because you know exactly where it’s going.
16. Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Starring: Gina Philips, Justin Long
Directed by: Victor Salva
Plot: A road trip turns to horror when siblings Trish and Darry spot a trench-coated figure dumping a body. Curiosity leads them into the path of a winged creature that awakens every 23 years to feast—and they’ve just made the menu.
Why it scares: Curiosity kills more than cats here. Like IKWYDLS, it begins with an accidental discovery and spirals into dread, but this time the killer isn’t human—it’s something ancient, unstoppable, and terrifyingly methodical.
17. The Final Girls (2015)
Starring: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Åkerman, Nina Dobrev
Directed by: Todd Strauss-Schulson
Plot: Grieving her late mom—a scream queen from a cult-classic horror flick—Max gets pulled into the actual movie and must survive the slasher tropes with a group of clueless campers.
Why it scares: It’s emotional horror dressed as parody. Like IKWYDLS, it’s about teens trapped in the aftermath of trauma, trying to rewrite a story that feels destined to end in blood.
18. Totally Killer (2023)
Starring: Kiernan Shipka, Olivia Holt, Julie Bowen
Directed by: Nahnatchka Khan
Plot: A masked killer returns after decades, and Jamie accidentally time-travels to 1987—the year it all began. To stop the killings, she has to blend in with her teenage mom’s friend group and rewrite the past.
Why it scares: The bodies may be fake (hello, time travel), but the themes are pure IKWYDLS—guilty secrets, clueless teens, and the cost of silence. Also: watching your mom’s high school clique implode is its kind of horror.
19. Freaky (2020)
Starring: Kathryn Newton, Vince Vaughn
Directed by: Christopher Landon
Plot: When a teenage girl switches bodies with a serial killer thanks to a cursed dagger, she has 24 hours to fix it before the change becomes permanent. Meanwhile, her classmates are dropping like flies.
Why it scares: Identity becomes the battlefield. Under the slasher comedy, Freaky explores what happens when your body becomes unfamiliar and dangerous. It’s the IKWYDLS formula flipped: you are the killer, but you’re also the prey.
20. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams
Directed by: Steve Miner
Plot: Laurie Strode has spent two decades hiding from her past, but Michael Myers doesn’t forget. When he resurfaces, Laurie has to stop running and start fighting for herself and her son.
Why it scares: It’s IKWYDLS with wrinkles—older, wiser, but still haunted. Laurie’s fear isn’t just of dying—it’s of not being able to protect the people she loves from a nightmare that never ended.
21. The House on Sorority Row (1982)
Starring: Kathryn McNeil, Eileen Davidson
Directed by: Mark Rosman
Plot: A sorority prank goes fatally wrong, so the girls cover it up and try to move on. But as graduation night arrives, so does a killer who knows what they did—and wants payback.
Why it scares: It’s IKWYDLS with Greek letters—secrets, guilt, a shared crime, and a murderer who turns sisterhood into survival horror. The group’s unraveling feels chillingly familiar.
22. Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
Starring: Melissa Sue Anderson, Glenn Ford
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
Plot: At an elite prep school, popular student Virginia’s friends are being killed off in bizarre, brutal ways. With memory lapses and a tragic past, she begins to question her sanity, just as her birthday nears.
Why it scares: A psychological puzzle with a slasher’s bite, this one echoes IKWYDLS in its theme of buried trauma returning with a vengeance. You can’t hide from the past… especially if you are the danger.
23. The Burning (1981)
Starring: Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Jason Alexander
Directed by: Tony Maylam
Plot: A summer camp prank leaves the caretaker grotesquely burned. Years later, he returns, hedge clippers in hand, to turn a new batch of campers into mulch.
Why it scares: Another prank-gone-wrong story with violent consequences. Like IKWYDLS, it’s built on teen recklessness and long-festering guilt—except here, it’s the woods that hold the secret, and the retribution is brutal.
24. The Prowler (1981)
Starring: Vicky Dawson, Farley Granger
Directed by: Joseph Zito
Plot: Decades after a soldier murders his ex in a prom-night rage, a masked killer in military gear returns to the same town—and the same school dance—to pick off students.
Why it scares: A killer in disguise, a past that won’t stay buried, and a high school celebration turned nightmare? This one practically salutes IKWYDLS—then bayonets it.
25. Bride of Chucky (1998)
Starring: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl
Directed by: Ronny Yu
Plot: Chucky’s back—this time with his equally homicidal girlfriend, Tiffany. As the doll duo embarks on a deadly road trip, a teenage couple gets dragged into their blood-soaked love story.
Why it scares: Under all the camp and carnage, it’s about young lovers trapped in someone else’s violent legacy. The chaos, the pursuit, the twisted romance—it’s IKWYDLS, but with plastic psychopaths and black leather.
Sins Never Stay Secret
The legacy of I Know What You Did Last Summer lives on through a wider family of horror films that are built upon secrets and consequences, plus teen paranoia, not just through its sequels or through reboots.
These 25 films maintain the same level of tension, whether you prefer the supernatural, the surreal, or even the slasher genre.
What happens when the past refuses to stay buried keeps that tension alive. Although the masks, names, and murder weapons may vary, someone always knows, never changing in one thing. They have not finished.
