Have you ever wondered what would happen if an old-school ’80s slasher flick got the A24 treatment? That’s what we get with Peacock‘s Crystal Lake, a Friday The 13th prequel produced by the independent film studio.
CRYSTAL LAKE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman who is covered in blood looks at herself in the bathroom window. She picks out a tooth that’s embedded in her hand. “What did you do?” she says to her reflection.
The Gist: Nine months earlier, Pam Voorhees (Linda Cardellini), a single mother living in Crystal Lake, NJ, is encouraging her son Jason (Callum Vinson) to return to the Crystal Lake camp with her on the first day of the season. It’s where she works, and she wants to keep an eye on him. Jason, who is often sick and has some sort of encephalitic condition that makes his head swollen, thinks the kids are just going to stare at him.
At camp, Jason swims out into the lake to retrieve a ball thrown by his friend Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom) as she defends him from a bully. He starts flailing and, even though Pam and others run out to rescue him, Jason goes under and disappears.
Nine months later, Pam still thinks Jason is out there somewhere, even though the town’s police chief, Levon Brooks (William Catlett) tries to tell her that Jason’s body may have floated downriver and might never be found. But he cares about her and takes her to a town picnic, where she has a meltdown when she sees people using the lake. Later, two men posing as state police detectives visit Pam’s house, and she soon realizes that these two men are from a place that is part of her past, and she’s not going back.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Brad Caleb Kane, Crystal Lake is a prequel to the Friday The 13th franchise, but it also has shades of shows like Stranger Things.
Our Take: While Crystal Lake may give the story of Jason Voorhees and his mother Pam the context we may not have gotten over the past 46 years, the show stands on its own as a layered drama with lots of effective horror and a compelling performance by Cardellini that anchors the entire show in something resembling reality.
Anyone who is familiar with the canon of the Friday The 13th franchise might be a bit annoyed that the timeframe of Jason’s initial drowning has been transferred to the early 1970s, but it helps in a few ways. First, we get a killer soundtrack where the era’s bubblegum pop is juxtaposed with Pam’s killer tendencies. Second, Levon’s sister Brianna (Devin Kessler), a newspaper reporter, is straining against both the gender and race biases to pursue a story about the Voorheeses.
But it also helps keep things looking like the world the fans of the franchise got to know. As we get deeper into Pam and Jason’s past, the more we might stray from Crystal Lake into that weird, experimental environment that the show hints was a big part of both of their pasts. As long as things are still anchored in Crystal Lake, though, Pam’s past will help make a traditional blood-and-guts horror plot have a whole lot of nuance.
Performance Worth Watching: Cardellini makes Pam less of a monster than how Jason’s mom was portrayed in the original film. We also appreciate Callum Vinson’s performance as young Jason, given how much makeup and prosthetics he has to wear for the role.
Sex And Skin: Two camp counselors have sex in a storage shed, leaving Jason and the other campers unsupervised. That’s what leads him to swim out into the lake.
Parting Shot: After feeding her first two victims to a bear, Pam imagines Jason holding her hand and looking at her with approval.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Crystal Lake goes beyond the usual horror tropes to give Pam and Jason Voorhees a nuanced, layered backstory, which is highlighted by Cardellini’s very watchable performance.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.