All eight episodes of Crystal Lake debut on Peacock on October 15. This is a mostly spoiler-free review, but if you want to know nothing about the show, best to click out of here.
It’s a tricky thing, telling a prequel story. Not only do fans of the thing being prequelized know the ultimate endpoint of the tale being told, but they also already have preconceived ideas about how the events happened which led to their beloved original. Essentially, the creators of a prequel already have the deck stacked against them before they ever even put pen to paper. Or, in the case of Crystal Lake – the new Friday the 13th prequel series – put knife to throat.
But then again, a prequel can work well when it understands how to color (in blood in this case) within the lines of the larger canon while also developing its own world, one filled with engaging characters, a new story worth getting invested in, and enough twists and turns to keep eyes on the screen (before a few of them are inevitably popped out or pierced). It doesn’t hurt to have a cast led by the always great (and recent Emmy winner) Linda Cardellini, either.
Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees, a character who your horror-fan buddy is always so proud to remind you – just in case you forgot – was actually the killer in the first Friday the 13th movie, before her more famous son Jason took over in Part 2. Originally played by Betsy Palmer, Pamela was driven mad when the boy drowned at the Camp Crystal Lake summer camp due to the negligence of a pair of camp counselors, which eventually led the bereaved mother on a killing spree in that first film… before she faced her own unhappy demise.
That’s been the long and short of Pamela’s story since she debuted in the 1980 film, but now showrunner Brad Caleb Kane (who also is a writer-producer on It: Welcome to Derry) and Cardellini give us a very different take on Pam. Unlike Palmer’s campy whack-job, Cardellini’s Pam is a fully fleshed-out character whom you actually root for, even as the hows and whys of her landing in Crystal Lake with her young son – yes, Jason is here – are slowly revealed over the course of these eight episodes.
It’s a bit tricky to delve into the ins and outs of this show without giving away the various fun surprises that are in store for those who stick with it, but I will say that I really had to let Episode 1 sink in before I was ready to proceed with the rest of the series. Much of this has to do with the inclusion of the 11-year-old Jason (played by Callum Vinson), who is depicted as just a regular little kid who happens to be physically, well, different from the other kids at camp. Caleb Kane and his production team manage to find a balance between the different looks of Jason that the consistently inconsistent Friday the 13th movie series has given us over the decades. But it’s also a bit off-putting at first to see this little kid just being, well, a regular little kid who says stuff like “Yes, I’m reading this whole thing tonight!” By the time he’s raising his new machete in the air, which is part of the camping kit that Pam ordered from him, well…
But then Cardellini and Vinson get to have some really tender moments together, and you feel bad for wishing Jason was just the mute, mutated, monster from the movies. This is a prequel, after all, and you know we’ll get there eventually! And indeed, Caleb Kane reminds us of this when Jason is soon out of the picture, as cinematic fate has prescribed.
What Crystal Lake is really about, then, is how Pam goes from normal, loving mother to the not-mute, not-mutated, but definite monster that she’ll be when she one day puts an arrow through Kevin Bacon’s throat, among other dastardly acts. The character’s slow descent is methodically traced over the course of this season, as she has to deal not just with the loss of her son but also with her mysterious past which has come back to haunt her… and which she seems more than a match for, physically at least. Jason must’ve gotten his skills with a blade from somewhere!
The show populates its cast of townies and campers with various degrees of effectiveness. Cameron Scoggins as the not-too-smart Officer Dorf – a legacy character from the movies! – is a lot of fun, while Gwendolyn Sundstrom plays Jason’s young, troubled friend Grace. The latter is a character who adds a new layer to what we thought we knew about the Jason origin story; she serves as a sort of Jason stand-in for Pamela after her son is gone, for better and worse. Some of the other townsfolk are less interesting, though, and feel a bit too “supporting TV cast” for their own good.
Still, the most notable of the group beyond Cardellini is William Catlett as Sheriff Levon Brooks, who like Pam has a murky past he’d rather not dredge up, even while he can’t fully shake it. His empathy for Pam leads to a strong relationship between the two, with both actors finding different shades to play therein. How much does Pam really care about Levon, versus how much is she using him to buttress herself against any suspicion regarding the increasing number of violent incidents happening around town? Cardellini never fully lets on.
And about those incidents… Crystal Lake does not hold out when it comes to the bloodletting, kicking off with a fairly insane fight scene in the pilot episode that goes from scary to funny and back again. I didn’t keep count, but just about every episode has some kind of tour de force scene of crazy gore that will have you either gasping or chortling… or both, depending on how you feel about such things.
Caleb Kane and his writers certainly know the source material, and they cleverly write in and around events that will eventually happen in the movies (a rewatch of the original Friday the 13th in particular is worth it for fans, if not required). By the time Crystal Lake nears the end of these eight episodes, some of those same fans may be frustrated by certain developments or tweaks or additions to the overall Jason universe, while others will be gratified by how it’s all come together. But you know what they say: You can’t make a Friday the 13th prequel without killing some horny teens – or annoying a few fans.