‘Crystal Lake’ Review – A Welcome Return To ‘Friday the 13th’ Lore That Won’t Please Everyone

Horror fans everywhere have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Crystal Lake, the series based on the Friday the 13th film franchise that serves as a prequel to the 1980 film. Much of this anticipation has to do with the lack of Friday the 13th content for years, thanks to a very lengthy legal battle that had the rights tied up in its own horror movie. The last time Jason Voorhees graced the big screen was in the 2009 reboot, and since then Camp Crystal Lake has been dormant. That all changed when the late Victor Miller, who wrote the screenplay for the original film, emerged victorious following a protracted lawsuit to the gain the rights to the first film. This led to Crystal Lake coming to fruition, allowing a series to move forward that could take any inspiration from the first movie (location, Pamela Voorhees, and young Jason) because Miller created it, while the series itself operates under an umbrella partnership with Warner Bros./Horror Inc.(adult Jason Voorhees and other trademarks) so there would be no legal roadblocks.

That being said, Crystal Lake uses the original Friday the 13th as its foundation, most notably Camp Crystal Lake, Pamela Voorhees’ (Linda Cardellini) origins, and the drowning of Jason (portrayed as a child by Callum Vinson). The result is a series that fills in the holes of the backstory involving a mother who killed due to the weight of her enormous grief and a son who fans only knew drowned at Camp Crystal Lake and grew up to murder without thought or consequence. It’s a fun take on the very loose mythology already established, but the how and the why likely won’t please every fan of the franchise.

The beginning of the series establishes things as we know them. Pamela Voorhees works as a cook at Camp Crystal Lake, where her son Jason is bullied by other campers for his facial deformity. He has the immense love of his mother, who hovers over him with a protective sense that there is more to her watchful eye than normal parental concern, and a friend in Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), a young girl and fellow camper who likes Jason for who he is (but we’ll later learn she has her own issues that make Pamela circle her with parental love as well). One day, while counselors Barry (Phoenix Parnevik) and Claudette (Danielle Kotch) sneak off to have sex, Jason ventures off into deep water. He drowns, seemingly disappearing beneath the surface, and his body is never recovered.

The ordeal scars Pamela to her core, with the grieving mother, even nine months after the event, still keeping watch over the lake where she lost her boy. The town mostly sympathizes with her, but can’t seem to understand her belief that Jason is still out there somewhere. Police chief Levon Brooks (William Catlett, in one of the series’ truly stellar supporting turns) is one of her only friends and sounding boards, a man who understands her grief because he has had to deal with grief of his own. He encourages Pamela to get back into the world, but as he does that, two men posing as state detectives, declaring they have found Jason’s body, try to sedate and kidnap her. Pamela ends up violently murdering them both, but not before one of them threatens to tell the town who she really is and what Jason really is/was. This sets the series off in motion, providing a plausible backstory for Pamela and Jason, while also taking a big swing with the latter’s origins and abilities to never die across the various films that will likely have many people divided.

Before getting into the details, the Friday the 13th franchise has never been known for its continuity or substance. As a horror fan, the films are certainly fun, and they provide suitable entertainment thanks in large part to the fact that they are check-your-brain-at-the-door slasher films that are known more for their gore and kills, rather than a plausible narrative. Only the first movie attempts to be something a bit more of a murder mystery wrapped in slasher film sensibilities, as the camp counselors looking to reopen Camp Crystal Lake are systematically murdered before the big reveal of who the killer really is. This isn’t meant to be a dig by any means. Friday the 13th and its subsequent sequels serve a purpose, but no one will mistake them for high art.

This is all to say that this is why this Friday the 13th fan had no issues with the narrative swings that Crystal Lake takes. When a franchise doesn’t have much to jump off of, it makes it easier to have fun with the lore a bit. Hell, Bates Motel, a series that served as a prequel to Psycho, arguably had a much harder time gaining the affection of fans because Psycho is universally beloved as a classic. That series worked because it respected its source material while making changes and additions that made sense within the narrative that fans were already aware of. Crystal Lake does this very thing without the problem of having to adhere to prestige source material. Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, knowing this, is allowed to explore Pamela, Jason, and the town in a way that honestly gives them all more layers that make them fully formed characters in a way that they have never been before.

The audience is aware that Pamela is a grieving mother who lost her mind when her son drowned at the camp, blaming those who worked there for not paying proper attention when her boy seemingly lost his life. Crystal Lake does even more with Pamela’s grief and what she does because of it by showing her through a very empathetic lens. Not only has she lost her son, but she’s also relentlessly lonely. She hasn’t really lived since her son died, and with the arrival of men from her past, her life as she knows it is also threatened. The series not only makes Jason her meaning of living, but escaping her past adds another element to her fight for survival.

That doesn’t mean that Pamela’s descent into insanity isn’t as we know it. She is a broken woman at her wits’ end due to the loss of her son, but she also doesn’t take well to men who bully (that’s explained in later episodes in greater detail) and people who don’t value and appreciate what it means to be a mother who loves her children unconditionally, and is also prone to set her off (this results in a great kill in the third episode, “Part III”, that sees Cardellini embracing her inner Betsy Palmer, the original Pamela Voorhees, at her finest).

It’s Cardellini who leads an impressive cast. There are other series regulars and guest stars who shine, most notably Devin Kessler as Brianna Brooks, a journalist and Levon’s younger sister, and Cameron Scoggins as Dorf, Levon’s partner in the Crystal Lake Police Department and a character fans will know from the original as Sgt. Tierney (portrayed by Ronn Carroll). Even the always reliable Hamish Linklater shows up in the final two pivotal episodes that prove crucial to understanding Pamela and Jason’s expanded origins. They all serve a purpose, but there is no denying that this is Cardellini’s show and she does a hell of a lot with the material to make Pamela equal parts sympathetic and unhinged.

The audience feels the weight of what has happened to her thanks to Cardellini’s performance, and even as she slices and dices her way through those who wrong her or get in her way, the audience remains on her side because she’s given such a rich backstory that it’s easy to relate to her. Some might think this dulls the mystique established by Palmer in the 1980 original, but Crystal Lake, despite giving Pamela more meat on her narrative bones, never loses sight of what makes the character memorable for fans. Episode 6, “Kill Them, Mommy,” will delight fans of the franchise as Pamela descends into full beast mode and adds to the series’ body count in great detail in a matter of minutes. Cardellini brings such nuance to the role that she’s believable no matter what facet of her psychosis she displays. Even though this is a horror series, Cardellini certainly deserves Emmy consideration because her work across all eight episodes is stellar.

Episode 7 (“Friday…”) and elements of Episode 8 (“The Final Chapter”) will be a bone of contention for the fandom because this is where we get a backstory for Pamela, and most notably Jason, that won’t land well with everyone. It serves the purpose of further explaining Pamela’s unwavering devotion to her son but also explains, at least in a way that makes more sense than not explaining why Jason grew so fast after his drowning in Friday the 13th Part 2, but also why he can’t seem to die. The great thing about Crystal Lake is that it doesn’t walk in with the authority of 2018’s Halloween, which ignored all the sequels that followed the 1978 film. It just offers another alternative to how Pamela and Jason got to where they are, as we met them in the 1980 film and its 1981 sequel. Fans hung up on the explanation seem to be missing the fact that we really had no real explanation for any of this beyond Pamela’s murderous rampage each time people tried to reopen the camp. At least now there’s a bit more substance, something the franchise has proudly lacked, to fill in some of the blanks.

There is a lot of love for the source material on display, proving that Brad Caleb Kane, who also worked on the It prequel series Welcome to Derry (and is also the singing voice of Aladdin across the Disney animated films, go figure), does have love for the franchise. There are great nods across the series, including shooting the show in New Jersey at some of the original locations (some of them seem so frozen in time that they have no problem fitting into the 1971 aesthetic), seeing the killer’s point of view, Harry Manfredini’s signature score for the series’ main theme, and the title sequence during Episode 1 that directly recalls the opening titles from the 1980 original. There is also a pretty spot-on recreation in Episode 5, “The New Blood,” of the opening of Friday the 13th that should appease the fans, although it ends on a bit of a twist that will spark even more conversation.

That’s what makes Crystal Lake better than it has any right to be. It could’ve easily been an episodic journey of Pamela’s revenge across the camp as she splattered blood across our TV screens with no real narrative purpose, but it strives to be more than that. That’s not to say that fans wouldn’t have enjoyed mindless fun because that’s part of the reason the films have remained horror mainstays for years, but since it has been so long since we’ve ventured into Camp Crystal Lake, it’s great to see that the return was done with a bit more respect that only a mother like Pamela could love.

All eight episodes of Crystal Lake are now available to stream on Peacock.