PLOT: The backstory of Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) and her son Jason, and their misadventures at Camp Crystal Lake.
REVIEW: Crystal Lake is one of the most anticipated shows among horror fans, with it being the long-awaited Friday the 13th prequel, which is part of an ambitious plan by A24 and Peacock to build out the franchise in the absence of any actual Friday the 13th movies in theaters due to a complicated rights situation (all we got was a divisive short film). As such, the creators of the show are attempting to build a mythology around the Voorhees family, all of which is only hinted at in the first two episodes, which screened at TIFF.
It’s still a strange experience to watch TV episodes at a film festival, something which wasn’t helped by the fact that the screening I attended still seemed to have the screener letter attached to it that we critics often get. Yet, it can’t be denied that this is a pretty ambitious show, with it photographed in cinematic 2.35:1. Probably a flatter aspect ratio would have been truer to the original films, but I digress. The pilot is full of nods to the original movies, with Harry Manfredini’s score, along with the famous “ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma” motif, worked in.
But Crystal Lake, while punctuated by moments of gore (each episode has one), isn’t strictly horror. It actually starts on quite a sensitive note, introducing us to Jason, who is presented as a smart, kind kid, and his devoted mother, Pamela, who is played by the great Linda Cardellini. She’s excellent at evoking Pamela’s love for Jason, with it similar in some ways to the single-mom role she played on ER. Despite their inevitable fates, there’s nothing “weird” about either Jason or Pamela, although, because of the way he looks, poor Jason is bullied a lot at Camp Crystal Lake, where his mom is the cook. The townsfolk are mostly portrayed as harmless, with Pamela friendly with the town’s police chief, a widowed cop from Newark (William Catlett).
Of course, things quickly go awry, sending us into the continuing story, which hints at a slasher menace (which figures more prominently in the second episode), as well as Pamela’s violent past. This is probably the aspect of the show that will be most divisive, as they seem to be setting up a storyline where Jason’s condition is to be blamed on some kind of shadowy, CIA-adjacent company Pamela is fleeing from.
While it’s open for debate whether or not Jason’s indestructible nature ever had to be explained (in my view, prequels are almost always unnecessary), Crystal Lake, which is set in the early seventies, does use some of the more shadowy aspects of the era to increasing effect. People really were experimented on by programs related to the CIA, with MK-Ultra being the most famous—although whether or not that’s actually what’s happening here has yet to be revealed. The second episode is better than the first, with much of it set at a seminar that Pamela attends that’s based on the controversial EST therapy that was in vogue during this era.
Through it all, Cardellini is excellent, with her performance so good that she keeps the show working, even when—at times in the first episode—you wonder if this is actually going to work as an ongoing series. The stuff focusing on Pamela is good, but I was less enamored with the more Friday the 13th-like moments focusing on horny camp counselors up to no good. Will the franchise work on the small screen? It’s still too early to tell, with us having only seen two episodes, but there’s enough going on here—particularly in episode two—that I want to keep watching.
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