‘Crystal Lake’ Rewrites ‘Friday the 13th’ Lore With Gory, Campy Glee

Horror fans have every right to feel protective of Friday the 13th. The 1980 film, directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by the late Victor Miller, is one of the foundational texts of the slasher genre. To date, it’s sparked a 12-part film series, video games, comics, novels, countless Halloween costumes, and more—including multiple TV shows. While the Jason Voorhees faithful hold onto hope that the hockey-masked maniac will one day return to the big screen after 17 years and counting, a fresh take on Friday the 13th arrives this week on Peacock: Crystal Lake, a prequel series centered on Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother. io9 watched the full series ahead of writing this spoiler-free review. As splatter hounds have known for decades, Pam is revealed as the villain at the end of Friday the 13th, having launched a gruesome killing spree targeting the Camp Crystal Lake counselors she blames for her son’s drowning death. So going into Crystal Lake, we know what Pam’s future holds. Across eight episodes, however, the show digs into Pam’s past, going all the way back to her pregnancy but mostly focusing on that fraught year between the tragic loss of Jason and her descent into darkness. © Peacock Purists will have to accept that Crystal Lake plays fast and loose with the established Friday the 13th timeline. In the original movie, Jason’s accident happens in 1957, and the first murders take place in 1958. Then, the movie picks up in 1979, when Camp Crystal Lake is readying to reopen in spite of its macabre reputation. Crystal Lake, however, takes place in 1971. We see the drowning early in episode one, then fast forward nine months—as the camp is making plans to open that very next summer—to see how Pam’s managing her grief. As you might guess, she’s not managing it very well. We immediately know this because the prologue set in the show’s present day reveals a blood-soaked, thoroughly traumatized Pam. She’s just done something terrible that we get to see unfold before the episode ends, and it won’t be the last terrible thing we see her do. Crystal Lake creator Brad Caleb Kane (It: Welcome to Derry) made the exact right call in casting Linda Cardellini as Pam; she’s instantly likable and completely sympathetic, but there are also flashes of that ferocious character she becomes in Friday the 13th. Cardellini is just a few years younger than Betsy Palmer was when she played Pam in Friday, but Cardellini’s Pam is way less matronly—she makes that iconic blue cable-knit sweater look stylish instead of frumpy. © Peacock Her coolness and sex appeal, and the fact that by all appearances she’s a genuinely nice person, catches the eye of Crystal Lake police chief Levon Brooks (William Catlett), a former Newark cop who’s reluctantly relocated to small-town New Jersey. Having lost his wife a few years prior, he understands what Pam is going through, and he cuts her some slack when their attempts at romance hit some awkward roadblocks. But Crystal Lake doesn’t remain a sleepy dot on the map for long. We know the bodies are going to start stacking up—and the show absolutely delivers on the gory legacy that Friday the 13th requires—and Levon is soon enmeshed in a mystery involving human remains found in the woods that envelop the town. And true to its title, Crystal Lake, which uses the same (miraculously preserved) locations where Friday the 13th was shot decades ago, spends time getting to know the quirky residents of this soon-to-be notorious place. Everyone hangs out at the diner during the day and the bowling alley after dark, though you can also find the local high schoolers—including the infamously horny Barry (Phoenix Parnevik) and Claudette (Danielle Kotch)—hanging out at Camp Crystal Lake when it’s closed between seasons. Other familiar names from the movie who get some intriguing characterization in Crystal Lake include Officer Dorf (Cameron Scroggins), whose feckless approach to police work is a frequent source of frustration for Levon, and Ralph, aka “Crazy Ralph” (Nick Cordileone), who gets to be more than just a caricature here, though he’s still fond of blurting out freaky warnings. © Peacock There are also plenty of new characters who become entangled in Pam’s drama, including Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), the bullied young Jason’s only friend, who unwittingly becomes a surrogate daughter figure for Pam. We also meet Levon’s younger sister, Brianna (Devin Kessler), a newspaper reporter who stumbles across the scoop of a lifetime, giving her a lively side plot that lets Crystal Lake riff on 1970s conspiracy thrillers. Speaking of those Woodward and Bernstein vibes, never for a second does Crystal Lake let you forget its “Me Generation” setting. The show is stuffed, maybe overstuffed, with retro music and other cultural references (Soul Train, kung fu movies, Harold Robbins’ The Betsy, an extremely clichéd gang of hippies), and the wigs and fashions are calibrated to be just this side of over the top. At one point, Pam attends a new-age seminar where she’s encouraged to “drop the mask and embrace your true authentic self,” which lets Crystal Lake lean heavily into the idea of masks, metaphorical and otherwise, that are so important to Friday the 13th as a whole. It’s a bit heavy-handed, but it’s a crucial step toward understanding how Pam eventually charts her breaking point. As young Jason, Callum Vinson—swathed in the requisite prosthetic make-up—doesn’t get a ton of screen time, but he makes an impact, especially in an early scene where we see him excitedly grasp a machete for the first time. The inclusion of Jason’s future signature weapon is just one of many Easter eggs Crystal Lake packs into its eight episodes. © Peacock The opening credits sequence, which debuts in episode two, is a note-perfect homage, and it paves the way for a later episode to go all in on a shot-for-shot redo that cleverly recontextualizes one of the 1980 movie’s most memorable sequences. Friday the 13th’s instantly recognizable “ki-ki-ki-ah-ah-ah”—sort of Jason’s version of a theme song—is also an important part of the sound design. As Crystal Lake is aiming to fill in all the blanks on Pam’s backstory—and Jason’s, as part of that—the show does indeed provide its own explanation for exactly how this nice lunch lady came to birth one of cinema’s most feared (and resilient) horror villains while also becoming one herself. Your acceptance of the show’s tweaks to the established Friday the 13th lore may vary, of course. But if you can accept such preestablished ideas as “Jason’s entire body explodes, but then he becomes a sort of wandering evil spirit who can possess people at will to do his bidding” (Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday) or “Jason gets cryogenically frozen then thaws out on a spaceship in the 25th century” (Jason X)… well, it doesn’t really make sense to nitpick any of the wilder notions floated by Crystal Lake, does it? There’s plenty here to have fun with—including, we must mention again, multiple death scenes that rival some of the juiciest in the entire Friday franchise. All eight episodes of Crystal Lake arrive October 15 on Peacock. Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.