The eight-episode Peacock horror series expands the Friday the 13th lore, but it works best when Linda Cardellini takes center stage.
If you miss when Hollywood didn’t retroactively explain every single aspect of fun genre films through prequels, sequels, and reboots, Peacock’s Crystal Lake may not be for you. The A24 series serves as a prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise and follows single mother Pam Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) as she struggles with grief after her son, Jason (Callum Vinson), drowns in the town lake while attending summer camp nine months earlier.
Showrunner, writer, and executive producer Brad Caleb Kane (It: Welcome to Derry, Tokyo Vice) teams up with original Friday the 13th writer Victor Miller to mixed results. The franchise has been done to death, spanning twelve slasher films of varying quality, television shows, novels, comic books, video games, and tie-in merchandise. It may not be a critical darling, but repeated references in popular culture and the instantly recognizable image of Jason’s hockey mask have cemented its legacy.
Crystal Lake expands that history, offering eagle-eyed viewers Easter eggs while trying to establish its own identity. Although it delivers some of the bloodshed and suspense horror fans expect, its large ensemble and uneven pacing sometimes undermine its central story.
A tragedy sets the story in motion.
Episode 1 wastes no time throwing viewers into the deep end, opening with Cardellini drenched in blood. She asks her reflection, “What did you do?” before the show flashes back nine months to a happier(ish) time in Pam and Jason’s lives as they prepare for camp.
Jason doesn’t want to attend Camp Crystal because the other children bully him for being different. He has hydrocephalus, which causes an enlarged cranium, a condition the series explores further in a later episode set in 1959. He’s content to stay with his mom, who, as those familiar with Friday the 13th know, works as a camp cook. Pam insists that spending time with children his age will give him a sense of normalcy, setting the tragedy in motion.
Vinson delivers a sweet portrayal of Jason, capturing a boy too young to understand the depths of the cruelty he faces. Other children pick on him almost immediately, but his friend Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom) defends him by throwing a ball into the lake, beyond the boundary the children’s counselor, Claudette (Danielle Kotch), tells them not to cross. The bullies turn on Grace, while Claudette is too busy with her boyfriend, Barry (Phoenix Parnevik), to pay attention to the children in her care.
Strangers arrive and further disrupt the plot.
Another staff member tells the campers to wait in the craft shack while Grace is sent to find Claudette, but Jason ignores the instructions and heads into the lake to retrieve the ball. Unable to swim, he drowns, altering life as the townspeople of Crystal Lake know it.
Nine months later, two strangers arrive at Pam’s door, offering false hope that they have found Jason’s body and need her to identify it. They’re clearly hiding something, and their interest in her past raises questions about what brought her and “Argonaut” (Jason) to Crystal Lake.
It doesn’t take long for the series to embrace the slayings of the films that inspired it, though the gore never quite goes far enough. The kills have promising setups – a brutal encounter involving a fryer is a highlight – but the show never shakes the feeling that Pam could be more sinister. For a franchise built on inventive, gruesome deaths, Crystal Lake occasionally feels too restrained.
Crystal Lake expands a familiar story.
Horror franchises often give villains elaborate backstories that turn them into defensible antiheroes when they should remain the evil characters audiences first met. The original Friday the 13th is a whodunit that reveals Pam as the elusive camp killer, seeking revenge on those who reopened the camp as if nothing tragic had ever happened there.
That approach has become tiresome, but Crystal Lake strikes an interesting balance. It explores how Pam confronts the darkness within herself when pushed to her limits, making her easy to understand and sympathize with, even as her actions become harder to defend.
The townspeople offer support, but they are rarely sympathetic, making it clear they found Jason off-putting. The series initially examines the tension between grief and the expectation that someone should eventually move on. While the community wants Pam to heal, she has no interest in moving forward without her son, whom she believes is out there. Fans of the franchise will recognize familiar aspects of the story, but newcomers can enjoy the show without having seen the films. Its accessibility works in its favor, even when the lore building takes away from Pam’s journey.
Linda Cardellini makes for a distinctive horror mother.
Crystal Lake swings between two extremes. When the show focuses on Cardellini, it is fast-paced and offers a fascinating look into the mind of a grieving woman determined to protect her son and, later, Grace.
Cardellini may not be known for horror, despite occasional roles in the genre, but she’s clearly more than comfortable in it. Pam is consumed by rage over her son’s death and the circumstances that brought them to Crystal Lake after people she trusted misled her. Cardellini balances maternal tenderness with barely contained fury, giving Pam a commanding, matriarchal presence that makes her disturbing behavior all the more compelling.
Her relationship with Grace adds another layer to the character. Pam recognizes how the adults around Grace fail to protect her, and her determination to help the girl reflects the maternal instincts that drive much of the series. Yet her increasingly violent efforts to protect Grace make that relationship unsettling, blurring the line between devotion and dangerous obsession. Sundstrom holds her own opposite Cardellini, delivering an impressive performance in her television series debut.
While the supporting characters are interesting, the show falters when it shifts focus away from Pam, Jason, Grace, Levon (William Catlett), and Briana (Devin Kessler). Although the series isn’t a romance, Pam and Levon make a compelling pair, with Cardellini and Catlett’s chemistry providing a welcome reprieve from some of the more lackluster plots. These include Ralph’s (Nick Cordileone) PTSD and Dorf’s (Cameron Scoggins) struggles, which the series doesn’t spend enough time exploring. The storylines have potential, but the show doesn’t give them enough room to develop, taking screen time away from its more compelling characters.
The bottom line.
There isn’t enough of Linda Cardellini anywhere, much less in the horror genre. She carries Crystal Lake through its uneven storytelling, delivering a performance that makes Pam both sympathetic and terrifying. The series has plenty working in its favor, from its campy atmosphere to its mystery surrounding Argonaut and Pam’s past. But its underdeveloped supporting characters and surprisingly restrained gore leave something to be desired, especially for a franchise synonymous with gruesome kills. Crystal Lake doesn’t fully justify revisiting a story that audiences already know, but Cardellini makes a convincing case for spending more time with Pamela Voorhees.
Crystal Lake premieres October 15 on Peacock.
Images courtesy of Peacock.
REVIEW RATING
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Crystal Lake Season 1 - 6.5/10
6.5/10
