Crystal Lake Review: Linda Cardellini Murders Her Way Through Peacock’s Friday the 13th Prequel Series

Does anyone watch the Friday the 13th franchise for its plot? It’s an odd choice for a longform origin story prequel, to be sure. As one of the genre-defining slasher movies of the early 1980s, the original Friday the 13th is a simple tale about a bunch of summer camp counselors getting slaughtered by a mysterious assailant. We eventually learn that this killer is an older woman named Pamela Voorhees, driven mad by the death of her son Jason, who drowned in the camp’s lake years before. Later movies resurrected Jason as a monstrous, seemingly indestructible villain, and as interest waned in his summer camp origins, the franchise shook things up by taking Jason to outer space and introducing supernatural elements to his lore. But you don’t need to know that stuff to enjoy Peacock’s new prequel series, Crystal Lake, which follows Pam (Linda Cardellini) in the aftermath of her son’s (Callum Vinson) apparent demise in 1970.

Like the Psycho prequel Bates Motel, this premise gives Crystal Lake plenty of leeway to insert new characters and backstory — but unlike Bates Motel or the enjoyably camp Chucky TV spin-off, Crystal Lake mostly plays it straight. For the first couple of episodes this grounded approach really doesn’t seem worth our while, but things heat up once Pam’s bloodthirsty impulses kick in.

In a modernized twist on the hagsploitation genre, where middle-aged female villains are often motivated by twisted maternal relationships, Pam rapidly evolves from a sympathetic grieving mother to a person who believes any problem can be solved by homicide. Think “When all you have is a hammer…” except in Pam’s case, all she has is a machete. Or a meat tenderizer. Et cetera.

With potentially unfortunate timing, Crystal Lake arrives just months after Jane Schoenbrun’s film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which offered a satirical meta-commentary on a horror franchise inspired by Friday the 13th. While Camp Miasma poked fun at the problematic legacy of 1980s slasher cinema, Crystal Lake seems slightly uncomfortable with its own source material — and less likely to have fun with it.

6.3

Crystal Lake

Like

• Delivers the goods regarding classic slasher movie tropes
• Linda Cardellini’s Pamela Voorhees makes for an entertaining antihero
• The amusing supporting cast of slightly stereotypical 1970s characters

Dislike

• Feels like a by-the-book franchise prequel
• Tones down the campy side of the slasher genre

The movies depict Jason Voorhees as a wordless antagonist who wears a mask to hide his unusual face, connecting his villainhood to his appearance. Born with a facial deformity, the young Jason of Crystal Lake is a sweet kid who gets bullied by his peers and pitied by the adults in his hometown — a small New Jersey community where many locals have close links to the nearby Crystal Lake summer camp. Jason’s mother and his 13-year-old best friend Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom) are the only people who understand him, but he isn’t really a main character here, for the obvious reason that he has to “die” early on.

Thanks to Jason’s pop-culture brand as a mindlessly violent villain, Crystal Lake faces an uphill battle to join this sympathetic backstory to his future role. We know that he’s destined to become a monstrous figure lurking in the woods, and it’s hard to reboot that material in a non-offensive manner. You can see why they chose to focus more on Pam.

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Episode 1 introduces the idea of a mysterious corporation keeping tabs on Jason and Pam, hinting that they may have a more complicated history than their cozy family life suggests. Since Jason will grow up to be functionally immortal (and arguably undead), it’s safe to assume he’s not a regular kid. For the most part, however, Crystal Lake focuses on small-town drama (albeit of a decidedly gory variety), as Pam tries to process her son’s apparent death while hiding the evidence of her escalating body count.

Pam’s closest friend in town is the caring and responsible police chief Levon Brooks (William Catlett), a relationship that gets entertainingly complicated as Levon becomes her love interest while investigating the town’s spate of murders. Over in the big city, Brooks’ sister Briana (Devin Kessler) also starts looking into the case in her capacity as a newspaper reporter. Meanwhile at the local school, Jason’s former BFF Grace embodies the teenage side of the slasher genre, introduced as an awkward kid who gets bullied by the older, more popular girls. 

Grace’s role feels like an analogue to the protagonist of the Friday the 13th copycat movie Sleepaway Camp, bonding with Pam over their shared experiences as outsiders, mourning Jason while everyone else quickly moves on. For financial reasons, there’s a strong push to reopen the summer camp just one year after Jason drowned, setting up an expanded role for two of the camp counselors from the first movie: mean girl Claudette (Danielle Kotch) and her jock boyfriend, Barry (Phoenix Parnevik).

Helmed by Brad Caleb Kane (IT: Welcome to Derry), Crystal Lake arrives courtesy of A24’s recent push to produce more IP-driven projects, expanding the company’s prestige indie branding to include titles like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Elden Ring. Still sharing a co-writer credit on Crystal Lake‘s first episode, Hannibal showrunner Bryan Fuller developed an earlier version of the show, and I do find myself wondering what that might have looked like.

Fuller’s Hannibal added gothic flair to the procedural tone of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novels, positioning Hannibal Lecter as a charismatic co-protagonist whom we root for despite his malevolent deeds. Crystal Lake‘s interpretation of Pamela Voorhees follows a similar philosophy, but there’s less sense of this show having a distinctive artistic vision. The goal is to make a solid prequel that fleshes out Pam and Jason’s backstory while ticking off familiar genre tropes: gory murders (which this show does very well), hapless police work, teen drama, and a thematic link between sex and death. It’s successful in that regard, but it’s probably not the most interesting offering among this October’s horror TV releases. Especially since we’ve now seen several other shows capitalize on retro horror nostalgia.

People watch Friday the 13th to laugh and scream and get freaked out by gruesome death scenes, in a format that wraps everything up within 90 minutes of blood and suspense. An eight-episode, plot-heavy TV series has to rework that material into a fundamentally different genre, and while it’s fun to watch Linda Cardellini let loose as a budding serial killer, this feels like one of many shows that exist primarily to squeeze more attention out of popular IP.

Premieres: Thursday, Oct. 15 on Peacock with all eight episodes
Who’s in it: Linda Cardellini, William Catlett, Devin Kessler, Gwendolyn Sundstrom, Callum Vinson
Who’s behind it: Brad Caleb Kane (showrunner), Michael Lennox (director)
For fans of: IT: Welcome to Derry, Stranger Things, Bates Motel, Friday the 13th
Episodes watched: 6 of 8