Review by C.J. Bunce
What’s our best new recommendation for Halloween viewing this weekend? That would be the new Peacock series Crystal Lake. Only someone who truly loved Sean S. Cunningham and Victor Miller’s Friday the 13th could have made such a show. It goes beyond the original simple 1980 summer camp teen slasher fest and easily surpasses the original story of one of the genre’s biggest franchises. Maybe that’s not so difficult to achieve. After all, the 1980 movie was a cheap slasher flick about teens getting killed at a summer camp–an attempt to use the genre to capture the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween from two years prior. Probably its biggest attraction today, other than the pure nostalgia for the 1980s, is that it features an early appearance by Kevin Bacon. But its strangest feature is also the centerpiece of this fall’s unlikely prequel series. The villain of the original movie, as everyone would learn in the final scenes, wasn’t some monster–wasn’t Jason Voorhees, a kid who died at Crystal Lake years ago. No, it was his middle-aged, very suburban-looking mom Pamela, played by Betsy Palmer. It’s worth your time re-watching the 1980 Friday the 13th (which was remade, in addition to the 11 other movies and an unrelated but good earlier TV series), also streaming on Peacock, before you dive head-first into its eight hours of storytelling. If your appetite for horror includes revenge, beheadings, and other gory violence, you’ll find Crystal Lake to be a quality production, with a tautly written script and a talented cast–and top notch horror effects. It also has all the right costumes, sets, cars, and props to be your best retro fix this year.
If you’re a fan of horror prequels you might compare this series to the flashback and flash-forwards in the Halloween Kills (reviewed here), a successful prequel/sequel that brought forward original characters played by the original actors, re-shooting scenes that weren’t shown on the screen during the original story decades before. Crystal Lake showrunner Brad Kane, who oddly enough was the voice of Aladdin singing his way through Disney’s Aladdin movies, demonstrates learned lessons from the likes of other horror prequels, like Bates Motel and Ratched, while at the same time going for all it’s worth to deliver something close to Freddy Krueger’s origin story, found in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Crystal Lake will likely land for horror fans as an equal or better prequel than Freddy received, but it’s not quite as exciting and brilliant as Orphan: First Kill (reviewed here), another rare prequel/sequel that surpassed the original, also thanks in large part to the strength of its lead actress (Isabelle Fuhrman). Crystal Lake has its ups and downs, but arguably all of those downs may just be part and parcel of the slasher genre.
Just like casting a little person (Peter Dinklage) as the deformed Toxic Avenger just didn’t feel right, providing the backstory for a young Jason Voorhees as a bullied kid with a deformed head doesn’t feel right in that opening episode. Differently abled or disfigured people as villains has been a subject of controversy for a long time, so add this series to the debate. Jason, played by young actor Callum Vinson, is a victim for the entirety of this series. He’s mocked, he’s bullied. His mom is his number one supporter, but he also has another. His mom is Pamela, played by Linda Cardellini (Scooby-Doo, Hawkeye, Muppets Now, The Founder, Freaks and Geeks). The year is 1971 and she and Jason have only been in the backwoods town of Crystal Lake for a few years. How they got there becomes a key plot thread of the series. She, too, is the victim of this story.
But she’s also something else. Is her devotion to her son that of the typical loving, caring mom? Pamela is a school lunch lady, but she also doubles as the cook at Crystal Lake, the campground. When Jason is out swimming during the camp, Pamela is busy doing her duties. But the staff that is supposed to be watching the kids are “fooling around” elsewhere. So Jason drowns and dies, but his body is never found. Pamela is, naturally, inconsolable.
Soon we get to know all the players in this town, and slowly discover how they all come together to become Friday the 13th as we first meet the characters in the 1980 movie. The character development is pristine. We meet Sheriff Levon “Lee” Brooks, played by William Catlett (Abigail). He’s close to his sister, a journalist (played by Devin Kessler). Lee’s backstory away from Crystal Lake is as a disgraced cop, which is why he ended up in this backwoods town. He’s looked up to by his subordinate, Dorf, played by Cameron Scoggins, a man who seems to be trying to be a good cop, but his quirks need to be seen to be believed, like his cringey efforts to get Pamela’s friend Rita (played by Joy Suprano) in the sack. He’s also son of the former sheriff. Lee’s crack squad of hick cops includes Enos (Daniel Sherman), who is quick to get shot when he pulls together a lynch mob to try to discover why dead bodies keep being discovered in the woods. Dead bodies? Yes, there seem to be quite a few. Who could be doing that? The camp kids start the rumor that Jason is a ghost, there waiting to kill, the subject of a good campfire tale.
The 2020s cast have no problem looking and acting the part–and absent the use of the phrase “dafuq” for what at the time would have been the full WTF?–the teens will have you thinking this show could have been pulled from the archives. That’s the not really a goody two-shoes restroom bully Claudette, played by Danielle Kotch, and her boyfriend Barry, played by Phoenix Parnevik. They are the duo that should have been watching Jason when he drowned. Then come the requisite hippies in their trademark van. They include the “seer” Harmony, played by Manon Gage, Stella, played by Lark White, and Shutterbug, played by Drew Scheid. All of these look like kids you swear you knew from some other 1970s movie, or some kid you actually knew in the 1970s. The casting is that good.
After Jason dies, Pamela learns of Jason’s other key cheerleader. That’s Grace, played by Gwendolyn Sundstrom, a girl who doesn’t seem like she’s ever acting. She’s completely believable as a young girl who was simply Jason’s good friend. Unfortunately her mother isn’t so nice, and Pamela finds out.
When two men show up looking for Pamela, her already bleak world unravels further. Does that visit have anything to do with the bodies the sheriff finds mutilated by a bear in the woods? And who is this creepy guy named Ralph who is living in a Cabin in the Woods (played by Nick Cordileone)? Are those just slaughtered animals hanging in his shed? And what happened to that young woman who was hitchhiking to become the next cook at the camp? So many questions!
As Jason’s father (played by Hamish Linklater) shows up, Pamela’s backstory comes into focus. Just as all the action is about to hit a climax, we’re taken back to an episode of The Jack Paar Show (an actual vintage TV show) where Pamela has her TV debut as a singer. What would normally be a clunky episode in a season unveils the level of the dark horrors of Pamela’s past. It’s the stuff of mad scientists and real-world experimentation, of women being given valium by men to stay quiet, and other things one might find in Coma or The Stepford Wives or The X-Files. No doubt the writers room had plenty of fun spinning this story together. And the makeup and special effects crew earned their paychecks.
It all works because the series lead actors are 100% committed to their roles. Linda Cardellini is yanked in all kinds of bizarre directions and pulls off every look, every emotion, in every scene. William Catlett’s straight-laced cop is both cool and smart. Gwendolyn Sundstrom’s ability to convey a confused teenager could have a career ahead of her like Jena Malone or her own spin-off character for the franchise. Even Cameron Scoggins’ Dorf gets a perfectly written finish for the series finale.
For the genre, the gore is actual fairly light stuff. It all sticks to the level of slasher movie gore from the original 1980 movie without drifting into body horror territory. Although the seventh episode has plenty in common with Doctor Moreau.
Note that each episode is named after a movie sequel. Will there be more seasons? In just eleven days the show has become Peacock’s fourth largest debut for a scripted series. Showrunner Brad Kane wants to do more, possibly with a Twin Peaks twist or two, and specifically get to the point of that certain hockey mask the franchise comes to be known for. But the series ends well in episode eight–it doesn’t need more.
Forty-six years after that first dark Friday the 13th, Crystal Lake is still the subject of our Halloween fears. Horror fans won’t be able to pass it up, and fans of TV shows recreating late 20th century America also will want to see this. Crystal Lake is now streaming on Peacock.
