It’s hard to say whether the tumultuous production is to blame, but something went seriously wrong when seemingly talented people made Peacock’s “Crystal Lake” a disastrous reboot in almost every way. The director of the highly influential original film, Sean S. Cunningham, had been talking about bringing the franchise to television for over 20 years, but it really came back to life in 2022 when A24 and the incredible Bryan Fuller (“Hannibal”) announced production of a new series.
The excitement in the horror world was palpable. Jason Voorhees, through the lens of the man who redefined Hannibal Lecter, with one of the craziest things to ever appear on network television? He couldn’t get here fast enough. And then the strike caused production to collapse in 2023. When it ended, Fuller and even Kevin Williamson (“Scream”), once also involved, were gone. Did their departure make it a disaster, or did they leave because it had already become a disaster?
Brad Caleb Kane, screenwriter of “Tokyo Vice” and “IT: Welcome to Derry,” returned to his first creative credit, and the plot of “Crystal Lake” jumped in the early ’70s, announcing that Jason wouldn’t even be the protagonist: it would be Pamela Voorhees, the true villain of the first film. How Pamela became crazy enough after her son’s death to murder a group of camp counselors seems like a promising set-up, but to say “Crystal Lake” is hardly that show would be an understatement. It’s never long enough, the tone and motivation of the characters vary so wildly that it feels like that old writing class or theater game where one person continues the story after someone else starts it.
As a season, it’s one of the most confusing and inconsistent outings in a long time, constantly hampered by a lack of direction and motivation until a final sequence of episodes transforms it, once again, into something completely different. Characters disappear, subplots change direction, and it all ends up rewriting the canon of Jason’s origin story in a way as ridiculous as “Jason X.”
It begins with familiar and promising rhythms. Linda Cardellini, so good in “DTF St. Louis” that she just won an Emmy, plays Pamela Voorhees, a cook at Camp Crystal Lake in the early ’70s. She protects her deformed son Jason (Callum Vinson), who is mocked and bullied by the other kids at the camp. In one of the series’ interesting early choices, Jason dies in the first episode, left to drown by counselors who weren’t doing their job. But instead of relying on the guilt that would make Pamela a movie icon, Kane and company start getting weird before the end of the first episode, when a few tough guys from out of town show up looking for Pam.
It turns out Pam and Jason were running away from someone and hiding in Crystal Lake, and if I gave you a hundred guesses, I don’t think you’d guess how this subplot entirely reshapes Jason and Pamela’s legacy in a way that’s truly antithetical to the whole appeal of “Friday the 13th.”th” series. We don’t need plots, we need an invincible monster in the woods.
“Crystal Lake” also makes the mistake of trying to be more than just a prequel or homage to the first film, perhaps thinking that a series of that series can’t lose sight of Jason himself. Without spoiling, the series picks up a year after Jason drowned, but they never found the boy’s body and there are signs that he may still be alive. And maybe bigger? And homicide? Again, the new origin story attempts to explain some of this, but it just results in a show that often feels downright inconsistent in its middle section, unsure of who its heroes and villains should be.
Like, no one sat down and decided who Pamela actually was in this version of this universe. Without spoiling, she becomes a bit like the Pam of the first film, but then the series almost forgets her. She also becomes the mother of a potentially troubled new child, but the show also sidelines that for an ending that clearly feels like the product of rewrites, even if it does include a fun, wicked performance from Hamish Linklater. The “Widow’s Bay” contestant is one of the few stars of the performance.
Cardellini gets lost in a constantly rewritten character while poor William Catlett (so good in “Color Book”) gets the thankless role of town sheriff, a love interest for Pamela but more of a plot device to move things from one death to the next. Shows like “Widow’s Bay” and “Below” have reminded us of the need to supplement shows like this with interesting ensembles, but the creators of “Crystal Lake” fundamentally fail to do that, spending so much time with counselors and even a group of local hippies/victims who have about as much personality as the unfortunate souls on “Friday the 13th.”th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.
If you come to “Crystal Lake” for the bloody stuff, this camp kitchen serves up plenty of it. The showrunners clearly prioritized practical effects in what horror nerds called “Quality Kills,” and they give viewers a bit of that almost every episode. Faces are cut, body parts are lost, and the red substance leaks. At least “Crystal Lake” comes to life somewhat during its scenes of intense violence, even if many of them lack emotional weight or permanence.
It could easily be argued that no death in the legacy of “Friday the 13th” has ever had any real emotional weight or permanence, and that the throwaway nature of “Crystal Lake” is a feature, not a bug, but the series needed to be more fun and entertaining to achieve this. It’s not funny or inventive enough to be a true slasher, in part because a season of hour-long episodes demands something deeper than a 90-minute gorefest. That being said, “Crystal Lake” finally achieves a consistent tone in its final version; even though it gets there thanks to a silly plot (and some aesthetic/directorial choices in the penultimate episode that literally had me shaking my head, but I won’t spoil it here), the finale produces some gripping showdowns.
That said, I was struck by how little the six episodes between the premiere and finale mattered. You could literally watch the first and last episode and miss little of the story. Then again, maybe the creators of “Crystal Lake” thought they had to intentionally keep Jason Voorhees in the B-movie muck, but then they had to lean into the POV murders and unforgettable soundtrack instead of even pretending to depict heartbreak, cultural conflicts and government conspiracies. The result is a show that is never serious enough and never funny enough. Jason Voorhees deserved better.
The entire season was screened for review. It will premiere on October 15, 2026.
Gn entert
