Crystal Lake review – Friday the 13th gets unnecessary expansion in gory and goofy series
Linda Cardellini tries her best but this baffling attempt to add backstory to one of horror’s thinnest franchises is IP stretching at its most pointless
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No one or no thing ever really dies any more, something that has long been true in the world of slashers, where no amount of stabbing, shooting and exploding has stopped masked killers from killing again and again and again. Recent years have seen the timeline of the Halloween franchise retooled so that Michael Myers could regain his head and restart his reign of terror, while Ghostface has resurfaced to stalk the younger relatives of his old frenemies. As Leatherface prepares an A24 comeback courtesy of Obsession’s Curry Barker and dual Nightmare on Elm Street reboots square off, it’s time to return to Camp Crystal Lake to see what desperate rights-holders can do with Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-wearing giant who enjoys slicing and dicing horny youngsters.
Given the success of the low-budget franchise (12 films since 1980 grossing almost $500m worldwide) and the killer’s still strong brand recognition, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen him since the middling 2009 remake (especially as quality has never been a preventive issue in the franchise). It’s partly down to a headache-inducing scramble over rights but also the difficulty of placing a killer as mechanically one-note as Jason in a horror genre that now places more importance on trauma over terror. Friday the 13th films were tiny-brained and thinly plotted excuses to make couples squeeze each other tighter in the dark, light on thought and heavy on blood. Some were better than others (1984’s The Final Chapter, which of course wasn’t the final chapter, being a notable high point), but the bar was low and the more a film-maker might add to the plate, the less it might feel like a Friday the 13th movie.
Which brings us to Crystal Lake, an almost comically of-the-moment pitch for a 2026 return to the franchise. A schlocky sleepover slasher has now become an overstuffed eight-part streaming series exploring the backstory of Jason but mainly focused on the psychology of his murderous mother, Pamela, who was revealed to be the killer in the first film. What turned Pamela into a psychopath? Why was Jason able to survive his drowning? What exactly are we doing here?
Pamela is a character who was in less than 15 minutes of a 46-year-old movie, best known since as a Halloween costume or a Scream gotcha question, more plot twist than person. But she’s now been turned into an ex-nightclub singer turned experimented-on Stepford Wife turned grieving mother turned avenging angel. It’s expansion for expansion’s sake in a show that isn’t as heinous as it could be, but more a passable answer to an LA conference room question that should never have been asked in the first place.
In the lead, Linda Cardellini, fresh off an Emmy win, tries to bring some prestige to the pulp and almost succeeds. The violent hardening of her camp cook single mother, whose disfigured son accidentally dies in the cold open (far too soon for us to be emotionally invested), is only ever close to being tantalising because of how far she’s willing to go. But the tone of the show is far less surer than her at times ferociously compelling performance. Creator Brad Caleb Kane wills us to take the silliness seriously in moments as some vague commentary is made about the medical and societal treatment of women in the 70s before he leans into full-on, Syfy channel goofiness. To justify an entire series, he gives us flashbacks, a conspiracy, some romance, a spot of police corruption, a plucky journalist, a seance, a nefarious life coach and a shadowy corporation, an overbooked camp fit to burst. It’s Bates Motel but for a film without even a shred of the texture of Psycho and while meddling with a franchise as tinny as Friday the 13th is not exactly sacrilege, it’s just entirely pointless.
It’s not that a TV series directly copying the stalk-and-slash formula of the films would have worked either (even an 80s attempt used Friday the 13th as a symbol of bad luck rather than a way to bring Jason to the small screen), but it’s just that a TV series maybe wasn’t the best idea in the first place. Horror stans might appreciate the fan service (and the staggeringly nasty gore) but for anyone else, the overcomplicated and underpowered Crystal Lake just doesn’t warrant the stay. Jason will inevitably be back (a new film is reportedly in the works) but, despite Cardellini’s best efforts, maybe it’s best to leave Pamela behind.
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Crystal Lake is available now on Peacock in the US, on Stan in Australia on 16 October and on Now in the UK on 19 October
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