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It might not quite be Friday the 13th, but Thursday the 15th will be a homecoming for the Voorhees brood after nearly 20 years in the wilderness. Indeed, it’s now been confirmed that Oct. 15 will mark the return of Jason Voorhees—or at least the community that made him, including dear old mamma via the new A24-produced television series Crystal Lake.
The show, which appears to be a prequel/reimagining of the harried “lore” we ascribe to the Friday the 13th franchise, is confirmed for that October launch on the Peacock streaming service, and furthermore has announced Linda Cardellini in the role of Pamela Voorhees. By virtue of the significance of that casting and that character name, we can infer quite a few things about Crystal Lake, even as we ponder its bigger mysteries.
Candellini is of course a TV favorite for millennials who grew up watching her on Freaks and Geeks, ER, and as Velma in the 2000s run of Scooby-Doo movies. Yet that same generation of viewers should have vivid memories of watching Pamela Voorhees (or her ghost) make a wreck of things in Friday the 13th (1980) and its sequels. It is, after all, a classic movie bit of trivia that Jason and his iconic hockey mask is not the killer in the original movie. Rather it’s his mother Pamela who is the surprise slasher in the first flick.
As per Peacock, the only official word on Crystal Lake is that it will explore the Voorhees’ lives before the events of that initial Friday the 13th. This would seem to imply the show will be a period piece prequel set in the 1950s wherein we spend time with the Voorhees before little Jason is bullied (seemingly) to death at Camp Crystal Lake.
Taking such an approach to an iconic horror movie has proven fertile ground before. Look no further than A&E’s Bates Motel from the 2010s, which had no right being as good as it was. However, we’d point out that the horror film Bates Motel was reinterpreting—Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)—left a lot more buried psychological landmines and dramatic treasure to excavate. By virtue of its own twist about the killer in Mrs. Voorhees, Friday the 13th feels faintly like a riff on Psycho (although by way of a much more overt Halloween knockoff), but in practice it was an exploitative slasher at the beginning of that glorious gory wave in the ‘80s. So it is a question if there is as much dramatic heft there, there.
Still, the idea of going back to the beginning of Friday the 13th lore is interesting, not least of all because… it’s so bizarre that it almost begs to be unpacked and twisted. Think about it: In nearly every Ft13 flick, some dumb horny kids, who are definitely not from the area, come to town to work at the summer camp by the lake. Kids from far away are also shipped in, and none of these people, nor their parents, seem aware that just last year, or maybe two summers back, a guy in a hockey mask (or his mother) slaughtered a dozen teens at that very lake. At that very camp!!!
And it keeps happening again. And again. And again. The town is clearly aware of this, with harbingers of doom warning kids in each film that they’re knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door, and everyone knows the “legend” of Jason, but for the locals it’s a known reality there’s a nut in a mask cruising for a slewing up in there in those hills.
What if there’s a reason for that? What if the whole town has reasons to condone or even support this ritualistic slaughter? And what if this goes back to some nonsense Mama Voorhees is up to?
Look, I admit Twin Peaks’ing of Crystal Lake could be way off—or a way out there idea. But if you’re going to make a TV show about this stuff, like the Voorhees, you gotta make some big swings.
The post A24’s Crystal Lake Series Needs to Explain What Is Up with This Weird Town appeared first on Den of Geek.
