Linda Cardellini refreshes her history in horror as Pamela Voorhees in the new Peacock series “Crystal Lake,” the prequel to the “Friday the 13th” franchise and Victor Miller’s original 1980 film.
“Crystal Lake” intends to bridge a gap between the backgrounds of Jason and Pamela Voorhees and explain the former’s supernatural abilities. The series is A24-produced and written by Brad Caleb Cane, and premiered on Oct. 15 on Peacock, featuring eight 45+ minute episodes.
The first episode lays the foundation for Pamela Voorhees’ backstory to be told, opening with an extreme closeup shot of her hands covered in blood. The camera slowly pans up to meet her reflection in the mirror, staring back at her shocked face which is covered in so much blood that you can just barely make out the whites of Cardellini’s eyes.
She quietly, and almost calmly, asks herself, “What did you do?” before the scene quickly cuts to a black title screen which clarifies that we’ve flashed back nine months.
An establishing shot of the Voorhees residence is shown, where we then see that young Pamela is inside watching TV before she is startled by the reflection of a young Jason Voorhees, who is awake because he’s having trouble sleeping.
Pamela tucks him into bed and the two talk about going to camp the next day, each sharing different feelings and expectations for how it will go. When Jason shares his worries about fitting in with the other kids, Pamela tries to get him excited instead by singing him the camp’s theme song, but Jason softly says he hates the song.
This interaction clearly demonstrates the kind of relationship that Pamela and Jason have because of the way that he confides in his mother when he’s feeling down, and how deeply she cares about finding a way to comfort him and put an optimistic spin on things.
The action slowly rises when the Voorhees get to camp the next morning, with Pamela finding a snake in the kitchen. Using some camera trickery and a bloody knife that was used by Pamela just moments before to cut raw meat, the viewer is meant to believe that she’s out to kill the creature, but it’s revealed that she in fact captured the snake and released it further out in the woods.
I believe this was done purposely to show that Pamela’s violent nature stems from the loss of her son and contrast with the Pamela we know from the movie.
While out in the woods, she also runs into “Crazy” Ralph Neely, who is known from “Friday the 13th” to wander around town, drunkenly rambling about a death curse on Camp Crystal Lake.
In the middle of Pamela and Ralph’s confusingly off-putting conversation about avoiding landmines and sticking to pathways, Pamela overhears a commotion coming from the lake and realizes that Jason is screaming out for her help. When she sprints to the dock, she realizes that Jason is about to drown in the middle of the lake and jumps in to swim after him, but loses him after his head eventually goes underwater.
Pamela continues calling out to Jason before she cries out a bone-chilling “NO!” before the frame slowly zooms in and freezes on an extreme close-up of Cardellini’s screaming mouth, just like in the original vintage slasher films.
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Cardellini has a face built for horrified facial expressions, and her slow slip into insanity as a grieving mother who refuses to let the town accept, or forget, that her son is dead, perfectly encapsulates one of the most intriguing parts about Pamela Voorhees’ character.
The second half of the episode follows Pamela as she deals with the recent loss of her son, helped by Chief of Police Levon “Lee” Brooks, a new character introduced in this series
One day when Chief Brooks invites her to a town barbeque, Pamela becomes overwhelmed with being at Crystal Lake and by the people who are trying to talk to her about her son. While there, she also finds out from two previous camp counselors that the camp is being reopened. This sends Pamela into a disassociated spiral and she runs into the lake screaming for the children to get out because it’s not safe. She asks how everyone can celebrate such an event when her son died there nearly a year before, then hastily leaves the event in her truck.
Soon after, Pamela is visited by two men claiming to be police officers who are asking for her to identify what they believe to be Jason’s body. Sensing that something is off after one of the men makes a rude comment, Pamela tries to escape and kills one of the men with a pair of scissors as the other one chases her with an injection that the first man failed to distribute.
While he is getting the injection ready and Pamela is on the floor, he reveals that he knows her real last name is Wittering, and she asks how they found her. She eventually escapes and kills the second man, which then leads us back to the point at the beginning of the episode where Pamela is covered in blood, staring at herself in the mirror.
In true slasher style, the pilot’s ending leaves viewers on the edge of their seat with many questions about who Pamela and the people she’s running from really are, or how she managed to escape them for so long, especially in the original movie.
Lexis Lovato is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @lovatolexis
