REVIEW: Crystal Lake – Season One (2026)

Rating: TV-MA | Episodes: 8 | Runtime: 60 minutes
Release Date: October 15th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: A24 / Peacock
Creator(s): Brad Caleb Kane

Some of us are meant to wear masks.

As someone who never held any affinity for the Friday the 13th franchise, I also never realized how up in the air and disjointed its mythology was. Between the series’ origins starting as a planned horror anthology wherein the story of Jason and Pamela Voorhees was but one campfire yarn to fade into the ether to the former’s trademarked goalie mask not being introduced until the third film, it was all being built in real-time with no true solid basis beyond slasher kills.

It wasn’t until the sixth entry, Jason Lives, that the character was given the sort of supernatural strength and invulnerability I had presumed was part of his lore from the beginning, so a prequel like “Crystal Lake” actually begins to feel like more of a necessity than a cash grab seventeen years after a critically derided yet profitable cinematic reboot. Why not go backwards and finally give Jason the concrete back story that so many changing hands and false starts didn’t?

Was that the original plan before Bryan Fuller and Kevin Williamson were let go after the 2023 Writers Strike? Considering it’s been reported that A24 wanted to go in a “different direction,” you could assume no (although Fuller’s unique sensibilities might have simply given the studio pause aesthetically rather than thematically). It is what new showrunner Brad Caleb Kane chose to do, however. A lot of homage and some recreation with some brand-new exposition.

It starts with Pam (Linda Cardellini), the small town of Crystal Lake’s quiet school cook who works summers preparing meals at the Christie family’s camp. A woman everyone knows because everyone knows everyone, but also because you cannot ignore her physically deformed son Jason (Callum Vinson). Whether the constant bullying by classmates or adult sentiments from the likes of Daniel Stewart Sherman’s Enos (“hard to look at, but sweet”), they’re unforgettable.

The question then becomes how to weave the narrative touchstones (Jason drowning in the lake as a boy, Pam getting her revenge on the two counselors that were supposed to be watching him, and Jason’s later formidable physique) together in one cohesive whole while introducing fresh characters like chief of police Levon Brooks (William Catlett), his reporter sister Brianna (Devin Kessler), and locals like Rita (Joy Suprano) and Dorf (Cameron Scoggins).

I must give Kane credit for finding an effective (if familiar) formula to do so—one I won’t spoil here. Just know that he isn’t hiding his revisionist strings until a last episode reveal. He’s introducing it in the first episode to make sure Pam’s grief is met with an external threat that drives our intrigue forward beyond her inevitable descent into Norman Bates territory. So, while you might assume you know why she’s covered in blood at the start, you are probably wrong.

I’ve only ever seen the first two films and Freddy vs. Jason (I have conversely always been a huge Nightmare on Elm Street fan), so I can’t speak to whether the show does justice to the fans (the callbacks via episode names like “Part 2”, “Part III”, and “A New Beginning” show the fan service is on point). What I can say, however, is that the kills are gruesomely memorable in their splatter gore with some great cadaver work. That’s most of the allure anyway, right?

The highlight for me comes in episode five’s “The New Blood” wherein directors Celine Held and Logan George meticulously re-stage the cold open to Friday the 13th. It’s quite the feat with every detail from dialogue to camera position giving us a wonderfully nostalgic sense of déjà vu before a couple new wrinkles are added to keep us on our toes. The more familiar something looks, the higher the chance that you’re going to find yourself surprised.

Add other subplots of alienation via Jason’s best friend Grace (Gwendolyn Sundstrom), the genre’s sex-crazed teens trope (Danielle Kotch’s Claudette and Phoenix Parnevik’s Barry), a bit of political paranoia via a group of hippies (led by Manon Gage, Drew Scheid, and Lark White), and everyone’s favorite crackpot Ralph (Nick Cordileone) trying to warn of the evil in the forest and there’s plenty of meat on the bone to sustain a year’s time in eight episodes.

My biggest caveat lies with the penultimate chapter “Friday …” and its common use of a flashback to answer some of the mysteries needed before the climactic finale unfolds. It has nothing to do with the device or the content, though. My issue lies with its aesthetic choices. I don’t know if it’s the product of a green screen or a camera trick, but the deep focus a la Speed Racer is not great. I get approximating the uncanniness of memory, but it’s nausea-inducing.

“Crystal Lake” is pretty solid otherwise. It’s funnier than I expected (helped by Scoggins’ Dorf and a nice troop of recurring yokels) and bloody enough to wonder why they didn’t go full farce. The new history ascribed to the Voorhees duo works and Cardellini and Catlett lend enough gravitas to keep the carnage grounded in an authentic lived-in experience. There are a few loose ends left for a future season to tie too since there’s plenty of room before Pam’s fate is sealed.