TV Show Review: Crystal Lake

Crystal Lake is the latest addition to the Friday the 13th franchise, and as you could expect from such a legacy series, it has divided fans. All of a sudden, everybody is a Friday the 13th expert. There are aficionados everywhere. People have thoughts. People are upset about the timeline. I am not interested in the timeline. Neither am I interested in the whole franchise. This review is going to focus solely on Crystal Lake as a TV series, and then maybe towards the end we can discuss what it means for the Friday the 13th franchise. Maybe.

But let's get down to the main series itself.

The Story

Crystal Lake focuses on the story of Jason Voorhees, but this time, we get a closer look at his mother, who is played by Linda Cardellini in this new series. We get to see exactly the conditions that brought her to the town and to Crystal Lake as a whole.

Yes, there is still the element of Jason drowning and not drowning. There is the element of him turning into a killer and haunting the woods. His mother also loses a bit of her mind, but this series tries to tell us, okay, this is what happened. They try to give us a sort of origin story to make sense of the whole franchise because there have been so many instalments of Friday the 13th, I have lost count. He dies, he resurrects, he's a zombie, he's not a zombie, he's allergic to atomic waste, he's not. There has just been way too much.

So, going right in, we're going to start with a quick review of this particular TV show.

The Series

The series focuses on the origins of Pamela Voorhees and Jason Voorhees, which, as it turns out, were not even their real names. It's sort of an origin story for both characters. Pamela is a single mother who is trying to take care of her sick child, who is also physically deformed. At first, it feels like that is all there is to it, but after the first episode, where Jason drowns, we realise that there is more to her story, as Pamela is not even her name.

And then Jason doesn't actually drown, but instead of going back home to his mother, he decides to haunt the woods, haunt people, skin them alive, and kill them. The progression from being innocent to being a serial killer is the craziest thing I've ever seen, but sure.

Episodes

So, the first episode was a banger. You realise that Pamela has a lot of strength in her when she kills the two men who come to kidnap her in her home. Those two men, one of them was just way too loud. If he had been very subtle, they would have gotten her, but he was way too loud, and, yeah, she got rid of them and was able to feed one to a bear to help her finish the job.

The first two episodes were very good. Towards the middle, it slows down a bit. So, we get to find out that Pamela was experimented on when she was pregnant because, wait for it, the company wanted to create human beings that could withstand an atomic blast.

The Reason for The Experiments

I know science is revolutionary, but it is just insane that people would sit down and want to think about something this crazy. I mean, I understand building a bomb shelter. I understand building buildings that can withstand bombs, but creating a human being that can withstand an atomic bomb? It's just insane.

And then the series tries to explain that every trauma he goes through just makes him stronger. So, the stabbing, the shooting, and his massive regenerative abilities all contribute to his development. He grows older at an incredibly rapid rate. Because in this series, we see him as a ten-year-old, and the next year, he's looking like a twenty-year-old man, which I assume has to do with the chemical alterations in his system.

He is badly deformed, thereby wearing a potato sack over his head to hide his deformity from the world. Who knows when he grows into the hockey mask, his signature look? But in this series, he's still wearing a potato sack.

So, the middle of the series involves investigations, the sheriff and his sister, sexual conversations, and a lot of in-betweens. They were a bit slow, but towards Episode Six, things picked up again.

Hamish

As we look further into Pamela's story, we are introduced to one of my favourite pop-up horror actors. I mean, I know he does things beyond horror, but I just like him, and that is Hamish Linklater.

If the name doesn't sound familiar, then I want you to think about Midnight Mass. Yeah, the Reverend Father in Midnight Mass. Yes, that is Hamish Linklater. Right? I want you to think about The Whisper Man. I want you to think about Gen V. I want you to think about the recent Widow's Bay. He was Sirius, the founding father in Widow's Bay.

He just has a way of turning up and making a scene his own, or making a role his own, and that's exactly what he did here. Because the minute I saw him, I was like, of course. Of course Hamish Linklater has to be in this movie.

So, Hamish makes the mistake of coming down to look for Pamela and Jason, and he meets his demise at Jason's hands. Thank God. Pamela basically makes it out alive because, while trying to strangle her, he remembers the fact that she actually watched out for him. She wanted him to be happy. It's just that she did not realise what had happened when he drowned, or when he almost—when he fake-drowned, if I have to put it that way.

Thoughts On The Story

To focus on the story, the story was fine. The TV show was produced to the quality of a solid TV show. It tried its best to hang on to the lore of Friday the 13th, even introducing the machete that Jason eventually gets used to. We see it being introduced, right? The potato sack is there, the killings are there. It tries its best to make sense of everything that exists in Friday the 13th.

The only problem is, no matter how well it does, fans are just causing chaos after chaos after chaos and complaining.

Now, mind you, Friday the 13th is not an MCU cinematic universe. It wasn't done the way Phases One to Three of the MCU were done, whereby every story was interconnected. We just had multiple versions of instalments going left, right, and centre. There was no thought behind anything. It was supposed to be one movie that spawned into a franchise of almost twelve movies. Nobody knows where one is starting. Nobody knows where one is ending. It's just everywhere.

The harsh reviews this series has been getting are just unnecessary. This series should be judged as a standalone series, and as a standalone series, it's an amazing show. It is an amazing show.

It has the right bit of emotional storytelling, drama, suspense, horror, stabbing, and killings. Everything is balanced. Everything is balanced. And the acting, especially from Linda, was, like, up there. It was so good.

Hamish, too. Hamish was not in so many episodes, maybe just three episodes towards the end, or two episodes, and yet he was also good. So, the actors tried. The story was solid.

The Friday The 13th Family

Now, in relation to the Friday the 13th family, fine, it might not fit in, but I feel if fans embrace this as an origin story, it would save them a lot of issues. But then it's so difficult to embrace this as an origin story because, in this story, Pamela does not kill the counsellors. So, that throws off a lot of the storyline that existed in the original ones.

I said I wasn't going to compare this. I just needed to mention it because it is a Friday the 13th sort of combination. So, it's in the same family, just a TV show.

The Show Itself

For this TV show, it is absolutely worth it. If you're a horror movie fan, you would love this TV show. It's interesting. Yes, there are slow moments in the middle, but even those slow moments try their best to play into the lore of the entire franchise and the mystery surrounding Pamela and Jason.

Some episodes feel stretched out a bit, but it was totally worth the watch, and I would recommend it to anybody.