Pamela Voorhees has long been an underserved character in the history of horror cinema. The matriarch of the entire Friday the 13th franchise was infamously the original killer in Sean S. Cunningham’s first installment and played to unhinged perfection by Betsy Palmer in the 1980 film before passing the slashing baton off to her formerly deceased son, Jason. Over the course of the subsequent decades, there have been a baker’s dozen sequels to the film, but none of them have dug any deeper into Pamela’s story, instead opting to push forward with Jason and his iconic hockey mask instead.
Fortunately, all of that is going to change with the release of the new series Crystal Lake on Peacock this October. The series acts as a prequel to the original film and stars the ever-wonderful Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees. This gives the series an opportunity to really dig into the tragic backstory of this character and her relationship with her son in fascinating ways, with Cardellini all-but-certain to lend some bona fide dramatic gravitas to the proceedings. And while showrunner Brad Caleb Kane is eager to explore those differentiating points between this series and the movies, he’s also keen on letting franchise fans know that Crystal Lake is going to go “full Friday the 13th."
At a recent sneak peek event for the upcoming series, the showrunner said, “I think the biggest conceptual issue was people know what to expect from a Friday the 13th, or at least they know what a Friday the 13th movie should be. Teens go out to a place, they are having sex and doing drugs, and then they are hunted by Mrs. Voorhees or Jason in the subsequent films. But, thankfully, we weren’t making a Friday the 13th movie."
“This was called Crystal Lake, and we were doing a story about the town and a prequel about Jason’s mom, and it was really fresh snow. We could build it however we wanted, and feeling ownership for the franchise as a long‑time fan and a lover of it, truly die‑hard lover, I kind of knew what I wanted to see as a grown‑up Friday the 13th fan, as somebody who these movies opened doors for me and opened my eyes and I was thrilled watching them with thousand‑seaters full of people yelling at the screen. But I also grew up a little bit and became interested in other films and other themes in films, and I wanted to bring all of that cinema love to my love for Friday the 13th," he continued.
Essentially, Caleb Kane is speaking to the fact that Crystal Lake opened up a whole new world of artistic possibilities for the team and that they were keen to seize them, while also ensuring that it felt cut from the same cloth as the iconic Friday the 13th films. For what it’s worth, this is exactly the kind of approach I have been hoping for from the start.
Cardellini is a great actress, and Pamela’s arc is an inherently compelling and emotionally rich one that has been underplayed in the franchise up until now. Turning the spotlight on this character in an authentic way and allowing a truly great performer to run with it, all while featuring the kind of bloodshed and antics one would expect from a Friday the 13th film, would be a best-case scenario. Here’s hoping that’s what we get when Crystal Lake releases this Halloween season.
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