A Quiet Weekend at Camp Crystal Lake

It has been some time since we last saw anything from Jason Voorhees. The lead killers of the Friday the 13thOne of the most famous Slasher film franchises, the Friday the 13th series saw multiple twists and turn before finally settling on the formula everyone knows and loves: Jason Voorhees killing campers 'round Camp Crystal Lake. series has seen his rights tied up in multiple legal battles, leading to several works getting proposed, and then cancelled, while all the lawyers bickered with each other for years. There hasn’t been an official new film in the series since 2009’s reboot, Friday the 13th, and while we did have a short-lived asymmetric horror video game, Friday the 13th: The Game, that was eventually delisted and made non-functional (even on private servers) by the current rights holders of the franchise, Horror, Inc., in 2023.

Really, about the only thing we have been able to latch onto, as Friday the 13th fans, is that many of the creatives behind the franchise have big plans and if, some day, the rights could get worked out, surely we’d get something new. “Of course the new Peacock series Crystal Lake is still happening. It’s only been retooled a couple of times so far. Surely one day, maybe in 2026, it’ll finally come out. Just keep your fingers crossed…” Despite it supposedly being in production, we’ll all believe it when we see it.

Which is what makes the release of any new Friday the 13th media a cause for celebration. Just having something new to look at, something that is official that features Jason is a huge step towards the franchise finally coming back to life. That’s what makes Sweet Revenge interesting: it’s the short film relaunch of the franchise, and technically its second reboot, showing what the production team at Horror, Inc. has in store going forward. It’s Jason back again, killing because that’s what he does, while fodder characters line up to be beheaded over and over again. And for this franchise, that’s really all that people want.

The short film focuses on Eve (Ally Ioannides), who has just gotten engaged. She goes on a trip with her fiance and his friends – all played by Natassia Wakey, Toussaint Morrison, Tim James White, and Chris Carlson – out to a cabin by a lake in some secluded woods. Eve, though, is worried because she doesn’t understand why her fiance picked her, why he proposed. Her doubts tear at her, making her question their relationship, and while this trip should have been the time for the two of them to get closer and cement their relationship, the trip doesn’t work out that way.

Part of that is because her fiance seems to be avoiding her when she wants to do stuff around the lake. But a bigger problem is, of course, Jason Voorhees (Schuyler White), who is alive and ready to kill. While Eve is out canoeing on the lake by herself, Jason appears and pulls her under. When she comes back, seemingly minutes or hours later, she slowly makes her way back to camp only to discover that Jason has been there first and he’s killed so many people. Eve has to get back to their cabin and get her friends, but what she finds there might just chill her to the bone and send her life in a direction she could have never expected…

As a first taste of this new chapter for the franchise, Sweet Revenge does what it needs to. It’s a YouTube short, so obviously it can’t give fans of the franchise everything they expect – there can be some cursing, but the blood, sex, and nudity that are mainstays of the franchise have to be toned down for this short film – but what it provides should give hope that the franchise is in the right hands for the foreseeable future. The film is able to set a mood that says, “yes, Jason is back. Just wait and see.”

Because of its short nature, and the fact that it was published on YouTube, I’m willing to forgive some issues I had with the movie. One of them is the fact that, frankly, it’s not very scary. I’d say it’s predictable, in fact, which bleeds off a lot of the tension. The film doesn’t have the time to really build up its scares, having to rush through setup for its story and characters, all so it can get to Eve’s main adventure as she stumbles through camp, fleeing from Jason. While the mood is there, I wouldn’t say there was much in the way of tension or surprise, especially not when the short really wants to pay homage to all the tropes of the past franchise.

There are moments, like when Eve gets pulled off a canoe and into the lake by Jason, that you know were in the short simply because the creative team wanted to give fans moments they could recognize. Why does Eve end up with a machete of all the weapons she could have found? Because that’s what Jason uses normally and they want it in this film. Why does Jason kill a bunch of people? Because they were drinking and having sex and those have always been cardinal sins in his book. Honestly, just going to Crystal Lake (which we eventually see is the site of these cabins) is enough to get Jason to show up, but the film has to put a pin on it and show us the Crystal Lake sign late in the film because we have to have that moment as well.

With that said, I think these moments are probably required to get fans of the franchise back on board and ready for more. It’s been sixteen years since the last film and fans have been eager, drooling at the prospect of something new in the franchise they could sink their teeth into. Sixteen years is a long time between works in a franchise, so we can forgive a few slavish homages to the past since they’re sure to delight hardcore fans while reminding any casuals of a few beats from the franchise they might have known. Here, in a possible one-shot short film, these moments are excusable since this is just a first taste, an amuse bouche for the bigger, cinematic adventure hopefully to come. I just don’t want to see too many of these trope-ish, elaborate callbacks in a feature length reboot, especially now that we’ve gotten them out of the way here.

Despite these moments, though, I don’t feel like Sweet Revenge is overly slavish to the formula. Sure, young adults (who are clearly not teens here) going to the lake and getting sliced up by Jason is all these films have ever really done, and that’s fine. But there are some narrative twists that I think could set this franchise in a different direction, especially if this short ties directly into whatever comes next. And, please note, there will be spoilers for this next paragraph.

To start, Eve gets pulled overboard by Jason and an unknown amount of time goes by before she reemerges. Enough time passes that, far as we can tell, she should have died. She honestly even looks undead when she comes back up, pale with her eyes looking dark and hollow. Did she die under the water and was she brought back by the same force that regularly brings back Jason? Is she possessed by that spirit or something else? And is that why she feels her own need to kill (which she does, at least once, in this short)? The short doesn’t answer these questions, instead ending before a final confrontation between our murderous final girl and the big man himself, but the fact that the film even plays around with conventions does give me some hope for where the franchise could go after this.

Sweet Revenge is slight and a much shorter, and less bloody, adventure than Friday the 13th fans probably want. Some of that can get explained away by format and where it’s published, and I’m willing to forgive on those terms. What the film does, though, is provide mood and narrative questions that I actually really enjoyed, which is a rare thing for me with this franchise. Most of the films have been rote and repetitive affairs, with campers going to the woods to smoke, screw, and get sliced over and over. Sweet Revenge does some things that are different, actually playing with the franchise’s own concepts in a couple of ways I find intriguing.

Intrigue is good. It says that the filmmakers have thought about the franchise and want to try and change things up. That is what I think Friday the 13th needs: new ideas, new perspectives, and a willingness to change things up. While this short still has a lot of the tropes of the franchise, it’s the new ideas that are seemingly present here that give me the most hope for what comes next. And all it took was sixteen years to let the franchise find itself again. Sometimes a good, long rest (deep under the waters of a lake) really can do a series some good.