Mama Voorhees’s Time to Shine

It’s been close to two decades since Jason Voorhees last graced our screens. At the time, Friday the 13th (2009) was pitched as a soft reboot for the franchise, a way to get the film series going again after a six year lull following Freddy vs. Jason. That film was supposed to have its own continuation, with many ideas pitched including a crossover with the Evil DeadStarted as a horror cheapie to get the foot in the door for three aspiring filmmakers -- Raimi, Tappert, and Campbell -- Evil Dead grew to have a life of its own, as well as launching the "splatstick" genre of horror-comedy. franchise (which the owners of Evil Dead rejected outright), but in the end neither the slasher crossover, nor the later reboot, managed to get any sequels.

This was due to complex legal issues, and a bunch of lawsuits, from the various owners and stakeholders 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. franchise. Various people said they owned the rights to the various movies, and most especially to the character of Jason Voorhees, and that tied up all future movie plans in knots. No one could move forward until all the legal matters were settled, and the franchise went dormant with no way to bring the fans what they were looking for: more slasher action.

That all changed when the legal matters were (generally) settled and A24 came on to back the project: a television series. You will note that the franchise is still on in theaters, but instead they went the television route. That’s because the movie rights are still a tangled web, but streaming is a whole other ball game (in large part because streaming wasn’t even a factor back when the franchise first started). So with the ability to make something, and a creative team ready to go back to the lake where it all started, a prequel series was put into production.

And right there I feel like we hit the first road bump for this whole idea. Crystal Lake, named after the famed lake (and, in fact, the whole town where the camp site exists), is a prequel and origin story for Pamela and Jason Voorhees, the killers from the films. But one has to wonder why we need an origin story for these characters. Pam already had her story explained in the original Friday the 13th, as she was a mother grieving the loss of her kid after camp counselors let him drown. She kills everyone that goes to the lake to get her revenge. And after she’s killed off at the end of the first film (spoilers, I guess), Jason comes back from the dead (is that even a spoiler?) to continue his mother’s reign of carnage for an additional eleven movies.

This is not a franchise that needs an origin story to explain everything. We didn’t have questions about Pam, Jason, or why they were killing. The charm of the Friday the 13th films has always been their simplicity. We knew just enough about the characters that we never questioned what they were after or why they killed. Explaining the motives for slasher killers, in point of fact, dulls the very thing that makes them scary and interesting (example: Halloween: Curse of Michael Myers). And yet the creators on the show felt that they had to make a prequel for these killers, and it’s a flaw in the whole idea that the television series is never able to get past.

We begin (obviously enough) in a Summer in the late 1970s with Jason (played as a 12 year old by Callum Vinson), attending the Summer camp where his mother, Pamela Voorhees (Linda Cardellini) works as a cook. She leaves him in the care of the camp counselors, which is a bad idea as the two counselors that should have been watching him, Claudette (Danielle Kotch) and Barry (Phoenix Parnevik), go off to have sex in the boat house. Jason swims out into a deep part of the lake he shouldn’t be in, can’t swim back, and drowns, all right in front of Pam as she tries to rescue him.

Over the coming months Pam tries to recover. She tries to move on with her life, striking up a relationship with the town’s Chief of Police, Levon Brooks (William Catlett), but she’s simply not able to shake the feeling that Jason is still out there. Not dead but somehow not able to come home. Trouble comes for Pam, though, when two supposed police officers come round to ask her questions. In reality they’re men working from a corporation in her past, and they want to take her with them. She fights them off, killing both men, and this awakens a taste for blood within her. Pam realizes she’ll fight for what she believes in, and will kill anyone that gets in her way, kicking off a bloody reign of terror that will soon come for this sleepy New Jersey town.

I feel for the creative team that worked on this show. I really do. You want to make a Friday the 13th prequel, as much to avoid any issues with the franchise rights as anything else, but then you actually have to make that idea work. That means not just showing Pam as she slowly descends into violence but also trying to explain why she does what she does beyond just wanting revenge for her dead kid. The idea is to give her more reasoning, more back story, more plot they can use to make an eight episode series out of what is, at its core, a pretty simple premise. Pam kills to avenge her son. Do we really need more than that?

Well, the series feels like we do, and it spins this convoluted back story about a secret corporation, sci-fi plans for Jason, and a whole lot of other nonsense that, frankly, bogs down the story. The more the show goes out of its way to explain Pam, the more ridiculous it gets. And in the process it also tries to justify Jason, the hulking beast-man who can take any amount of damage and get back up, who can rise from the dead over and over and never stop. We already knew he could do this, and explaining it takes away from his character. He’s not an unkillable beast because he’s undead and powered by hate. No, he’s like this because someone made him like this.

Frankly, this ruins the vibe of the character, and it drags down the show. The series has to stop, at regular intervals, to handle this stupid plotline, which detracts from the time spent watching Pam kill people, then clean up after herself, and then act shocked when the Chief of Police says, “you know, Pam, more people died. I just can’t figure out who’s doing this…” When the show is just about Pam getting (sometimes very petty) revenge, it’s great. It’s bloody and a little silly but delightful all the same. I just wish it didn’t focus so much on explaining Pam when its best weapon is Pam herself.

That’s because Linda Cardellini is fantastic in the role. I don’t think anyone is surprised about that, mind you. Cardellini is a great actress in everything she’s been in, and her fandom only grows as the years go back. Casting Cardellini in the role of Pam made people sit up and take notice. It gave Crystal Lake a level of prestige it might not have had anyone. A real actress was going to be in this slasher series. People wanted to see why, and Cardellini delivered. You tell; she had a great time making this series of television, and there’s no doubt the show would be much worse without her.

But that doesn’t justify all the stupid decisions this series makes. All we need is Pam being a revenge killer and the show would be great. That’s what Crystal Lake should have been, and I have to hope that now that we’ve gotten all these prequel plot shenanigans out of the way, any kind of second season will focus on what works: Pam, Jason, and killing. Anything other than that is just going to ruin what works about Friday the 13th… if this first season hasn’t already done too much damage to recover. But hell, we got past Jason X. Surely we can get past the worst parts of this season.