“Crystal Lake” – “Camp Crystal” – Season One, Ep. 1 (Peacock)
I sit down to write this review mere minutes after completing episode one of Peacock’s long-awaited, even longer-gestating, almost mythically delayed Crystal Lake, when I am full to bursting with observations and general things to talk about. Anyone who has visited Darkadaptedeye often enough to poke around a bit can tell I have a serious affinity for the Friday the 13th series. Given the presence of two full-length ranking lists, six minute-by-minute walkthroughs, and mentions in another three horrorthon recaps, suffice to say that la familia Voorhees is kind of a thing around these parts. After interminable years denied an official cinematic Friday due to the galling protracted custody battle waged by biological father Victor Miller and absentee stepdad Sean S. Cunningham, I am frankly white hot for my chance to finally return to camp as the diametric opposite of an innocent bystander. I’ve avoided all but official trailers in the runup to Crystal Lake’s premiere, and only watched those to convince myself after endless years of second-guessing that this prequel series would be worth investing in at all. I know other online outlets with more access, and, I’m guessing, free time than me, are reviewing the entire series at once, but I can’t bring myself to here. Partly because “Camp Crystal” is, against all odds, so compelling and entertaining that it cries out to be considered alone, and partly because I don’t want to risk ruining or at least sullying this feeling with what I’m afraid might come after.
We return to Crystal Lake, New Jersey, an idyllic hamlet nestled into a cascading tree canopy that seemingly stretches beyond the horizon, for a full consideration, following decades of unfair reduction to a particularly prodigious homicidal footnote in the wake of her son’s ascendance to superstardom, of one Pamela Voorhees, doting single mother and cook at the town’s namesake summer camp. Crystal Lake in 1971 (?!), as the trailer if not the premiere itself informs us, looks practically just as we left the place in 1980. It’s best not to get hung up on strict chronology here anyway – something for which Friday fans have an unfortunate knack historically, even inventing and revising their own timelines whenever the numbers didn’t make sense – because the details otherwise are just spot-on. Downtown Crystal Lake looks so much like the stretch of modern-day Blairstown, New Jersey you can still visit today* that it’s both palpably eerie and not a little invigorating. The camp sign is the original I’ve never seen convincingly reproduced for purchase at horror conventions, and the coffee shop is dotted with auspicious locals like friendly trucker Enos, eccentric doomsayer Ralph before he officially earned his “Crazy” moniker, and waitress Trudy before she found work at that diner on the rainy outskirts. If these sets and locations are new, and I purposely didn’t check, they feel intrinsically authentic, and amazing. Even the main titles repurpose the famous glass-shattering logo and rearrange Harry Manfredini’s timeless score. This is fan service of the highest order.
*Check out www.crystallaketours.com for an off-season guided beachside safari or apparently bucket list-worthy overnight experience (complete with movie screening, canoeing, and S’mores) spent exploring the active Boy Scout camp where Cunningham and Miller’s seminal original was filmed, and enjoy two handfuls of my personal envy as a cherry on top.
All of which would be for naught if those wonderful initial feels didn’t seep beneath surface level, take hold, and blossom into something legitimately involving. Maybe it’s the TV milieu, but I was anticipating a slower burn (couldn’t be happier to have been wrong). In the fifteen minutes before its main titles hit like a bomb – also, I should note, nailing the classic credit font and iconic fade to white transitions – Crystal Lake does an expert job of establishing the relationship between Pamela (at the time everybody was still neighborly enough to call her Pam) and her bright but put-upon eleven-year-old son, Jason, affording them tender and hopeful moments together, digging into the difficulties of his social life at summer camp, and, above all, demonstrating without quite stating the depth and intensity of her love for him. Bullied and pitied in roughly equal measure, this is to my knowledge the first cinematic representation of young Jason that treats him as a person rather than a prop, affording what has traditionally been a flailing or lunging mute invalid the dignity of speech and self-awareness. After an extra moment’s acclimation, I found myself surprisingly absorbed, and then, because we’re all versed in the high-level legend of Jason Voorhees by now, utterly horrified. Had Crystal Lake not nailed this sequence – despondent and fatally unsupervised, Jason swims out beyond the reach of his hysterical mother, flounders, and apparently drowns – the series to come would, if you’ll pardon the expression, be dead in the water.
Casting is of course crucial for any television show, but with a series that presumably charts the journey of a single principal throughout, holding fast to the established golden age “Anti-hero” playbook, it’s absolutely everything. I don’t remember how long or even whether peerless character actress Linda Cardellini (Freaks & Geeks, ER) was officially attached to Crystal Lake before the acrimonious departure of ace showrunner Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Dead Like Me) was announced, but I remember thinking at the time it certainly cushioned the blow. That seems an age ago now, but if Fuller had any hand in securing Cardellini’s services, it was the best decision he made on Crystal Lake‘s behalf, one that instantly makes it a viable and intriguing property going forward. Nine months pass on the strains of Manfredini’s shrieking soundtrack. As she is reintroduced, stoic and uninvited, at the end of the camp dock scanning still waters for any sign of her missing boy, Pamela’s expressive mouth, last seen frozen in a scream midway between terror and agony, is now a pursed, scarred-over wound of grim determination. Though far yet from the grinning lunatic Betsy Palmer once immortalized on screen, this Pamela Voorhees is clearly not a woman to be trifled with, or condescended to, nor one to accept “no” for an answer. Cardellini is more magnetic in the role than I might’ve dreamed, as a wallflower who, spurred by grief and desperation, finds herself redefining the things of which she is capable on an hourly basis.
The supporting cast isn’t tasked with anything so varsity-level, but they still distinguish themselves nicely. William Catlett is sympathetic and projects competency historically rare for the region (or filmed canon) as local sheriff Levon Brooks. Equally impressive despite paltry screentime is Callum Vinson as the doomed young Jason, who proves perhaps overly thoughtful for an eleven-year-old but beyond that just a normal kid with a misshapen, abnormally large head, tragically shadowed, as was practically inevitable, by the kind of barnacle-like bully that in another setting might’ve come at him twice as hard over half the offense. Camp denizens and townspeople beyond the coffee shop boast agreeably familiar names/profiles, including Steve Christy’s apparent parents, John and Kay, derelict horndog counselors Barry and Claudette, who I suspect will die real good circa episode five, and nobody’s favorite weed-obsessed, patronizing motorcycle cop, Deputy Dorf. All efforts pale in comparison to Cardellini’s Pamela, however, as they should, and she is spectacular at inspiring both pangs of doubt and glimmers of recognition as her mental state ebbs, flows, slips, recovers, but nevertheless reflects increasing signs of the slow structural deterioration that, once accelerated, will surely propel the series as far as it goes. It’s a shame in a way that Pam has such an intractably loony future ahead of her, because “Camp Crystal” is at its most effective in some of her most smoothed out, contemplative moments. Whereas Betsy Palmer’s Pamela was crazy by default, Cardellini’s is shattered but still struggles towards the light.
I’ve seen the original Friday the 13th countless dozens of times, and despite an occasional twinge of sympathy felt during the combination monologue/free-range cage match that dominates its final fifteen minutes, Betsy Palmer’s Pammy has never particularly moved the needle for me. She’s a fun and formidable villain, but nowhere near a fully formed human being despite her potent stockpile of grievances. Using identical raw materials, Cardellini crafts the character far more thoughtfully than the natural constraints of a ninety-minute backwoods murder mystery would have allowed Palmer to attempt, even if she’d had that direction within her and hadn’t already thought the movie irredeemable tripe. Jason’s disappearance – Pamela refuses to accept he is dead, and the show never explicitly contradicts her – destroys her world and sense of self. Cardellini’s pathos beckons us inside then springs a trap, forcing us to consider Pam’s roiling mind from the inside out. It’s the kind of performance whose sheer power demands preemptive forgiveness for whatever narrative stumbles might be yet to come, and even I, the longtime series fanatic turned budding small screen convert, was hardly so overcome as to disregard distant stormclouds I noticed forming above the lake. No series with Crystal Lake’s tortured development history, which saw fit to jettison a visionary like Fuller in favor of input from a combined fifteen executive and co-executive producers**, could possibly be expected to step lightly all the way to the bitter end. But it still leaves viewers one hell of an opening chapter.
**Including the late Victor Miller, who, full disclosure, often struck me as a ponderous blowhard in interviews and who, alongside check-cashing series custodian Cunnigham, I’ll never forgive for refusing to compromise his legal position for the greater good until the literal eleventh hour. Still and all, Miller had sneaky writing talent, and operated admirably within the inherently limiting parameters of his assignment. Tellingly, Cunningham’s name did not make this Bad News Bears postseason roster at all, and I’m personally thrilled he won’t be slinking around within earshot of the “Crystal Lake” creative team, presumably to proclaim, loudly and often, how he “never liked the hockey mask to begin with”. Court-mandated character credit is split equally here between Cunningham’s Horror, Inc. production house and original scribe Miller, who, as mentioned, sadly passed away before he could see this fullest flower of his long-ago creation unleashed upon the world.
So I’m not quite sure the point of introducing Sheriff Brooks’ sassy sister, a newly arrived big city writer lately relegated to penning embarrassing filler for the local newspaper’s back pages, except to unnecessarily pad runtime. The two have a fun enough dynamic, and maybe she’ll make a difference in the box score, but today she’s a distraction. The insinuation that Brooks carries a torch for Pam may also eventually pay real dividends, and at least results here in a tense coda to what I must say is among the most delightful and purely entertaining extended murder scenes I’ve encountered in years. I don’t want to dwell on the weird third-act twist that had strangers flashing suspect credentials showing up at Pam’s house under false pretenses after her public outburst made a mess of the Founder’s Day picnic – I already dread where I suspect it’s leading, plotwise – except to marvel at its surprise byproduct, an elaborate, escalating sequence of body disposal horror worthy of the Coen Brothers. If the fact that random people will and, indeed, must occasionally die on this show somehow qualifies as a spoiler***, credit is surely due Linda Cardellini’s nuanced performance and surprisingly assured stewardship from the post-Fuller braintrust. Handsomely mounted, thoughtfully architected, and beautifully acted, “Camp Crystal” deserves to be considered in a vacuum, independent of the remaining series I hope against hope will somehow prove worthy of its example. Now that I have, I couldn’t be more excited to get on with the show.
***This is Pamela Voorhees we’re talking about, remember. Big Momma V. The First Lady of Slasher Movies. Mommie Severe-est. Modern horror’s original very special guest star. The notable first in the morass of sharp curves that comprises the history of “Scream”. Even if we already kinda know where Cardellini will one day take Pam, I still can’t wait to see how she gets there. Put extra respect on her name.
