Horror fans, rejoice! After almost twenty years of drought – spent peering into the woods for any sign of Jason Voorhees – Friday The 13th is finally headed back to our screens. Crystal Lake is set to machete its way into our living rooms just in time for Halloween, resurrecting the monolithic slasher franchise for its first proper outing in nearly two decades, in all its gore‑drenched glory.
Linda Cardellini steps into the role of slasher‑killer matriarch Pamela Voorhees, following her blood‑spattered transformation from summer camp cook to sweater‑clad psycho killer, taking revenge for the death of her young son Jason at the titular camp. As he prepares to unleash familiar characters, intriguing backstories, and gallons of gore, showrunner Brad Caleb Kane gives Empire an early tour around all thing camp Crystal Lake. Here are 13 things you need to know Ki‑ki‑ki ma‑ma‑ma!
1) Linda Cardellini does her own thing as Pamela Voorhees
Cardellini isn’t typically associated with a horror‑heavy CV beyond, perhaps, her fan‑favourite turn as Velma in the Scooby‑Doo movies. But she was down to go fully unhinged as ‘Pam’ – as she’s known to the townsfolk of Crystal Lake – and was Kane’s first choice for the role. “Linda was very excited about the possibility of taking on such a massive character in the horror pantheon, and she looked at the twists and turns of the story and found her own unique way in,” he teases. “She really did let loose and went full kill-crazy rampage, and the result is pretty glorious.”
Cardellini was careful not to simply mimic Betsy Palmer’s legendary performance from the first film, instead carving out a version of the character that’s entirely her own – also choosing not to lean too hard into recreating the original look: “We did initially play with the iconic Betsy Palmer hair, but in the end it felt like cosplay,” says Kane. “Linda is such a powerful performer that you just want to stand back and let her cook… no pun intended.”
“We do have a stuntman walking around with a bag full of blood on his head”
2) They filmed at the original Crystal Lake
Clued‑up viewers will spot several landmark locations throughout the show, especially in some exterior shots, giving Crystal Lake a real sense of authenticity. “We shot in Blairstown, the original location where [Friday The 13th] was filmed, which hasn’t really changed in 45 years,” he reveals. The intention is to give long-time fans just the right amount of deja-vu. “We tried to totally recreate scenes from the original movie, but in ways that slightly change your understanding of the scene,” Kane teases. “Fans are in for a treat.”
3) Kane is a total Friday The 13th super-fan
The showrunner is a die-hard Friday fan – and like any horror fan obsessed with a particular franchise, he can’t narrow down his favourites. “I love them all, but if I had to choose I’d say Part III because it’s the first one I ever saw,” he says. “I saw it in the original 3D and it was my gateway drug into the franchise, and really the wider world of the horror genre. So I love that one because it was formative.” He considers The Final Chapter the best Friday The 13th movie, “because you get the OG ‘80s kid Corey Feldman versus Jason”, and says the one he finds most purely enjoyable is Part VI: Jason Lives, calling it “the funniest and most balls-out entertaining.”
4) It’s going to get really gory
The Friday The 13th films are famous for delivering some of horror’s most inventive, air‑punch‑worthy deaths, with gore‑hungry fans returning time and again to discover a new favourite kill. Kane wanted the deaths in his show to feel fresh, shocking, and unlike anything audiences have seen before, “And we wanted them to be bloody,” he promises. Pulling out his best Rick Dalton meme impression, he says he asked himself: “How can I get the audience to jump off their couch and point at the TV screen because they can’t believe what they’re seeing?”
5) The show is set eight years before the first movie
If you’re still wondering where Crystal Lake fits into Friday The 13th canon – and what the Voorhees family is up to at this point – the show paints a rich picture of the events leading up to the 1980 original. “Pam is a cook at Camp Crystal Lake, Jason is an eleven-year-old camper participating in all activities despite his physical limitations, and his mom is absolutely intent on making sure he has a normal summer outdoors with other kids… but with ultimately tragic consequences,” says Kane. It’s no secret that things don’t turn out well for little Jason, kicking off a franchise-worth of slasher mayhem. “Things take some twists and turns on the way to Pam’s total psychotic break and subsequent bloody rampage,” Kane says.
6) You’re not ready for the ‘Blood Bag’ scene
Kane and his team were determined to retain the tactile quality of the movies and keep the special effects as practical as possible. Case in point: a sequence in the first episode involving a literal bag of blood. “I don’t want to give away spoilers because it’s a fun surprise, but we do have a stuntman walking around with a bag full of blood on his head,” Kane grins. “We weren’t sure if it was achievable, and it took our brilliant special effects supervisor Johann Kunz to figure out how to do it. It was messy but we got it on the third try and I’m really proud of it. And nauseated by it!” ‘Gag’ is right!
“[The kills are] hopefully even more satisfying in a way than the movies”
7) The credit sequences pay tribute to the original movie titles
Another standout element of any Friday The 13th film is an opening credit sequence that practically punches audience members in the face with 3D-style titles. Crystal Lake is no different – and Kane is drawing from surprising inspiration. “The credit sequence can really help set the right atmosphere and vibe from the start. I remember watching a show that was the precursor to the X-Files, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and it had this really grainy, nerve-jangling vibe to it that’s just steeped in that 1970s time and place,” he says of his influences. “But I also wanted to give a nod to the original Friday The 13th movie; the words ‘Crystal Lake’ pop out of the screen, shatter the glass, and the credits use the same font as the movie.” They also got Harry Manfredini – who scored the original film – to create new original music for the title sequence.
8) You’ll feel the weight of the deaths in Crystal Lake
Each new Friday The 13th movie offers up a gaggle of disposable teens to machete, and the franchise has never been particularly interested in character development. But Kane wanted to delve deeper into the victims before they’re chopped up, adding an extra layer to the shock value. “[The kills are] hopefully even more satisfying in a way than the movies, because of the character work that comes before the carnage,” he notes. “The goal was about getting the audience so invested in the story and the characters that each kill lands emotionally.”
9) J****ason Voorhees is a misunderstood cutie pie
Unlike the other big slasher killers like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Chucky and Ghostface, Jason has always had more of a sympathetic edge. Sure, he’s an unstoppable murder machine, but he’s had a rough time of it, bless him. Kane says it was really important to see the relationship between Jason and his mother, and how the loss of this very sweet little boy would affect her. “The series is the story of Pam in the immediate aftermath of losing the one person she considers her reason for living,” he say, “so we wanted to explore that relationship and all the love so we’d fully understand how she became the woman we know from the first movie.” And it sounds like Voorhees Jr might get his stab at the action too… “All the Jason-as-slasher stuff hits much later in the season. But when it hits, it hits hard.”
10) Callum Vinson was fully ready to play Jason
Kane says that Vinson, who plays young Jason in the show, hardly needed any prep from the creators to take on one of horror’s biggest villains. “I think Callum’s been preparing for this his whole short life. He’s a massive horror fan so he was excited to take on the role, and game for anything we threw at him.” He was fearless, too, getting into the claustrophobic world of the Jason prosthetics. “The head was incredibly heavy, and poor Callum had to wear it in really sweltering conditions,” says Kane. “It took some fancy footwork to figure all of that out. Our special effects makeup guy, the great Dave Presto, had to quickly create a more breathable prosthetic that could also be torn away and reapplied quickly.”
11) You’ll get to know the townsfolk of Crystal Lake
Fans of the wider cast of characters from the original movie – Crazy Ralph, Officer Dorf and Trudy among them – will get to spend far more time getting acquainted with their… eccentricities, let’s say. “We knew we wanted to include all those iconic people from the first movie, because the show is called Crystal Lake, and of course a town is its residents,” says Kane. “In a 90-minute movie, you only have so long with people; sometimes they’re just there to add colour or comic relief or be a prophet of doom, but in longform TV storytelling you have the chance to flesh people out, live with them a little.” And then, most likely, die a lot.
“As a longtimefan, I knew what I would want to see in a show”
12) It’s packed with easter eggs for fans
It isn’t just Pamela’s iconic sweater that gets an outing in the show – Kane has packed it with loving nods for those who know where to look, without alienating the casual viewer. “As a longtime Friday The 13th fan, I knew what I would want to see in a show, and of course I’d want more story and character – but you also want all those familiar goodies from the movies peppered into the context of the story we’re telling,” he says.
13) It should satiate 20 years of Friday The 13th fan hunger
It has been an excruciating wait for fans desperate to revisit Camp Crystal Lake, and Kane was keen to scratch the itch that comes from being away from that world for so long. That meant delivering “new kids at the camp, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and the excitement of wondering how the kills will be different from anything that came before,” he specifies. “I just want fans to have a good time in the same way I had a good time watching the movies in theatres. Just that rollercoaster of emotions and the thrill of the unknown. That’s certainly what I’d be jonesing for after such a long Friday The 13th drought.” Sharpen those machetes, fans.
Crystal Lake launches on Sky and NOW in October
