The first full trailer for Peacock’s Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake has arrived, and while the story puts Pamela Voorhees front and center, there are a couple of intriguing shots that suggest the series has some big surprises planned for Jason.
The trailer introduces Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, a mother who watches her deformed young son Jason drown at Camp Crystal Lake. From there, grief turns into bloody revenge as Pamela goes after the teenage counselors who were supposed to be watching him.
This version of Pamela has been described as “a mother who had given up a singing career to raise a special needs child and takes a dark turn when she loses her son.”
While Pamela was expected to handle most of the killing herself, the trailer throws an interesting curveball into the mix. A quick shot appears to show someone who looks an awful lot like “Sackhead” Jason running through the woods.
That’s a pretty interesting inclusion. Jason didn’t get his famous hockey mask until Friday the 13th Part 3. Before that, he stalked victims with a burlap sack covering his head in Friday the 13th Part 2.
Of course, this raises the question of exactly what we’re seeing. Is Jason already alive and killing during the events of Crystal Lake? Is the shot from a flash-forward? Or is the series messing with the mythology in an even bigger way?
Another brief image may provide a clue. The trailer features a mysterious yellow door that could point toward Jason being connected to some kind of failed secret government program.
The franchise’s expanded universe has played around with genetic experimentation as an explanation for why Jason is so ridiculously difficult to kill. Crystal Lake could be pulling that idea directly into its story and making it a much larger part of his origin.
Whatever is happening, Jason’s return has been a long time coming. The character spent more than 15 years trapped at the bottom of the proverbial lake thanks to complicated rights issues surrounding the franchise. But, that;s all been worked out.
Callum Vinson, known for Chucky and Long Bright River, plays Jason as a child. The cast also includes Nick Cordileone (Warrior), Joy Suprano (Fleishman Is in Trouble), Danielle Kotch (Director’s Cut), and Phoenix Parnevik (Bel-Air) as Ralph, Rita, Claudette, and Barry, respectively.
Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane has said Crystal Lake isn’t simply trying to recreate the familiar Friday night slasher formula.
“In many ways, it’s a psychological thriller,” Kane said in a recent interview. “It’s a paranoid ’70s thriller. It has all of the DNA of a slasher without quite being a slasher.
“There are rivers of blood in the show. There are very, I think, ingenious kill sequences and deaths and murders, but it’s all done in service of character and theme and place and time.”
Kane is specifically looking back at the cultural climate that helped shape the original Friday the 13th and using that era as part of the foundation for the series.
“[Friday the 13th] out of the paranoid ’70s thriller era. It came out of the mistrust-of-institutions era. It came out of the women’s lib era, the National Organization for Women era, this consciousness-raising awakening era in America. I wanted to go and play with all of those themes,” he added. “[Cardellini is] gonna shock and surprise a lot of people.”
Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees is a great casting choice for the series. Pamela has always been essential to the franchise, but Crystal Lake has the room to turn her from the killer revealed at the end of the original movie into a fully developed tragic character whose descent into violence unfolds over time.
For a franchise that has spent years stuck in legal limbo, that’s one hell of a way to bring Jason back.
