The name "Crystal Lake" might not mean much to you unless you were alive in the 80's when Friday the 13th took theaters by storm and "Jason" became a horror superstar despite being the bad guy. This was a notion that had become sort of popular back in those times where the villain was actually the star of the show even though the entire objective of it all was for him (or her) to get defeated.
Crystal Lake takes place before the events of the Friday the 13th film and explores the life of Jason Vorhees before he became a masked killer and some of it is pretty interesting but like a lot of series it is intentionally drawn out a bit too long so they could make a series of it.
I used this picture only because it would be more recognizable than the real stars of the show. I don't know if the younger folks of today even know what Jason Vorhees is though? It was a household term in the 80's and then kind of went out of fashion when the makers of these films made too many of them and people lost interest. The original film though, was a smash hit and was released for the first time 46 years ago. I was barely alive at that point but I had an interest in it because the notion of Jason was everywhere. I probably snuck a look at a VHS version of the film by the time I was in 4th grade or so.
anyway, let's stay on point and talk about Crystal Lake.
It doesn't really focus on Jason as much as you might think and this becomes evident in the first episode very early on when Jason drowns and disappears just as was told in the films back long ago. So I like that they are sticking with the story. This series focuses more on his mother Pam who is played by a woman who is quickly becoming the female Pedro Pascal by being in almost anything the comes out. Her name is Linda Cardellini and she is a pretty solid actress.
She is distraught by Jason's disappearance but carries on with life and as time (and episodes) go by, we are eventually given some information that was on all of our minds when we were watching the movies such as "why can Jason take so much damage and just get back up and keep going?"
The show attempts to explain that and while it does take a seriously long time for them to get to the damn point they do eventually get there and when they do, the explanation about how it is that Jason is so damn tough to the point of being damn near invincible, actually makes a lot of sense.
The portions of the series where they really try to humanize Jason and make him look like he is just trying to be a normal kid is pretty hard to relate to seeing as how we all know how this ends up, but thankfully they didn't focus on that for very long. A lot of it was pretty cringe but I get it, they needed this for the backstory. He wasn't just born a seasoned killer, he had to be made into that.
I won't spoil how any of this pans out because if you are a fan of the original movies, this IMO, does a good job on expanding on it in a prequel sense and answers a lot of questions for us.
As was the case with all of the films, there is a lot of shocking gore scenes in this series and I like that they stuck with that. This was a big part of the reason why films like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street were so popular. Well, that and boobs. This series doesn't have a lot in the boob department and that may disappoint some of the men of culture out there.
One critic negatively criticized the show saying it had "and excessive amount of subplots that have no bearing on the story" and I totally agree with that.
These two have massive backstories attached to them that takes up sometimes half of entire episodes but neither character is in the original movies and not to take away from the actors, but they are just police officers in a horror film prequel. We don't need several episodes focused on their lives when this whole thing is about Jason and his mom.
I think a bit part of the reason why this series only gets 6/10 on most review sites is specifically because it is TOO LONG. It didn't need to be 8 episodes long and I think everyone, including Peacock, is aware of this.
I know I drifted in and out of paying attention during the middle episodes and by episode 7 I remote scanned my way through most of it, because it was filler. The "bookend" episodes are wonderful though.
Should I watch it?
If you have an appreciation for Friday the 13th or 80's gore horror at all, I would say yes. But even then I think you will need to keep remote in hand because the series does unnecessarily drag on in the middle episodes when neither Jason nor Pam are even focused on very much - which is really strange because they are the entire reason for the series existing.
For the casual viewer though, I think this will get boring pretty fast. You'll see a couple of gore kills and then lose interest. It could go either way. I enjoyed it, but not enough to rave about it and would understand if a lot of people would be rather "meh" about this one.
