I can’t remember the last time during a catch-up phone call with a confidant, one of us didn’t marvel that we hadn’t been accused of assault. If any law enforcement officers are reading this, I want to make it clear that this will never happen.
Well, let’s call it non-zero chance. Ultimately, I’m realistic; anything can flip a person’s switch from off to blackout rage. However, I have decades of practice holding back my inner She-Hulk. This is also the case for most women.
Every day we wake up to a nation controlled by a convicted felon of multiple sexual assaults, while a college student seeking justice after alleging she was gang raped at a fraternity party is doxxed and crushed. We are not taken seriously in politics or at work. The manosphere has poisoned our water coolers and social media feeds.
Women have had enough, including each other. Aspiring professionals and “Live, Laugh, Love” Karens who sell everyone on maintaining their manicures are legion. They threaten to knock you over in pedestrian crossings and refuse to bow out gracefully when told, for example, that a pretty mechanical bird hanging on the wall of a shop is not for sale.
Ladies, look to your left. Now look to your right. One of you is dying to stab someone. Only Pamela Voorhees, played by Linda Cardellini in “Crystal Lake,” has the courage to act on this impulse. Her bloodlust covers her skin in the shitty opening scene of this “Friday the 13th” prequel, after she disposes of two goons who make the fatal mistake of invading her house and taunting her. We go down with a quick shot to the jugular. The other loses half his face to the Voorhees family’s machete.
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The point is that as we are assaulted by all of this, we understand that Pamela has it too. She lost her sweet son, a boy born with hydrocephalus, a congenital brain defect, who was constantly bullied until he drowned at camp. The town goes from pitying her to whispering that she’s crazy, leaving her in a rut in the anger phase of the grieving process. As she tackles the men attacking her, I find myself muttering, “Yes. Get him. Again. Again!”
Don’t mistake this for an endorsement. Please don’t do it. “Crystal Lake” is a barely watchable gorefest, with a plot riddled with more infiltrating holes than Pamela’s victims. (Of course, if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t, I suppose that counts as a recommendation.) What passes for a story amounts to little more than a two-dimensional cartoon rendered with human flesh puppets, courtesy of actors capable of much better, including Cardellini.
Still, it’s pretty awesome to see one of television’s most enjoyable performers slaughter a group of sex-crazed hippies, or throw an abusive parent in a deep fryer to relieve his stress. Few of us can claim to have never dreamed, for example, of an anvil falling from the clouds to erase a threat from our lives, whether it be a legitimate relative or an idiot comedian. Jason Voorhees’ mother simply prefers a hands-on approach.
I understand why the many leads who screwed up the “Crystal Lake” cauldron, starting with Bryan Fuller, were forced to fill in the gaps in Pamela’s origin story. The beauty of the character, once its truth is revealed in the original 1980 film, is its relative mystery. Who would suspect that a disreputable matron dressed in a humble sweater could wreak such disorderly havoc? The other women, that’s who. We have always suppressed murderous desires. (See: “Dateline,” “Snapped” and the rest of the Oxygen channel’s true crime programming.) Only recently have we started saying it out loud.
Long before the medical and pharmaceutical industries made perimenopause fashionable, Pamela Voorhees was a gender outlier, particularly in a cultural climate that had already begun to backslide after a decade of legislative progress for women’s rights.
Today, in our post-Roe v. Wade, female anger needs to be explained to be taken seriously. While women have produced excellent recent reviews, including “Furious” and “East of Eden,” the brutal truth is that the “Friday the 13th” films are recognizable by hockey-masked PIs too young to watch them.
So it falls to “Crystal Lake” to tell most of us why the mother of the patron saint of slasher cinema was driven to kill, kill and kill some more in the first place. But it also helps us understand why a wrinkled sock in the middle of the living room or dirty dishes on the kitchen counter makes the exhausted woman in your life collapse.
Let’s assume that if you’ve read this far, you already know the big twist from the first movie: the real killer wasn’t Jason Voorhees, but his crazy mom. Otherwise, I mean, what gives? Have you seen this photo of Cardellini and wondered what Lindsay Weir from “Freaks and Geeks” did? With regret, I present this as your answer.
But as any old-fashioned porn fan adept at fast-forwarding through the “plot” will tell you, there’s merit in jumping straight to the action – which means Pamela destroys fools with something more cutting than wit.
Maybe Fuller, the guy who graded “Hannibal,” could have done something brilliant with Pamela. But he left the project early due to creative differences, leaving “It: Welcome to Derry” showrunner Brad Caleb Kane to expand the legend of a woman whose motivations were pretty basic. I mean, if your kid died because two horny teenage counselors eschewed their lifeguard duties to boner in a shed, you might have some homicidal compulsions too.
Unfortunately, at a time when dormant franchises are being treated for every drop of ichor, a simple explanation is not enough. So – and this will save you having to endure or waste all eight episodes – Pamela Voorhees turns out to be the victim of a patriarchal industrial conspiracy.
(©2025 Peacock TV LLC. All rights reserved.)
The former professional singer is made pregnant by her lover, Elias (Hamish Linklater), who works for a company called Bellflower. When she nearly miscarries, he convinces her to marry him and move to the enclave sponsored by his company that is full of pregnant women like her. Once she’s settled in, her husband treats her to Bellflower-made TV dinners and happy pills, occasionally taking her to the doctor to get filled with mystery slime. Truly a MAHA conspirator’s nightmare.
Some time later, Jason arrives and demonstrates a talent for waking up from naps that an average human would not wake up from. So the father secretly subjects his son to all kinds of crazy science, including massive exposure to radiation. Once Pamela discovers this, she saves Jason, turning the skull of the man who gets in her way into soup, and they escape to Crystal Lake.
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Cardellini’s Pamela Voorhees represents what happens when women drinking from a bottomless well of human contempt and carelessness reach their limits. The writers, in their clumsy way, respond to this idea by having him dispose of his first massacre by slathering the bodies with a deconstructed tonnato sauce made from canned fish and honey, and standing around while a massive bear prepares to feast.
Before the animal bites, it assesses Pamela, sniffs her tears and leaves her alone. You might see this as one predator recognizing another. For women of a certain mood, however, it confirms what we already know: that a bear is preferable company to thoughtless and dangerous people. Plus, it will help you get rid of pesky evidence without question, which only a true and understanding friend would do.
All episodes of “Crystal Lake” air on Peacock.
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