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Peacock series Crystal Lake doesn’t feel like a Friday the 13th movie when you first press play, even though it’s set up to be a prequel to the original film. (This review includes spoilers of the original Friday the 13th movie but avoids major Crystal Lake spoilers.) Instead, Crystal Lake strives to build a drama that’s half homage, half uncharted territory, while giving a long-awaited backstory to Pamela Voorhees. The original villain in the first film, Pam Voorhees, shocked audiences in 1980 by popping up out of nowhere in the midst of a brutal camp counselor killing spree, then confronting the final girl with a Norman Bates-like delivery of the movie’s chilling tagline, “Kill her, mommy,” using the voice of her drowned son, Jason. Although the hockey-masked killer, Jason Voorhees, became the horror icon at the center of the franchise, his mom, Pam, continued to fascinate fans, who knew very little about her. Beheaded in the first film after just 13 minutes onscreen, her spirit would occasionally appear in later films, but the original actor, Betsy Palmer, who portrayed Pam refused to return, largely because the character has no depth. Ars dug into news archives and found interviews where Palmer explained that the later films did nothing to expand the character, offering only “stupid” lines. There was no reason for the actor—who at the height of her fame dated James Dean and was often typecast as the sweet-faced girl-next-door—to stoop to stepping back into Pam’s shoes. She famously only agreed to do the first movie because her Mercedes broke down on the Connecticut Turnpike and she needed a new car. She worked 10 days to capture her scenes, got paid $10,000, bought a new car, and expected nobody to remember her performance. “I read that script and thought ‘What a piece of junk,’” Palmer said in 2005. Palmer often criticized the later movies for bringing back Jason’s mom but giving her nothing to do. So, while some die-hard Friday the 13th fans may find Crystal Lake slow and foreign in the first few episodes, it’s worth sticking around for the first stab at fulfilling Palmer’s dream of Pam being more than just a helicopter mom of a vengeful boy living at the bottom of a cursed lake.
document fetched 2026-10-24 11:22 · canonical https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/10/review-crystal-lake-suffers-a-bit-from-its-obsession-with-pam-voorhees