Crystal Lake review: Linda Cardellini makes Mrs Voorhees matter

Grief, a lake and a mother on the edge

Single mother Pam Voorhees can’t get past the death of her young, sickly son Jason, who drowned in the town lake almost a year earlier. Then two strangers turn up on her doorstep asking questions about her past, and the people of Crystal Lake start to wonder who this quiet woman really is. The series moves the story to the 1970s and makes Pam the cook at the camp, while the counsellors who should have been watching Jason were, as Empire delicately puts it, busy getting busy.

That’s as far as I’ll go. Anyone who has seen the 1980 film knows roughly where this is heading. The show is about how she gets there, and how many people she gets through on the way.

Why Pam is the real monster

Jason gets the hockey mask, the sequels and the lunchboxes, but the franchise starts with Pam. In Sean S. Cunningham’s original she’s the twist: a grieving mother whose love curdles into a killing spree. Betsy Palmer played her with a sort of chirpy menace and had very little screen time to work with. Everything Jason later became, he got from her. That gap is what makes this prequel tempting, and also what makes it risky. Explaining a monster is the quickest way to make it less frightening.

Jason got the mask and the merchandise, but the most frightening thing at Crystal Lake was always a mother who loved her son too much.

Cardellini carries the whole camp on her back

The series was created by Brad Caleb Kane, whose recent credits include IT: Welcome to Derry. Cardellini plays Pam, with William Catlett as an old-school local copper who suddenly has bodies piling up on his patch, Gwendolyn Sundstrom as Grace, Jason’s friend who bonds with Pam, and Callum Vinson as the young Jason. Cameron Scoggins and Devin Kessler round out the main cast.

You’ll remember Cardellini from Freaks and Geeks, ER and Netflix’s Dead to Me, and she’s always been good at playing someone who seems sweet with something nastier underneath. Here she plays a woman somewhere between grief and madness, and it’s very effective. She’s tender one moment and terrifying the next, and both feel like the same person, which is the trick Pam’s whole story depends on.

The trouble is everything around her. There are too many subplots, including a conspiracy strand that keeps getting in the way. The supporting characters are mostly there to be killed, and the show often seems more interested in its next bit of carefully staged gore than in why any of it is happening. The kills are imaginative and very wet, as the 18 certificate suggests. But the bond between Pam and Jason, which ought to be the emotional heart of the show, is barely built before it’s broken.

What the critics say

Critics agree on Cardellini and on very little else. Empire calls the series a ludicrous backstory but says Cardellini is excellent as Pam. TVLine sums it up as fun but flawed and singles out her knockout performance. NME is cooler: it thinks gore fans will love it, but that in an age of elevated horror the show feels a little empty. The Playlist is harshest of all, saying nothing works except Cardellini and calling the whole thing thunderously dopey. The overall message: the lead is great, the show is a mess.

Where to watch Crystal Lake in the UK

Crystal Lake is a Peacock original. It premiered in the US on 15 October 2026, and in the UK it’s available on Sky and on the NOW streaming service, rated 18. If you want to do your homework first, the 1980 original is short, cheap and still effective, and it shows exactly how little Pam we got the first time round. Just don’t expect the later sequels to help you make sense of this show’s version of events.

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Verdict

Crystal Lake is a messy, overstuffed and occasionally silly prequel, saved by one of the best lead performances in horror television this year. Cardellini makes Pam Voorhees someone you can feel for, and then makes you regret it. I’d recommend it to anyone who grew up sneaking rented slashers past their parents and wants to know what Mrs Voorhees was up to before the machete came out, or to anyone who liked Bates Motel’s slow slide into madness. If you prefer horror that’s psychological rather than splattery, or you just don’t fancy watching someone tape a split head shut on a Tuesday night, I’d give it a miss and rewatch Dead to Me instead.

Sources

• IMDb – Crystal Lake (2026) title page
• Peacock – Official Crystal Lake series page
• Empire – Crystal Lake review
• NME – Crystal Lake review
• TVLine – Crystal Lake review
• The Playlist – Crystal Lake review

Crystal Lake – 2026 – Sky, NOW – Cast includes:
Linda Cardellini, William Catlett, Gwendolyn Sundstrom, Cameron Scoggins
Images from TMDB. Streaming data from JustWatch.