Brad Kane talks Linda Cardellini’s visceral take on Pamela Voorhees, the appeal of slashers and the series’ show-stopping practical effects.
Linda Cardellini as Pam Voorhees. Credits: Peacock
Slasher isn’t dead in Crystal Lake, a prequel series to Friday the 13th centred on Pamela Voorhees before she becomes the killer terrorising the titular quaint New Jersey town.
Created by Brad Kane, the show features Linda Cardellini as Jason’s grieving mother. The star expands on Betsy Palmer’s role penned by Friday the 13th’s late screenwriter Victor Miller, who served as co-executive producer on the series.
Ahead of Crystal Lake‘s UK release on 19 October, showrunner Kane sat down with Soundsphere to share why one of the first female serial killers of the screen deserves her flowers.
“We only see her so briefly in that first movie, and yet somehow her presence looms so large across the franchise. You know, Drew Barrymore would have lived if she had known more about Pam Voorhees in Scream, but it was nice to give her her due,” Kane says, branding Pamela “the mother of all slashers”.
Credits: Matt Infante/Peacock
More than four decades after the first film hit cinemas, it’s hardly a spoiler to say that, although Jason is the (masked) face of the franchise, it’s Pamela who actually starts the carnage.
Fans of the prolific Friday series might be accustomed to the films’ inconsistent lore, and while Crystal Lake captures the tensions and tones of the original movie, it also spins its own story.
Set primarily in the early 1970s, Crystal Lake alters the OG film’s timeline by zeroing in on Pam’s relationship with her only son Jason, played by Callum Vinson.
“I wanted her grief over Jason’s death to be immediate,” Kane said of the tweaked temporal setting.
“It helps make the 1980 movie make sense a little bit better.”
There’s also a bigger framework behind the decision to have the show unfold in a decade of political turmoil.
“America was a very specific place in 1971 and 1972,” Kane said.
Cameron Scoggins as Dorf, William Catlett as Levon. Credits: Matt Infante/Peacock
“And most specifically, it was going through an identity crisis. You know, we were one country in the 1950s and 1960s. We believed in our government. We believed in the institution of marriage. We believed in companies. We believed that people were out for the good and the benefit of Americans.
“Obviously, all those old structures shattered in the mid-60s, the late 60s, and by the early 70s, when we had Nixon lying to us about Watergate, the after-effects of Vietnam, we were in a very different place.”
Both Pam’s arc and the climate of suspicion and distrust plaguing small-town America prompt an inward search for answers, suggests the show.
“I wanted that journey of identity to mirror the journey that Pam takes in the aftermath of Jason’s death,” Kane said. “And this season […] is Pam becoming who she truly is at her core.”
Before being Mrs Voorhees, Pam is a doting mum and a valued member of the community with “a secret behind her eyes”. Cardellini peels layers off this seemingly irredeemable but irresistible character in a tour-de-force performance that keeps you on your toes.
By blending elements of a whodunit and an investigative journalism thriller with a classic slasher skeleton, Crystal Lake offers a horrifying, if a tad familiar and far-fetched, backstory that reveals why Pam is so fiercely protective of Jason.
“You know that there are machinations going on behind her eyes,” Kane said.
“And somehow Linda’s subtleties or nuances, they’re communicated to the audience without being communicated to the people she’s in the scene with on screen. That is a unique talent that I have not seen in a lot of actors.”
Credits: Matt Infante/Peacock
Crystal Lake’s gore, on the other hand, is all but understated. The show is a brutal, obscene affair in the best possible way, proving that a slasher doesn’t have to be sanitised to deliver a poignant message and a powerhouse performance.
The impressive practical effects designed by Dave Presto dial the OG film’s violence up to 11 — think gallons of blood poured onto Pam and a streak of hyper-graphic kills that might trigger a gag reflex in even the most nonchalant horror fan.
“It was amazing. It was a dream come true,” Kane said of having such a toolbox at his disposal for Crystal Lake.
He continued: “It had to feel like the old movies. It had to feel tactile. If a face is cut away with a machete, Dave built the musculature and the tendons and the ligaments and the bone, and then he put a piece of skin over it and pulled it away so that you see the blood and the bone underneath.
“We just wanted the audience to feel like this is actually happening in front of the characters like you feel in the movies.”
Nearly twenty years after Jason’s latest big-screen appearance in the 2009 remake, slashers have been carving new paths through the woods. Crystal Lake comes out in a great year for horror lovers, who were previously treated to a fascinating, radical exploration of slasher in Jane Schoenbrun’s Friday the 13th-inspired movie, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
“A lot of us saw those movies way too young, and that’s why we look back on them with a nostalgic fondness. I think today, we need a little bit more character there,” Kane said, arguing that Schoenbrun’s singular homage works “so well” as a “personal statement” through the lens of slasher.
“That’s what slashers need. I think they need a voice,” Kane said.
“They existed for perverse thrills at that time, and that was great.
“But now it would be fun to have slashers through the voice of the filmmaker, but not skimping on the blood and all of the stuff that we love from those movies.”
Devin Kessler as Brianna. Credits: Matt Infante/Peacock
Kane, for one, has more in store for Pam, Jason and the corollary of Crystal Lake townies, both legacy characters and those fleshed out specifically for the show.
“If we’re lucky enough to get the viewership, I do know exactly where season two goes,” Kane said.
“But I also designed [season one] to feel satisfying at the end in and of itself so that if we don’t get it, at least people can always come back to this and not feel like there’s a cliffhanger into season two and that we’re missing the completion of the story.
“I think you can draw a direct line from season two Pamela at the end of this season to the Pamela in the first movie and that was important to me.
“But if we are lucky enough, there’s more story to tell in Crystal Lake.”
All episodes of Crystal Lake will be available on 19 October on Sky and NOW.