Reinventing an established horror franchise for the small screen isn’t exactly new. Over the last few decades, Hannibal, Bates Motel and, most recently, Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, have all gone for a maximalist take on the likes of Hannibal Lector, Norman Bates and Carrie White. But something else links these shows together, other than giving modern updates to established slasher icons: the fact that the makers haven’t been afraid to mix up established lore.
Well, this is the exact position we find Crystal Lake as we approach its fifth episode. When you actually look at the history of Friday The 13th, you’d be surprised at how much wriggle room the films have actually given the show when it comes to how much they actually showed onscreen, compared how much we all actually assumed. But with that being said – is tinkering with the expectations of rabid and loyal fans going to pay off, especially as we’re starting to enter more overtly iconic parts of the legend?
After infiltrating Ralph’s property, Dorf seems to think that he’s caught himself a murderer. In the officer’s defence, the fact that the recently skinned body of a hippy is hanging in the recluse’s shed proves to be pretty compelling evidence. But when confronted with the grisly sight, Ralph seems to be just as horrified as the determined Dorf. However, despite the orgy of evidence, Sheriff Levon isn’t entirely convinced of Ralph’s guilt, which leads to extra tension between him and his fellow, try-hard, lawman. But there’s also a bit of awkwardness going on between Levon and Pamela, as her rather erratic behavior is giving him fairly mixed messages.
Elsewhere, Pamela is still trying to look out for the recently bereaved Grace despite the fact it was Pam herself who murdered her abusive mother. However, much to Pam’s irritation, young Grace has fallen in with the group of spaced-out hippies who are helping the Christys fix up the camp before the next wave of kids imminently arrive. When Levon arrives to break the news that their missing member, Willow, has been butchered, the free-love brigade decide to honor their fallen comrade the best way they know know – by dropping acid. But while Grace opts not to join them while they kiss the sky (mainly because she’s only 13), her dream to join their commune is dashed when Barry reminds them that transporting a minor across state lines is illegal. Meanwhile Claudette, in a fit of religious guilt, confesses to Pamela that she and Barry were making the beast with two backs when they should have been watching poor little drowning Jason; but while you’d think that this news would set Pam off on her latest murder, the fact that a miserable Grace has dropped three tabs of acid out of spite and is raging at the fact that Claudette and Barry has fucked over her existence yet again, means that a classic scene from the 1980 original doesn’t quite go how you’d think.
While all of the current plot threads currently in motion within Crystal Lake are still in effect and upping their stakes, the real headline grabber with “The New Blood” is that that the show has now moved into the territory of screwing around with established continuity to deliver some pretty genuine surprises. Of course, some will recoil in horror at the news that a reboot series that’s been somewhat disguising itself as a prequel would dare try to alter our perceptions of an iconic film that’s 46 years old, but what would be the point of Crystal Lake if it didn’t try to catch you out? To skip to the end of the episode, we find that it replays the opening flashback of the first film with a few extra twists to reveal that the post-makeout murder of Claudette and Barry isn’t as straightforward as we first believed.
You see, as that sequence was told almost entirely in a P.O.V. shot, we’ve naturally assumed that it was an unseen Pamela Voorhees who did the deed, but in “The New Blood’s” retelling of this seminal moment, matters get noticably more complex when the show adds a few extra components in the form of Grace, an existing grudge and a whole shitload of LSD. To set the scene, the fact that Grace’s beef with the couple of Claudette and Barry has been steadily growing thanks to some bullying and the stress caused by all three of them being indirectly responsible for the drowning of Jason. This means that when Barry inadvertently ruins Grace’s chance to leave with the hippies by simply reminding everyone of the law, Grace takes it personally and acts out by gobbling up the remainder of her new friend’s drug supply. In a psychedelic drug haze, Grace finds herself at camp where the offending couple sneak off for some love making, and it actually turns out it’s the young girl who stabs them thanks to the chemically-altered belief that she could save Jason from drowning in the past if she killed Claudette and Barry in the present.
While purists will no doubt be pissed, it’s worth mentioning that the show technically doesn’t contradict anything from the movies (aside from the date), but it uses this deviation from assumed lore to pull some genuinely intriguing character beats from the moment. You see, while it isn’t Pamela who does the initial stabbing, she does turn up and catch Grace in the act only to finish off Claudette in an act of belated vengence. It’s actually a nice pivot, as it merges her mothering instinct and her thirst for murder in one fell swoop – plus, it allows her to express her rage at Claudette’s earlier confession that she’s was boinking when poor Jason drowned. We get some classic Pamela Voorhees dialogue (“Jason should have been watched… Every minute….”), her connection to Grace as a surrogate child is cemented, and the twist keeps us on our toes without removing Pamela from the equation entirely. Pretty neat going if you ask me.
As for the rest of the episode, all the other plot threads shuffle along nicely. Levon and Dorf clash when it comes to their opinions on an arrested Ralph; Briana’s investigation into Bellflower continues and those hippies continue to be appropriately irritating to the point where they’re positively screaming to be killed in classic F13 fashion. However, it’s that change that proves to be what catches your attention the most, as it kinda follows the assumed lore while altering it to serve the story – and as that story is about a deranged mother who is trying to plug her loss by protecting another vulnerable child, it scans pretty well. Of course, there will be those will scream blasphemy and in some regards, I completely understand – after all, it can be jarring when your entire knowledge of a particular lore is suddenly challenged. But on the other hand, isn’t that what we want from new takes on old material? I didn’t agree with everything Flanagan changed in Carrie either, but I understood that the changes he made were in service to the story he wanted to tell. Crystal Lake is only doing the same, and so far it’s working for me.
As Crystal Lake gets further and further into injecting it’s own voice into 46 years of assumed lore, there’s going to be some expected push back when accepting new revelations. But so far, the makers have ensured that any alterations at least serves what we’ve come to see… Pamela Voorhees being a real mean mother.
Where to watch Crystal Lake – Season 1, Episode 5: The New Blood: