That's a good thing, because his new show, Crystal Lake, is almost guaranteed to be met with criticism from riled-up Friday the 13th fans angry over the changes Kane is making to Jason Voorhees canon in his attempt to give slasher icon Jason and his murderous mother Pamela (Linda Cardellini) a fleshed-out backstory. For one thing, Crystal Lake reshuffles the original timeline, moving Jason's death up from 1957 to 1971, and then compresses the amount of time between that event and the summer camp slaughter that follows. "I think the mythology is a little wonky as it is in terms of the timeline," Kane says, somewhat defensively, when I bring up these timeline shifts.
In general, Kane isn't too worried about how Crystal Lake tweaks or outright changes the existing Friday the 13th canon. He calls out our modern obsession with lore as completely missing the point of these movies, which conveniently gives him a lot more freedom to tell whatever story he wants. Still, maybe Kane has a point.
"I bemoan a little bit like this thing that we've gotten into," he says. "I grew up watching these movies in theaters and what they were about was sensation. They're about a collective experience, a cathartic experience, with an audience full of people.
It's about taking a ride. "But somewhere over the last 20 years, watching these slasher movies that had multiple sequels became about collecting and hoarding information. I come to these movies for character, for sensation, for the kills." Kane isn't wrong.
The Friday the 13th continuity has always been murky, at best, and the less time spent trying to apply logic to its timeline the better. That said, there are some very specific reveals in Crystal Lake's seventh episode, in particular, that I want to get into with the showrunner, and that means unpacking both how they interact with the broader Jason Voorhees lore and what they represent on this particular show. Thankfully, Kane was happy to get into those details with me, but not before delivering one more disclaimer.
"I am the original fan of these movies," he says. "I didn't make these changes out of whole cloth or because I don't have a respect for the franchise. They came from a very specific place." There are major spoilers for all of Crystal Lake in this article.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
