The unending exhaustion of IP has forced us to ask questions we never really wanted or needed to ask. How did the Pink Ladies in Grease come to be the Pink Ladies? What would happen if one of The Craft witches had a kid who was also a witch?
Why is the yellow brick road the colour of yellow? What is Linda Blair up to these days? No one or no thing ever really dies any more, something that has long been true in the world of slashers, where no amount of stabbing, shooting and exploding has stopped masked killers from killing again and again and again.
Recent years have seen the timeline of the Halloween franchise retooled so that Michael Myers could regain his head and restart his reign of terror, while Ghostface has resurfaced to stalk the younger relatives of his old frenemies. As Leatherface prepares an A24 comeback courtesy of Obsession’s Curry Barker and dual Nightmare on Elm Street reboots square off, it’s time to return to Camp Crystal Lake to see what desperate rights-holders can do with Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-wearing giant who enjoys slicing and dicing horny youngsters. Given the success of the low-budget franchise (12 films since 1980 grossing almost $500m worldwide) and the killer’s still strong brand recognition, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen him since the middling 2009 remake (especially as quality has never been a preventive issue in the franchise).
It’s partly down to a headache-inducing scramble over rights but also the difficulty of placing a killer as mechanically one-note as Jason in a horror genre that now places more importance on trauma over terror. Friday the 13th films were tiny-brained and thinly plotted excuses to make couples squeeze each other tighter in the dark, light on thought and heavy on blood. Some were better than others (1984’s The Final Chapter, which of course wasn’t the final chapter, being a notable high point), but the bar was low and the more a film-maker might add to the plate, the less it might feel like a Friday the 13th movie.
Which brings us to Crystal Lake, an almost comically of-the-moment pitch for a 2026 return to the franchise. A schlocky sleepover slasher has now become an overstuffed eight-part streaming series exploring the backstory of Jason but mainly focused on the psychology of his murderous mother, Pamela, who was revealed to be the killer in the first film. What turned Pamela into a psychopath?
Why was Jason able to survive his drowning? What exactly are we doing here? Pamela is a character who was in less than 15 minutes of a 46-year-old movie, best known since as a Halloween costume or a Scream gotcha question, more plot twist than person.
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