Crystal Lake

The legend begins with her.

Brad Kane, Logan George, Celine Held, Michael Lennox, Quyen Tran

MysteryDrama

★ Shortlisted by Jdubs, MarcLevyTO

Programme: Primetime
Year: 2026
Runtime: 108 min
Country: United States of America
Language: English
Premiere: World Premiere

Single mother Pam Voorhees has been unable to shake her grief after her young, sickly son Jason tragically drowned in the town lake almost a year before. When two strangers arrive at Pam’s door digging into her past, a disturbing chain of events are set into motion, leaving the townspeople of Crystal Lake wondering: just who is Pam Voorhees?

From the TIFF programme

Set long before the events of Friday the 13th, Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees in this captivating, A24-produced origin series.

Camp Crystal Lake: to the uninitiated, the name sounds pastoral, serene, perhaps even a little nostalgic. To those who know the name Jason Voorhees, it’s ground zero for what will become the many horrors of Friday the 13th. The tragic drowning of young Jason (Callum Vinson), and its impact on his loving mother Pamela (Linda Cardellini, Green Book, TIFF ’18; DTF St. Louis), spark a spiral of violence that will come to have a very high body count.

Pam is a devoted single mom: she works hard at her job in the camp’s kitchen, glad to be able to stay close to Jason but wary of the other kids’ cruelties. When negligent counsellors leave the kids unsupervised in the lake, tragedy strikes: Jason disappears in the water, surely having drowned. As time goes by and the town moves on, Pam struggles to cope; she’s encouraged to rejoin the community by one of her few friends, local chief of police Levon Brooks (William Catlett, A Thousand and One). But when shadowy figures from Pam’s past come knocking at her door, her paranoia doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Pushed to the brink of grief, how far will Pam go to protect herself and avenge her son?

Created by Brad Caleb Kane (It: Welcome to Derry) and produced by A24, Crystal Lake takes us back to the beginning. Featuring an electrifying lead performance by Cardellini, the series delivers a moving portrait of a mother consumed with grief, intriguing new details from the Voorhees family’s past, and a bloody good time.

GEOFF MACNAUGHTON

Content advisory: extreme violence, sexual content, nudity