Danielle Kotch and Phoenix Parnevik in Crystal Lake Image via Peacock By Shawn Van Horn Published Oct 16, 2026, 11:48 PM EDT Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th . Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld , Everybody Loves Raymond , and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google Discover Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Listen Thread 1 Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Crystal Lake.
Every iconic horror movie franchise seems to be taking a stab at television these days. Child's Play did it with Chucky ; Alien: Earth had a fun first season; and Mike Flanagan 's reinterpretation of Carrie was recently released on Prime Video. With a years-long lawsuit resolved , the Friday the 13th 's franchise, dormant since the 2009 film reboot, can rise from the depths. A24 and Peacock 's prequel series Crystal Lake , starring Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, mostly takes place before the events of 1980's Friday the 13th . After delivering its own reimagining of that movie's opening kill scene, Brad Caleb Kane 's series incorporates a shocking twist that changes the iconic moment for the worse .
Friday the 13th , written by Victor Miller and directed by Sean S. Cunningham , started as an admitted rip-off of Halloween . It's no surprise that, just as John Carpente r and Debra Hill 's horror flick had an opening kill set years before the events of the main plot, so too does Friday the 13th . The film opens in 1958, 21 years in the past, one night at Camp Crystal Lake . A group of counselors is singing in one cabin as an unseen person moves through another cabin of sleeping campers, revealed only through the camera's first-person perspective.
Crystal Lake camp counselors Barry ( Willie Adams ) and Claudette ( Debra S. Hayes ) make googly eyes at each other before they leave the group and sneak into the camp's empty barn. They go upstairs to the loft to lie down and do things you should never, ever do in a slasher movie when they're interrupted by that unknown character. The audience doesn't see what they see, but Barry and Claudette first think they've been caught and then become terrified . Barry is stabbed in the gut, and as Claudette tries to run away, the killer approaches until Claudette's screams abruptly stop.
Spoiler alert: 'Jason Goes to Hell' is not number one.
It's quite an effective opening scene. Unlike Halloween , which begins with the origin story of six-year-old Michael Myers, viewers of Friday the 13th have no idea who the assailant is. The film then becomes a mystery where the killer's identity is never revealed until the third act, when Pamela Voorhees ( Betsy Palmer ) steps out of the shadow…