A blood-soaked Pamela Voorhees pulls a tooth out of her fist. Her gaze meets her reflection in the mirror. 

“What did you do?” she asks herself.

Just nine months before the aforementioned scene of A24’s first television adaptation of a beloved horror franchise, Pamela finds herself almost in a horror movie. She sits on the couch, content with domestic modernity, watching The Don Knotts Show. As she turns the television screen off, she catches her son Jason’s silhouette through the screen. 

When Pamela takes Jason to bed, a tender moment between mother and son: a vulnerable Jason questions why he must return to the camp the next day despite the jeers and incessant bullying to which his peers subjugate him due to his unsightly appearance. Because Pamela works in the camp kitchen, Jason’s presence at the camp ensures she keeps a watchful eye over him “in case you have an episode.”

Claudette, a female camp counselor portrayed by Danielle Kotch (who first demonstrated her horror acting chops in Sinister with Ethan Hawke) steps away to get something from her cabin, but not before prohibiting the kids from moving past the dock. She walks into a cabin to grab some equipment when her boyfriend, Barry, a fellow counselor, sneaks up behind her, tempting her into intercourse.

Grace, a female camper around Jason’s age, defends Jason when a kid who calls Jason “basketball head” throws a ball directly at Jason’s head. She throws the ball back, far over the dock, and the two quarrel, drawing the attention of an older camp counselor, who disperses the young campers when she catches wind of them swimming unsupervised. The counselor requests Grace go get Claudette and the kids make it back on land. 

Jason looks at the ball yonder, determined to retrieve it. Grace walks to a cabin, where she hears moans. She peers through the window to see Claudette and Barry in the throws of lovemaking.

Pam stumbles upon Ralph, the kooky recluse that warns camp counselors in the original Friday the 13th. She makes it clear that he should not stand within a certain radius of the camp when she hears screams. Mother’s intuition implicitly identifies her son’s urgent pleas for help. 

True to the original, one can recall the sound of Pamela Voorhees predecessor, Betsy Palmer, uttering, “The counselors weren’t paying any attention… They were making love while that young boy drowned. His name was Jason. I was working the day that it happened. Preparing meals… here. I was the cook. Jason should’ve been watched. Every minute. He was… he wasn’t a very good swimmer.”

Frantically, she makes it to the dock, spots her son far astray, and jumps in the water. She swims far yet loses sight of her son. 

Her screams cut to an extreme close-up reminiscent of the original score and the show’s title card. 

Nine months later, Sheriff Levon Brooks finds Pam at the dock, overseeing the lake from which her son drowned. She flashes black to a dear memory where Jason expresses wonder over new toys of his. Soon thereafter, he breaks out into a seizure to which she rushes to his care. It flashes back forward to Pamela cuddling her pillow, assuaging her dreams of holding him again.

Sheriff Brooks somehow convinces Pam to attend the Crystal Lake Founders Celebration, where camp counselors Claudette and Barry soon thereafter reveal that the camp will reopen during the summer. The fireworks added by her spotting kids disturbing the lake with their joy, and the frenzy of the festivities overwhelms her.

The owner of the camp admits they reopened the lake because they need the income they lost the previous year from the mass hysteria upon Jason’s post-mortem.

“Crystal Lake don’t give up the dead…Once you’re down there, you stay down there…You don’t rot, so you don’t rise,” Ralph says eerily.

When she returns him, she is met by two agents who share that they have discovered Jason’s remains and would like for her to identify the body. She finds their behavior familiarly suspicious. She attempts to escape and in doing so is caught by the agents whose motives are to subdue her.

Her quick thinking and dexterity work in her favor as she impales an agent in the thigh with golden scissors, removes them, then swipes his hand and jugular at him when the next agent withholds her from his grasp.

The surviving agent confirms that they found her location from the newspaper upon the sensational news of her son’s untimely demise. He corners her and just as he is about to sedate her, she grabs a saw to swipe his face, removing skin from the lower half of his face. She doubles down by axing his head. 

She calls an estranged friend to mention what one would find unmentionable. Sheriff Brooks startles her by knocking on her door, surprising her as she sits with her own actions. As she talks to him through the door, we see the misshaped-faced agent, sit up and approach her for a cheap jump scare. She stabs him ruthlessly, covering her in the blood she washes off in the opening scene. 

She gathers their bodies and feeds them to a black bear by Camp Crystal Lake. Fireworks and the bear’s gruesome gnawing in the background kick off the momentous celebration, almost redemption for her son’s troubles. She visualizes a young Jason looking up at her proudly.

An almost perfect setup of the story many know–or rather think–they know very well. The episode deliciously provides fodder for how Jason could survive a drowning. Such a strong opening and even more viscerally satisfying kills that pull unsettling reactions even from Linda Cardellini make for an effective first episode closing that not only captures audience attention but sustains audience curiosity on how the beloved live-action Scooby-Doo alumna can achieve deranged motives. 

Rating: 8/10