Editorials
Hell Is a Teenage Cannibal: “Yellowjackets” Is Event Television You Should Be Watching
Yellowjacket wasps are carnivorous social wasps that can sting more than once, are aggressively protective of their colony, and turn to cannibalism when food becomes far too scarce. All of which applies to Showtime‘s binge-worthy new show “Yellowjackets.” In this case, the title refers to the ill-fated high school girl soccer team that crash lands in the wilderness on the way to nationals. Twenty-five years later, the survivors of that crash realize the savagery they turned to is far from over.
And if you’re not currently watching it, you should be.
The pilot episode, directed by Karyn Kusama (The Invitation, Jennifer’s Body), sets the grim horror tone. A terrified young girl runs barefoot through snowy woods. She stops to hear strange calls as the camera pans across bizarre totems dangling in the trees. Then she begins to run again, straight into a spiked pit. Her bloody footprints lead the camera to her impaled body, twitching as life bleeds out of it. It cuts to the present to introduce central players and lay the groundwork for the overarching mysteries. The episode’s end offers a bookend to the opening in the form of eerie, ritualistic cannibalism complete with wet, squelching sounds as flesh gets devoured.
Series creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson (“Narcos,” “The Originals) know how to reel you in and keep you firmly on their hook as they dole out the enigmatic story piecemeal. “Yellowjackets” toggles back and forth between 1996 and the present to slowly reveal the fight for survival post plane crash and the present-day ramifications of what transpired out in the wild. Each new piece of the story adds to the growing pile of unanswered questions. It’s a mesmerizing blend of psychological survival thriller, drama, mystery, and horror. And it’s never afraid to show the grisly cost of survival, either.
The present-day cast is led by Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci as the adult versions of the crash’s teen survivors. Knowing they came out of the wild and the horrors endured is only a tiny sliver of their narrative. What transpired there took a psychological toll that lingers, and they’re not the only ones out there seeking the truth. What’s evident almost immediately, however, is that Christina Ricci’s Misty was unhinged long before boarding that plane in high school.
Melanie Lynskey as Shauna in YELLOWJACKETS, “Heart-Shaped Black Box”. Photo credit: Kailey Schwerman/SHOWTIME.
The past works to fill in the blanks, from pre-crash interpersonal relationships to the slow descent into savagery after the crash. Limbs get hacked off, impalements become frequent, and bloodletting paints a visceral picture of terror. It makes Lord of the Flies look tame.
Many mysteries remain at the halfway point of the ten-episode season, and the horror is building at a steady clip. As each episode edges closer to the winter months, therefore closer to the cannibalistic clan we glimpse at the outset, tensions and animosity mount. That extends to the present, with the messiness of the survivors’ adulthood becoming chaotic and forcing them to reveal their ruthlessness in various ways. It’s more about the gruesome journey and its ripple effects; we already have a firm idea of the destination in the past. And that journey never ceases to leave your jaw on the floor or throw new twists into the mix.
Harsh winters in horror often lead to cannibalism. Food is scarce, and the elements are lethal. That usually results in tales centered around the Wendigo, i.e., Ravenous, “Fear Itself” episode “Skin and Bones,” or even the Until Dawn video game, to name a few. “Yellowjackets” doesn’t bother with a supernatural entity. Sometimes nothing else is as volatile, merciless, cruel, and bloodthirsty as a teenage girl.
The cast, the addictive ’90s soundtrack, the mystery, the layered horror, and the bursts of gore all combine to make this event television you should be watching if you’re not already.
“Yellowjackets” airs Sundays on Showtime.
Genre fans rejoiced this week as Peacock finally released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Crystal Lake TV series starring Linda Cardellini as horror’s favorite killer mommy. This sneak peek is actually the first footage of an official Friday the 13th project since the Platinum Dunes remake came out over 17 years ago, so it makes sense that we’re all incredibly hyped for this long-awaited prequel.
While we’ve since received more information about the show -including how all eight episodes will be released at the same time on October 15– fans wasted no time in speculating about the direction they think showrunner Brad Caleb Kane intends to take the franchise next. After all, Kane’s team is free to adapt elements from the entire Friday the 13th franchise, so it seems that anything goes at this point. That being said, I doubt we’ll be seeing young Jason depicted as a fun-sized killer with an affinity for hockey masks, as I’m of the opinion that the show is likely reaching back to the original actress behind Pamela Voorhees herself in order to fill out the prequel’s story.
You see, after sifting through behind-the-scenes interviews and plenty of special features from my own Friday the 13th collection on physical media, I learned that the late, great Betsy Palmer had come up with an elaborate backstory for Ms. Voorhees that was never properly explored in the films. She may have only accepted the iconic role because she needed money for a new car, with Palmer notoriously referring to Victor Miller’s original script as a “piece of shit”, but that didn’t stop her from taking her work seriously – and eventually even warming up to the now-iconic film.
Trained in the Stanislavski Method, an infamous system where actors use the “art of experiencing” to more realistically portray their characters, Palmer decided to build off of Miller’s script and make her own notes in order to characterize Pamela as a more complex and arguably sympathetic figure, even if only a fraction of her contributions would actually make it onscreen.
The only real information she found in the script concerned her character’s prominent class ring, and from there Palmer extrapolated an entire backstory where Pamela had a high school boyfriend during the 1940s that got her pregnant and then skipped town. This led to Pamela being forced to raise her child all on her own during a deeply conservative period in American history – another reason why the character is so bothered by the camp counselors’ promiscuity.
It was Tom Savini who first revealed to Palmer that Jason was going to be depicted as being disabled (an idea that wasn’t in the original screenplay), with this crucial addition making the actress realize that Ms. Voorhees was already overburdened even before the death of her son. The tragedy only pushed her over the edge as she became a puritanical vigilante attempting to shut down Camp Crystal Lake at any cost.
For Palmer, this means that “Camp Blood” never had any curse, as the multiple fires and poisoned water incidents that kept the camp from reopening before the summer of 1979 were merely part of Ms. Voorhees’ years-long vendetta against the property’s owners. Palmer also insisted that the killer in the sequels isn’t the original Jason, as he definitively drowned at the bottom of Crystal Lake. According to her, having Pamela’s child return even as a killer revenant would undo her entire character arc, meaning that the masked murderer who takes over her legacy must be someone or something else entirely!
CRYSTAL LAKE — (Photo by: Matt Infante/PEACOCK)
These ideas match up with most of what we’ve heard about Peacock and A24’s plans for the upcoming series, which is set to follow Linda Cardellini as Pamela after she gives up a career as a singer in order to take care of her disabled son, played by Callum Vinson. That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if the writing team decided to borrow from the woman behind the machete in order to make the series more authentic to the source material.
Of course, there are rumors floating around that the show could also feature a teenage Jason in some capacity, so we’re still not sure about how exactly Kane and company plan to adapt their project to the franchise’s ever-changing mythology. That’s why I’d like to invite fellow readers to comment below with your own theories about where you think the prequel show is headed!
For now, I think it’s safe to say that Friday the 13th fans are more than ready to binge-watch Pamela’s bloody origin story when it finally drops this October. And who knows? Maybe the show’s success could finally lead to a new mainline film…
CRYSTAL LAKE — Pictured: Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees — (Photo by: Peacock)
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