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Sean Cunningham Keeping Hope Alive for “Friday the 13th” TV Series
Will we soon visit Crystal Lake on the small screen?
Remember when it was announced a few years back that a TV series set within the Friday the 13th universe was being developed? Like the planned reboot of the film franchise, the series never actually ended up getting off the ground (it was axed by The CW last year), but it seems that creator Sean Cunningham isn’t giving up hope just yet.
On the latest episode of the Shock Waves podcast, Cunningham provided an update on a potential “Friday the 13th” TV series, noting that it’s “still percolating.”
“The Friday the 13th series is still percolating and we’ve got a very good handle on how we want to do it,” said Cunningham. “You need really smart showrunners. I think the thing about Friday the 13th as a TV franchise… you have that problem – how the hell are you going to deal with Jason? Is he going to come out of the woods every week and smash another teenager against a tree and nobody is going to notice? Nobody knows who did it?”
He continued, “You have to service the fans. You can’t ignore them. Friday the 13th, at least in part, is going to be about Jason. So, how do you make sense of all of the contradictory stories that are out there, between Jason going to space, or versus Freddy, and all these other things? The assumption is this. Crystal Lake is a town that really exists, and a long time ago they had a series killer named Jason Voorhees, and then some Hollywood creep comes out and makes this exploitation horror movie called Friday the 13th. And then they make another one, and another one, and it just crushes the town. The town becomes the place that Jason built. And the stuff that happened, they know what really happened. The rest is Hollywood lore. There are people there that lived through it, and they’ll tell you what really happened. And so, what you can do is set up Crystal Lake as, more or less, like the town in JAWS – Amity Island. You have the town with all its prime movers in the town, but the town is located in an area that would allow Jason to exist in whatever form. But other things as well.”
“I would describe it as a place where if The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully wandered into this county, they never would have left! There’s so much weird shit going on! And then you have the family at the core of it. You’re not (always) following Jason around. It’s (also) the town and the town politics. It’s just such a rich pallet (of storytelling). And I’m really looking forward to it.”
For now, all things Friday the 13th are sadly lying dormant.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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