It’s a tale as old as the horror genre itself: When a franchise is officially out of steam (or you need to make something quick just to keep the rights), it’s time to set one installment in space. Jason X knows this is where an intellectual property goes to die, and has a blast with it. Writer Todd Farmer and director Jim Isaac milk every trope, both Jason and science fiction, for all they are worth. The result is an ironically enjoyable and deliberately comedic mess that also happens to have some of the highest quality kills in the entire series. There isn’t an original bone in this movie’s body, but that’s part of the charm. How could anyone watch Kane Hodder slice his way through a starship full of inept “scientists” who all dress like Hot Topic models and not crack a smile?
So what is life like with Jason in space? In this future, hockey was outlawed in 2024, David Cronenberg is a sleazy researcher hoping to dissect Jason’s ability to regenerate lost and damaged tissue, Lexa Doig from Farscape is the smartest character in the movie, and android women have magnetic nipples that fall off. In other words, if you’re watching this movie with the intent to take it seriously, I’ve got some swampland on the moon to sell you. The film’s writer went on to write both My Bloody Valentine 3D and Drive Angry 3D, two other movies that “do things to drive-in way,” to quote Joe Bob Briggs. Jason X is a drive-in movie: A flick made purely for entertainment and no other reason. Just shut your brain off, stuff your face with popcorn, and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
There are hammy lines, but they’re balanced out with good physical comedy and quality slapstick. When Jason throws a dude off a platform onto a giant drill that his dead corpse literally spins lower onto, and the assessment of his condition is, “He’s screwed,” it gets an amused chuckle every time. The liquid hydrogen kill is a series highlight that always gets a huge reaction from any audience. But my personal favorite is during the climatic Uber Jason sequence on the, for lack of a better term, Holodeck. If you were a fan of the sleeping bag kill in Part VII, it’s perfected here, even if some of the visual effects work surrounding it isn’t the best.
That’s not to say the movie is totally without technical merit. It’s actually the first movie in history to be color graded digitally, but because O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out first, Hollywood gave the Coen Brothers all the credit. However, this becomes a detriment for the film’s jump to UHD, because the original color grade was done in 1080p. If there is an advantage to this new Arrow 4K disc, it’s likely in the dynamic range, but it’s honestly impossible to tell if this looks any better than the prior BD release from Shout Factory. The audio definitely gets a boost, and some moments really take advantage of the directionality on a good sound system. Whether or not the new disc will be worth it for that alone, only you can say.
- Blake O. Kleiner