Jason X

After nine increasingly desperate attempts to breathe life into the Friday the 13th franchise, something remarkable happens in Jason X: the filmmakers finally stop apologizing for making a Jason movie. Director James Isaac and screenwriter Todd Farmer embrace the fundamental absurdity of their premise with the kind of gleeful commitment that proves infectious.

The setup is wonderfully preposterous: Jason Voorhees is cryogenically frozen in the near future and awakened four centuries later aboard a spaceship. If this sounds like the kind of high-concept desperation that killed off other horror franchises, consider how effective a similar setup worked for Ridley Scott’s Alien: like that film, Jason is a near-indestructible killing machine loose in a confined environment where there’s literally nowhere to run.

It’s this understanding that Jason has always been more force of nature than character, that makes the film work. Kane Hodder, returning for his fourth turn beneath the hockey mask, brings a familiar physical authority to the role that grounds even the most outlandish moments. When Jason punches a victim so hard they fly over a railing and land impaled on a giant drill bit—and we watch the body slowly spiral down the bit in gruesome detail—it’s horrifying. When the body’s discovered and the question comes over the radio, “What’s his condition?” the deadpan reply, “He’s screwed,” encapsulates the film’s sensibility.

This commitment to creative violence allows it to get away with its more outlandish elements. Jason stabbing someone through a steel cryogenic chamber door is preposterous, but it’s also precisely what we’ve come to expect and enjoy from this franchise. The familiar theme music creeping in before each kill—much like the James Bond theme signals imminent action—creates a Pavlovian anticipation that the film consistently satisfies.

Jason X represents the best aspects of the previous four entries distilled into one coherent package. It plays with the formula without abandoning it (unlike Jason Goes to Hell), features a novel setting it fully exploits (unlike Jason Takes Manhattan), showcases Kane Hodder at his most brutal (but without the telekinetic silliness of The New Blood), and incorporates meta-humor without getting bogged down in extraneous subplots (unlike Jason Lives).

While some of the CGI hasn’t aged particularly well, it’s wisely limited to the space sequences, with the violence remaining pleasingly practical. The production design deserves special mention—the weapons and armor evoke a Quake-inspired aesthetic that gamers of a certain age will appreciate, while the expedition suits blend influences from Star Wars sand people and Lynch’s Dune to create something distinctly stylish despite the film’s obvious budget constraints.

Most of the cast exists merely as Jason-fodder, but once the field is narrowed, the survivors display surprising charisma. Lisa Ryder stands out as an android Girl Friday, bringing charm to what could have been a one-note role.

The film reaches its apex when Jason is regenerated by nanotechnology into “Uber Jason,” a cybernetic killing machine with glowing red eyes and metallic armor. It’s a gloriously ridiculous development that nevertheless feels like the natural evolution of a character who has already returned from the dead multiple times. Despite all the chrome, he still wields a machete.

Jason X is essentially the Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein of the Friday the 13th franchise—a horror-comedy hybrid where the monster plays it straight while chaos unfolds around him. It’s not trying to reinvent cinema or even the slasher genre. Instead, it offers a self-aware romp that delivers exactly what fans want: creative kills, knowing humor, and the comfort of familiar horror tropes in an unfamiliar setting.

Is it great cinema? Hardly. But it’s an underrated entry in a franchise that had every reason to be creatively exhausted by its tenth installment. For slasher fans, it’s a liquid nitrogen facial worth experiencing.