Jason X 4K UHD Review

Arrow Video

4K UHD Release: May 20, 2025

Video: 1.85:1/2160p (HDR10/Dolby Vision)/Color

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0

Subtitles: English SDH

Run Time: 91:49

Director: James Issac

The year is 2455, humanity has left an overly polluted Earth for a new planet they've christened Earth II. A crew of scientists on an expedition to Earth I discover a research facility near Camp Crystal Lake where Jason Voorhees' body has been cryogenically frozen. They decide to bring him back on their spaceship, but, in doing so, seal their doom. As they depart once again for the furthest stars, the masked maniac awakens, ready to kill again! (From Arrow’s official synopsis)

There is the impression that, at the end of the millennium, as postmodern horror grew in popularity, bereft of ideas, every Hollywood studio tried sending their aging horror mascots to space. The absurdity of the concept overshadowed the actual scope of this movement, as technically only three established franchises attempted this – Kevin Yagher & Joe Chappelle’s Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996), Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Leprechaun 4: In Space (completed in 1996, but not released in the US until 1997), and James Isaac’s Jason X (completed in 2000, but not released until 2001). Trenchard-Smith’s film went straight-to-video and the other two were flops (partially due to studio/producer bumbling), rendering the supposed fad dead on arrival. 

Still, there was a moment when the Fangoria and early internet news cycle made it feel like this was the next big thing and the feeling stuck. Of the three [Blank] in Space movies, Bloodline has the most potential, but Jason X has a better sense of conceptual clarity. It is, purely and simply, exactly what audiences would expect from a movie in which the hockey-masked killer was sent to outer space. Especially in the year 2000, when Scream’s (1996) ironic methods were still popular. 

Jason X’s predecessor and New Line Cinema’s first shot at Friday the 13th, Adam Marcus’ Jason Goes to Hell (1993), tried too hard to give the franchise’s mascot a supernatural twist, arguably alienating some of the fan base (for the record: not me). With that in mind, it was smart to correct course, keeping Jason as he is and changing his environment instead. It’s a fertile ground for laughs, if not scares. For the record, I’ve never been a ‘Kane Hodder or Bust' type of fan, but do think that Jason X is his best performance behind the mask and none of it would work without his commitment to the bit, because Jason is essentially a playing murderous straight man to a cartoon universe. 

The problem with giving the audience exactly what they expect from Jason in Space (alternately, it could be called Alien, but with Jason) is that Jason X lacks surprises and, thus, the relative depth the setting might have offered the franchise. It does its job as a silly crowd-pleaser, but there’s not a lot of rewatch value and it only really justifies its existence the few times that the Camping Ground Killer is forced to get creative and use absurd science fiction devices to murder people. There’s a reason that the signature sequence is the one where Jason flash-freezes a woman’s face and smashes it to pieces – where else could you get that image, if not here? I do wish that there was more gore overall, but we were still about two years away from the more permissive MPAA of the post-9/11 era.

Some of the problems are budget-related and it’s not really fair to hold dodgy special effects against the film. Beyond the digital effects, the whole film has a very made-for-television vibe. Some of this is due to it being shot digitally (correction: shot on film and produced digitally – I describe this better in the video section) in an era when digital photography wasn’t quite up-to-snuff. The limited sets and chintzy costumes don’t help, but there’s also the cold fact that a lot of the cast & crew were culled from Canadian made-for-TV sci-fi shows – TekWar (1994), Forever Knight (1995-’96), Earth: Final Conflict (2000-’01), Psi Factor (1999), Total Recall 2070 (1999), Andromeda (2000-’05), and more. Canadian TV crews are, of course, capable of making visually rich science fiction films, but this particular film never sheds its syndicated cable veneer.

At least the Canadian connection led them to cast David Cronenberg in the prologue.

Video

Jason X has a convoluted cinematographic history. It holds the title of the first feature film to be completed digitally, though some sources mistakenly claim that it was shot digitally. In truth, it was shot on 35mm film, but the footage was all digitally scanned for editing, grading, and effects work. I don’t know if the digital footage was ever saved at a 4K resolution, but I suspect that it wasn’t. So how, exactly, do you make a 4K release out of a sub-4K original? Apparently, you scan the 35mm original camera negative that was used to make theatrical prints during the initial theatrical run (before DLP was a regular thing) in 4K/16-bit resolution. Referring to it as the original camera negative, instead of the film-out negative, is probably a typo. 

The images on this page are from the Shout Factory Blu-ray for editorial purposes only. Fortunately, some kind soul has uploaded comparison caps on caps-a-holic. These aren’t full-sized 4K caps and don’t include the Dolby Vision/HDR10 upgrades, but they should give readers a general idea as to what I’m seeing on my set. The difference appears a little overblown on the caps-a-holic page, because the Shout Factory’s BD is so noisy, but the UHD transfer is pretty soft and even a smidge washed-out (though colors are pretty vibrant). I still assume that the issues are down to the weirdness of the original materials and the fact that the original digital masters weren’t made to 4K specifications. In its ‘purest’ form, Jason X wouldn’t have any film grain, right? But a film-out scan should, right? I’m honestly not sure. 

Audio

Jason X is presented in its original 5.1 and a 2.0 downmix, both in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio. I stuck with the 5.1 track this time around and was charmed by the hyper-canned, super-digital turn-of-the-century sound. The effects are sharp, the surround channels get a decent work-out, and dialogue is clear without sounding tinny (apparently, the original Scream Factory release had a missing sound effect error that was corrected as part of a replacement program). The series’ original composer Harry Manfredini returned one last time for Jason X and, in spite of the obvious synthetic quality of all of the instrumentations, he managed to create a relatively eclectic score. It doesn’t vastly outperform his Jason Goes to Hell score and cribs quite a bit from Christopher Young’s Hellraiser theme, but it is, at the very least, closer to what one might expect from a wide theatrical release.

Extras

• Commentary with Michael Felsher and Steve ‘Uncle Creepy’ Barton – For this disc’s one exclusive commentary track, the Red Shirt Pictures head honcho and co-founder of Dread Central team up to explore the production, praise the film’s fun side, and point out some of the Easter eggs.

• Commentary with Todd Farmer and Peter Bracke – In this Shout Factory holdover, screenwriter Farmer is joined by the author of Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday The 13th (Titan, 2006) for another personable, but all-around more informative look at the making of the film.

• Commentary with director James Isaac, writer Todd Farmer, and producer Noel Cunningham – This is the original New Line DVD track, featuring the director, writer, and producer.

• 2020 Shout Factory introduction by actor Kane Hodder (0:43, HD)

• Scoring the Stars (9:53, HD) – This new interview with composer Harry Manfredini works as a companion piece to the Arrow-exclusive interview on the Jason Goes to Hell disc.

Shout Factory archive extras:

• Outta Space: The Making of Jason X (33:10, HD) – A making-of 2020 documentary that covers the production from inception through release featuring interviews with producers Noel Cunningham and Sean S. Cunningham, actor Kane Hodder, and writer Todd Farmer. 

• In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream (23:11, HD) – More with writer Todd Farmer.

• Kristi Is a Headbanger (11:13, HD) – Actress Kristi Angus, who has her face flash-frozen and smashed, talks about her audition and time on set.

• Jason Rebooted: Sean S. Cunningham on Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X (15:33, HD) – The producer returns and goes into more detail on the process of taking the franchise to New Line and the long road to Freddy vs. Jason (2003). 

• Behind-the-scenes footage (56:48, HD)

• Original electronic press kit (24:49, HD)

• Teaser and theatrical trailers

• 15 TV spots

• Stills, behind-the-scenes, and poster galleries

New Line archive extras:

• The Many Lives of Jason Voorhees (29:55, HD) – A 2002 featurette on the history of the character that includes interviews with pop culture critics and cult personalities.

• By Any Means Necessary: The Making of Jason X (17:35, HD) – An original behind-the-scenes featurette.

• 2002 cast & crew EPK interview reel (51:42, HD) 

The images on this page are taken from the Scream Factory Blu-ray – NOT Arrow’s new 4K UHD – and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.