JASON X or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

When someone asks me what my favorite FRIDAY THE 13TH movie is, I always pause and read the situation. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a very intimate question. That’s like asking which child or pet is your favorite? How dare you “Sophie’s Choice” me in this way!

Is this person even willing to sit and listen to me academically dissect the cultural symbolism and merits of each film? Will they empathize as I dreamily and passionately go into why Jason Voorhees is the greatest anti-hero since Snake Plissken? Do they understand that Jason’s unbridled yet valid rage and the unjustified killings of innocent horny teens is a metaphor for how awful being alive is? Or have they decided that there is already a correct answer, in which case, this person is not for me. Because there is no correct answer. (It’s PART VI, JASON LIVES. That’s the correct answer.)

I tease.

While PART VI is my favorite film of the franchise and JASON X is the one that brings me the most joy, I understand that we all have different needs when it comes to cinematic experiences. The only correct answer when someone tells you that you should or shouldn’t like a movie is “fuck off.” If we all had the same taste, art would be boring and meaningless. And if it hadn’t been for JASON X that might have been how I continued to see the horror genre: boring and meaningless.

What follows is a love story about a traumatized girl that watched a flick about a traumatized boy, and fell in love with horror movies again.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized my dad loved horror movies. I still don’t think he realizes it, either. My first movie memory is secretly watching KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE from behind him in the doorway of a dark house. We’d go on to watch more together in that dark house like JACOB’S LADDER, THE SHINING, THE OMEN, THE DEER HUNTER, APOCALYPSE NOW, and THE EXORCIST.

By age eight, I understood that these horror stories were cathartic. Something about the tortured internal anguish in these movies soothed my dad’s PTSD-ridden soul, and that in turn calmed my own fears.

As I look back, I think about how we had a life-size poster of Elvira with a werewolf hanging in our living room. Elvira became my role model. She was hilarious, confident, sexy, and mysterious. Elvira was everything I was taught women shouldn’t be. None of this made sense with the house I grew up in.

Somewhere in all that darkness, horror and Elvira were beacons of relief and hope. Yet, I never saw a single FRIDAY THE 13TH or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET entry. My dad never even spoke of them. How could this happen?

Life only got more complicated as I grew into teenhood.

The monsters under our bed that silently groom and shape us as children start to move up from the shadows of the bed to those of our minds. Painful, fearful, angry, and raw feelings fill that vacuum where our true voices were meant to be heard. Trauma is a poison. It seeps into all the things you love and turns you against them. Still to this day, I will not watch THE SHINING because I see so much of my father in it. Horror was a gift that my dad gave me and one that he also ripped away. When I lost watching movies with him—that one moment we could both be free of our mental war—we lost each other.

During this period, I tried to discover the genre on my own. There were a few here and there that gave me glimpses into where my future would lead. MANIACTS was my first mature acknowledgement of B-horror. I was drawn to it, but only because it felt like a secret I could keep for myself.

Then I ventured onto ELM STREET and it only took that first movie for me to exit horror again for many years. I’ve had nightmares since childhood. I still have them. It has severely affected my health and life. To me, Freddy Krueger was the ultimate villain and one that I faced every day. I hated him. I truly feared him. This was not the escape I had missed and yearned for; this was reopening a wound.

I had given up on horror. Growing older only made me more conscious of all my triggers, and the genre, as I knew it, didn’t offer me any safe space.

In my early thirties, I found a new group of friends who all loved horror. I stayed on the outside but I loved their style and instinctively knew, “these are my people.”  It was out of pure curiosity from everyone talking about how awful JASON X was that I made myself watch it. From the outside, it checked a lot of boxes for me. They reassured me: “it’s not scary”, “you'll laugh a lot”, “it’s robots in space with archaeologists”. (Robots in space with archaeologists is my kink, by the way)

So I watched JASON X.

And then I watched it again.

And again.

I watched JASON X three times in one night. Each time wondering if I had missed something. It seemed too good to be true. It was hilarious, goofy, bloody, badass, exciting, and thrilling! THIS was horror?!?  Where has this been all my life?

Aside from the feelings of joy, escapism, and empowerment it gave me, the movie does have its own merits. The SYFY-meets-Slasher is a kitschy unique aesthetic. Who doesn’t want to have fun in a film? (Other than sourpusses.)

The cheesy humor is obviously self-aware, shameless to the point of being bold. The rebranding into Uber-Jason was sexy, stylish, and somehow made him even more frightening. Also, JASON X has David freaking Cronenberg serving in a cameo. Throw in one of the best kills I have ever seen in my life and a call back to the second best kill ever, and it makes this movie all heart.

I was so eager to see the rest of the franchise that I finished all of them that week. While the others weren’t similar to JASON X, it still reignited my thirst to lose myself in horror again. Since FRIDAY THE 13TH was something my dad never shared with me, it was free of any residual memory. The first imprint of this franchise in my soul was mine and mine alone. There is so much power in a memory no one can taint or take from you. It also expanded my way of thinking beyond the mainstream concept that the genre was simply doom and gloom. Had I known it could be fun and schlocky on purpose, it would’ve become my brand much earlier in life. Yes, I need to see loads of blood, death, and fantastical practical effects to vent out the trauma that has suffocated my life, but by jove! I want to do it smiling and cheering.

I am not asking you to like JASON X. It goes against all that I believe to expect others to feel the same about movies that I do. But, like a proud mother, I will always sing its praises and dote on it like a favored child. When I proposed this topic, it was intended to explain why it deserves its flowers in popular culture. In conclusion, I’m realizing that for me it is less about discovering the film and more about recovering my sense of self.

The Jason Voorhees of the first nine films is my kindred spirit: He has unavailable parents, is powered by his enduring rage and pain, stalks around in raggedy-ass clothes not knowing how to interact with people, and he gets way too emotional about sex. But in JASON X, he becomes even more invincible, shiny, new, and owns that shit. My friends, that is, as the kids say: “Hashtag Goals”.

I don’t know why my dad never showed me anything from the FRIDAY THE 13TH series when he was showing me all the others. Maybe it wasn’t his brand. I understand now that the reason he hates NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is because he still has nightmares, too.

But I hope someday he and I can sit down together and watch JASON X. I hope he’ll laugh and think it’s dumb. I hope he gets excited by the punny carnage. I hope he spends the next three days yelling, “it’s ok guys, he just wanted his machete back!” I hope that now, 30 years later, we can find ourselves back in the living room watching horror movies finding relief from our troubles—but this time we’re laughing not crying.

I think it can happen, guys. My dad and I just want our childhoods back.