Video: How Does the Disc Look?

The film’s theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is presented in anamorphic video “mastered in high definition.” From all accounts, Friday VI’s DVD releases always had a nice transfer to DVD over the last decade, upon which there is not much to improve short of Blu-ray. Picture quality is very respectable with hardly a noticeable blemish. The film quality and transfer highly resemble Friday V’s very good transfer. Both are slightly lighter films than prior Friday films. Grain is very fine and usually very consistent. Blacks are a hint deeper than Friday V, and at times fill into the widescreen bars (29:28) fairly well, despite a tiny bit of black crush sacrifice. However, for the most part, blacks are very slightly faded yet steady.

The stable quality of the film, including a good contrast ratio, allows for some generally good depth with small object detail of tree branches in the camp’s forest and other distant shots. And finely grained textures of actors’ close ups and clothing look solid. A few times the camera seems to be faintly unsteady (such as a few shots in the police station), and the picture can get slightly out of focus, which is clearly from the source rather than a transfer issue. Additionally, the film is not razor sharp and sometimes seems to have a tiny haze to it. This was also the case in Friday V that I, admittedly, failed to mention in that review. But it’s more of a nit pick than anything. Never vibrant, colors are decently saturated and skin tones appear well color timed in the scheme. Despite expecting to see some edge halos during some action scenes, the film appeared free of them and no compression problems arose given the massive amounts of foggy scenes. This is a well-authored disc.

Audio: How Does the Disc Sound?

Finally someone had enough brains to pull a Friday the 13th film out of its cheap mono legacy, of which Friday VI is the first in the series. The disc includes a new Dolby Digital 5.1 remixed track from the Dolby Surround track in prior releases. Some may know that the film was actually processed in Ultra-Stereo, which is very similar to and compatible with Dolby Surround – four channels of information (Left, Center, Right and Surround) matrix-encoded. And just to turn up the nerd trivia knob, Ultra-Stereo is the same audio encoding used in Friday VII, and Friday VIII.

It’s not Star Wars, but a Friday the 13th film finally gets to breathe. Compared to prior Friday installments, directionality and dynamic range are improved with the action on screen and especially the score. Frequent wind through the woods whirls around the room reasonably fine and a few birdcalls caw from a side speaker at times. A brief car chase zooms from right to left. And, as the audio commentary points out, kills sound much juicier if you pay attention (eeww!).

The music is noticeably more detailed and buoyant, yet it competes with the action on screen sometimes. Indiscrete surrounds catch mediocre atmosphere effects, which could have been more aggressive, yet the rears seem to exhibit stronger gain from the score. Bass presence is like cheap vanilla iced cream – it’s not too exciting, but it’s there. Dialogue isn’t Alias-crisp but it’s recorded competently with no distortions or other problems.

Frankly, the 5.1 remix does not sound alarmingly different from the 2.0 Surround mix. Certainly, bass placement is changed with the discrete .1 LFE subwoofer (which isn’t say much), and the highs are a tad bit more open sounding. Surrounds supposedly receive a wider frequency range, though that difference is undetectable. But by toggling between the audio mixes, it’s not easy to discern much of a difference. Either way, the stereo effects in this film aren’t going to make you sit up in your chair and say, “that was awesome.” But it’s nice to have a more involving, dreadful atmosphere to enhance the screen action. Jason and crew need all the help they can get at this stage anyway.

The other language tracks are English 2.0 Surround, French Mono and Spanish Mono. The optional subtitles are in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. English Closed Captions are also included.