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 ason X is actually the 10th installment
in the Friday the 13th series, which garnered mass appeal in
the ‘80s with its heavy themes of teenage sex, bloodletting, teenage sex, more
bloodletting, and even more teenage sex. Like other horror series trying to find
their way in the new millennium, Jason X is trying to disassociate itself
with its past (notice the title change). The hope is to draw in a new audience
now that the old audience has grown up, had kids, and are forbidding their kids
to see movies such as Jason X, probably the same way their parents
forbade them to see the original Friday the 13th over 2
decades ago.
Lexa Doig (TV’s “Andromeda”) stars as Jason X’s
heroine, scientist Rowan, who finds herself cryogenically frozen alongside the
(once again) rampaging Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) sometime in the early 21st
century. The two are discovered 400 years in the future by a class on a field
trip back to “Earth 1” – the Earth we know, now an uninhabitable and
desolate wasteland. The class, led by Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts) brings
both frozen bodies back to their ship, where Sgt. Brodski (Peter Mensah) and his
small gang of tough Marines provide security. Lowe’s group brings Rowan back
to life, and before you can say, “Maybe we shouldn’t have brought Jason
onboard, too,” Jason Voorhees has awaken from his long slumber, found a
replacement for his precious machete, and is once again chopping up teenagers
engaged in premarital sex!
There is no doubt Todd Farmer, the writer of Jason X,
knows his subject matter very well. Jason X is filled with wanton
slaughter, severed body parts, decapitations, and plenty of splattered blood.
There are impalings, obliterated faces, and even a body being sucked out into
space via a small hole, leaving behind guts trails. The point is, Jason X
delivers what it promises. There is plenty of lame humor, a lot of one-liners
courtesy of Melyssa Ade who plays a wisecracking student. Everyone is a
stereotype, and everything is predictable. But so what? This is Friday the 13th, not
Remains of the
Day.
It’s obvious from the first “future” sequence that Jason
X had a limited budget. While director James Isaac tries to spruce things up
with some nice CGI and computer effects in the beginning, the rest of the movie
– until the very end – is devoid of said CGI and computer effects. Isaac, a
long-time visual effects supervisor, relies too much on cheap plastic sets
colored to look like metal and thus “high-tech.” Much of the movie, which
takes place onboard a box-like ship, looks and feels like a B-movie with a
decent budget. The sets are not pleasing to the eyes and scream “cheap.”
There are other notable curiosities about the film – not
exactly problems, but rather intriguing (in a "huh?" sort of way) “concepts.” Apparently in the future every
women dresses like Britney Spears and still uses phrases like “Are you
high?” to denote incredulousness at a colleague’s odd statement. This, of
course, makes little sense, especially when another character asks the 20th
century-born Rowan, “What’s a bike?” Let me get this straight. They
don’t have bikes in the future, but they still smoke weed?
Of course asking a movie like Jason X to have a
brain is just missing the whole point. Jason disappears and appears at will,
somehow moving like a superninja when he’s offscreen, but moving like a snail
when onscreen. In that way, Jason X follows almost every convention of
the 80s Teen Slasher without fail. Everyone is on the make and the first to die
are the sluts and their abetting male counterparts. The “evil scientist”
also gets his just desserts in a most gruesome manner (actually, Jason X features two
evil scientists getting theirs).
Lexa Doig does a good enough job as the out-of-time
scientist who just happens to be a total knockout with a killer body. Peter
Mensah does the tough grunt with a heart well, and Lisa Ryder, as the artificial
robot Kay-Em, sports a terrible haircut but is quite entertaining, especially
when she goes mano-a-mano with Jason and beats him! This, of course,
leads to Jason becoming “upgraded” – this little tidbit isn’t much of a
spoiler, since the movie’s ads make Jason’s upgrade to an even more
indestructible killing machine a big part of their sell. Truth be told,
Jason’s upgrade status only occurs toward the end of the film and with just 20
minutes to go, so by that measurement the ads are a bit misleading.
A movie like Jason X was made exclusively for fans
of ‘80s Slasher films, and the filmmakers seem to know this, which explains
why Jason X never tries to be anything other than a cheap ‘80s Teen
Slasher with some semi-nifty effects. One gets the impression that the (limited)
theatrical release of Jason X is nothing more than a big commercial for
the movie’s eventual resting place – that is, video store counters, where
the film will make all of its money back and then some. A sequel, no doubt, is
not far behind.
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