Jason X (2001)

Studio: New Line Home Entertainment

DVD Release Date: June 1, 2004

Directed By: Jim Isaac

Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell, Jonathan Potts

Brutal As Hell Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review By: Benjamin Bussey

Crystal Lake, some point in the near future. Jason Vorhees – very much alive and Jason-shaped, the events of Jason Goes To Hell quite rightly ignored – is incarcerated and, all methods of execution having failed, is set to be cryogenically frozen in order to keep him locked away for good. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan, and the bodies soon start flying, but when the dust settles, feisty scientist/final girl Rowan (Doig) manages to get Jason into cyrogenic stasis, and, for her trouble, inadvertently winds up frozen herself. The next thing she knows, it’s 2455 and she’s on a spacecraft bound for New Earth – but if Rowan is alive and well in the far future, no prizes for guessing who else is too…

Hellraiser, Critters, Leprechaun: as once brilliantly surmised in the pages of Hack/Slash, taking a horror series into space seems to be the ultimate indication that the filmmakers are officially out of ideas. As such, the gut impulse may be to dismiss Jason X offhand as the lowest the series could go. Not so. Jason Takes Manhattan still holds that particular title. On the contrary, Jason X gives the Friday franchise the shot in the arm it had long been crying out for, and is surely the most entertaining instalment since Part VI: Jason Lives (the series pinnacle, in my humble opinion). On the surface it may seem to have strayed a little too far from the classic Crystal Lake set-up, with its sleek futurist aesthetics, crew of roughnecks and shady corporate goings-on that have been the bread and butter of every SF action flick since Aliens. But you don’t have to dig too deep beneath the metallic sheen to reach the classic slasher structure, as Jason gets to work slicing and dicing his way through the ship.

The principle advantage of adding sci-fi to the mix is the opportunity for more bizarre deaths: amongst others, liquid nitrogen, holographic projections and the vacuum of space all get a look in. Speaking of holograms, they are put to unforgettable use in a Crystal Lake simulation sequence that is surely one of the most (intentionally) hilarious moments in the franchise thus far; post-Scream, a degree of ironic tomfoolery was unavoidable, but Todd Farmer’s script, while packed with humour, is careful not to lapse into spoof territory. Then there’s that other contemporary SF buzzword, nanotechnology, which plays a key role in creating a new, shiny, 21^st (or rather 25^th) century incarnation of Jason. In what would turn out to be his last film behind the hockey mask, Kane Hodder is better than ever, and, with a final kill quota of 25, chalks up Jason’s biggest body count for a single film yet. (Thanks for the stats, Fridaythe13thfilms.com.)

Of course, there are many fans who feel that Jason X is simply too far removed from the rest of the series to be a real Friday the 13^th movie. Perhaps that’s fair enough; the sci-fi elements do outweigh the slasher elements. However, to complain that the premise of the movie is absurd would be to completely misinterpret the nature of the entire franchise. Absurdity is the bedrock on which Jason Vorhees was built. He’s always at his best when not striving to be taken too seriously, and simply being let rip to wreak bloody havoc. By letting him do just that in a suitably cartoonish setting, Jason X is easily one of his most satisfactory outings.