Subject: Review: JASON X (2001)

From: Jon Popick <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 02:42:41 -0000

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I don't know if Alien is to blame or not, but there's a disturbing number of
horror film franchises that inevitably make the leap from raising holy hell
here on Earth to doing the same thing up in space. Hellraiser: Bloodline,
Leprechaun in Space and, one can only imagine, Rocky VI: The Struggle On
Myzuggal all take place where nobody can hear you scream, and Jason X - the
10th installment of the Friday the 13th series - follows suit by
transplanting its hockey-loving star into the stars themselves.

Has it really been twelve years since the last 13th installment?  Beats me,
since I haven't seen one of these beasts since the 3D version back in '82.
If you're in a similar state of Jason Confusion, don't worry - X isn't
really the kind of film that will puzzle those who haven't seen its nine
predecessors.  That said, I'm not sure why anyone that isn't a diehard fan
of the series would bother wasting their time with X.  You'd be just as well
off renting one of the older titles, because they're all pretty much the
same movie.  A splash of blood here, a missing limb there - there isn't much
new ground being broken with X.

X begins in 2010 at the Crystal Lake Research Facility (an homage to the
bucolic setting of the first film), where superkiller Jason Voorhees (Kane
Hodder) is about to be cryogenically frozen.  It seems Jason is
indestructible and has survived many attempts at punishing him capitally, so
the only option (!) is to put him on ice until the best and brightest of the
future can figure out a way to get him down for a dirt nap.  Things, as they
usually do when Jason is involved, go horribly wrong, though the killer is
eventually frozen, along with a young hottie named Rowan (Lexa Doig).

Flash forward several hundred years, where a group of students from Earth 2
(Earth 1 has long been uninhabitable) discover Jason and Rowan while on some
kind of an archaeological field trip.  They unfreeze them both, and wouldn't
you know it, the killing starts immediately.  Personally, I would have put
the kibosh on the stabbing and the slashing and made the film into something
like Encino Man, where Jason has trouble trying to fit in with the cool kids
from the future.

There really isn't too much more to mention.  Some of the special effects
are pretty cool, thanks to director James Isaac, who brought similar
wonderment to David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, The Fly and Naked Lunch
(Cronenberg has a cameo early in the film, too).  Fans of Gene Roddenberry's
Andromeda might get a kick out of seeing Doig play a human (she's a robot on
the show) and costar Lisa Ryder a robot (she's a human on the show).  And,
yes, the ending of X leaves things open for yet another Jason adventure.

1:33 - R for strong horror violence, language and some sexuality

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X-RAMR-ID: 31677
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 309666
X-RT-TitleID: 1113860
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 3/10