‘Evil gets an upgrade’
Jason X is a 2001 Canadian-American science fiction slasher horror film directed by Jim Isaac from a screenplay by actor/writer Todd Farmer (My Bloody Valentine, 2009).
It is the tenth instalment in the Friday the 13th film series and stars Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees. Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg (Shivers; The Dead Zone; The Fly) has a cameo role.
The movie also features Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell, Jonathan Potts, Peter Mensah (Midnight, Texas TV series; Sleepy Hollow TV series; True Blood TV series), Melyssa Ade, Melody Johnson, Phillip Williams, Derwin Jordan, Dov Tiefenbach, Amanda Brugel, Kristi Angus, Yani Gellman, Todd Farmer, Robert A. Silverman and Marcus Parilo.
The film took a disappointing $16,951,798 worldwide at the box office against a budget of $11 million.
Plot:
In 2008, (five years after Freddy vs. Jason) Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is captured by the United States government and held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility.
In 2010, a government scientist decides to place Jason in frozen stasis after several failed attempts to kill him. While Private Samuel Johnson (Jeff Geddis) places a blanket on Jason, Doctor Wimmer (David Cronenberg), Sergeant Marcus (Markus Parilo), and a few soldiers hope to further research Jason’s rapid cellular regeneration and try to take Jason. They pull off the blanket covering his body, but find Johnson dead, instead.
Having broken free of his restraints, Jason kills the soldiers and Wimmer. Rowan (Lexa Doig) lures Jason into an “ice” pod and activates it. Jason then ruptures the pod with his machete and stabs Rowan in the abdomen, spilling ice fluid into the sealed room and freezing them both.
Over 445 years later, in 2455, Earth has become too polluted to support life and humans have moved to a new planet, Earth Two. Three students, Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell), Janessa (Melyssa Ade), and Azrael (Dov Tiefenbach), are on a field trip led by Professor Braithwaite Lowe (Jonathan Potts), who is accompanied by an Android robot, KM-14 (Lisa Ryder). They enter the Crystal Lake facility and find the still-frozen Jason and Rowan, whom they bring to their spaceship…
Reviews:
“Jason X is well-paced, provides plenty of kills, has enough camp to make it enjoyable, and provides an interesting transformation for our antagonist in its final third. It’s nowhere near scary, and it’s because of that fact that the Alien comparison can only be taken so far, but it’s a slasher movie set in space and it takes a character who has been the villain for eight previous movies in a place and time he hasn’t previously had to deal with. That’s a go-for-broke approach and I have to commend the filmmakers for it.” Marter, The Escapist
” … there’s a legitimately fine comic sequence in which the surviving crew members, in an attempt to distract Jason, put him in a virtual-reality sim of Camp Crystal Lake. For a brief moment, new-school splatterpunk steps aside for old-school slash, and the sequence, prankish as it is (the sim comes complete with a couple of giggling, topless girls in sleeping bags), points up what’s fundamentally wrong with Jason X: It just isn’t the same when Jason stalks the sterile halls of a spaceship.” Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com
“Wittily scripted, smartly directed and well-played by an unfamiliar cast, this is a real treat for all those who have suffered through the story so far.” Kim Newman, Empire
“This sucks on so many levels.” — dialogue from Jason X. Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. Jason X sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. Only its title works.” RogerEbert.com
“It’s crazy that it took until the tenth film in the series for someone to say “you know something, we should have a proper laugh with this”, but finally someone did and it’s all the better for it. As a serious horror film, it’s a failure in every respect. It isn’t scary, it doesn’t build much tension and it just takes the piss at every opportunity. But it’s because of this third point that Jason X entertains – it knows it’s shit and it’s proud.” Chris Scullion, That Was a Bit Mental
“Jason X is one of those films that gets laughed at before it’s even mentioned. A good group of society just doesn’t like the flick. Truth be told I was kind of put off by it at first too. Uber-Jason? Come on now. But upon further viewings, I’ve realized I actually have a blast with the flick! Maybe you should give it a go.” Jared Pacheco, Arrow in the Head
Choice dialogue:
Professor Lowe: “Guys, it’s okay! He just wanted his machete back!”
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