Review: Jason X
Is Jason back? He most certainly is, but not in the form we have grown to know and love in the past editions of the Friday the 13th series of movies. Jason X is the first re-visit to the series in nearly ten years, and with that long bench warming plan, it seems as though the writers and producers of this series intend to take the movie, and the forth-coming series, into a new domain.
Jason X starts out in the near future. Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is finally capture and brought to a scientific research facility on his old stomping grounds of Crystal Lake. Jason is being studied for his highly elevated regenerative capabilities that allow for him to take a beaten, and keep on coming. Through a minor mishap while prepping Jason for transport, he escapes lays ruin to several marines and doctors, and then is frozen in a cryogenic unit, that also freezes his lead researcher Rowan.
Flash forward 455 years in the future when a team of student finds the old facility while charting around on Old Earth, see us humans with our beer, pot, and pre-marital sex have destroyed the planet to the point where no one can even inhabit it. I’m glad I’m doing my part. The team finds the frozen Jason and Rowan and manages to revive her with their vast medical techniques.
The problem with Jason X is the story, and technology don’t seem to stay constant through the entire movie. In the beginning they are able to repair a severed arm and a stab wound to Rowan, but when one of them gets something as simple as scratch or flesh wound they are totally unable to help, or heal. Before Jason becomes Uber-Jason near the end of the film, he is literally blasted to pieces by the nipple-removable android, but manages to come back. Several marines are merely stabbed, yet seem to be beyond repair, the consistency is laughable at best.
Which, in some aspects, is what the writers appear to be going for. There are several times during the movie when there are some down-right funny lines delivered, and some funny moments, “He’s screwed,” just being one example. Sure it doesn’t appear to be funny now, but when you see how this guy died, it is laughable. The classic moment from the film happens almost at the end on a “holo-deck” of sorts where two women proposition Jason with some favorite 1980’s past times. The ensuing “death-sequence” is the funniest and most memorable part of the movie, hell I’m still thinking about it.
While Jason X isn’t anything new or exciting, it does bring the serial killer to a new and uncharted domain for him, and anything but Aliens and Predators. While rumors are circulating of two more in this mini-series of Jason, it remains to be seen. I found it both funny, and relieving, that writer/director Jim Isaac makes fun of the older movies in the series. This one was okay because if they actually expected us to take this seriously the whole way thought, they have another thing coming…like maybe a machete.
