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Beam us down
Is Jason X just another gory, dumb slasher movie despite its spaceship setting? Count on it.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 25, 2002
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[AP photo]
Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees sports a new mask and armor in Jason X, the mindlessly gross 10th movie in the Friday the 13th series.
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We need another Friday the 13th sequel like Jason Voorhees needs another hole in his head. Jason X is the tenth, but the "X" is pronounced like the alphabet letter since the resilient killer's target audience probably hasn't learned Roman numerals beyond the "I" and "V."
Jason has been everywhere from summer camp to Manhattan to hell. If you're thinking they're all the same thing, you're more instinctively creative than the minds behind this movie. This time, the indestructible hulk winds up on a space ship in the 25th century. "That's over 400 years (from now)," one character informs us. I wasn't kidding about the Roman numerals.
By that time our worst fears have been confirmed: the Benetton generation has taken over leadership roles. A crew of Real World rejects discovers Jason and his last victim, a hot scientist named Rowan (Lexa Doig), frozen in a cryogenic chamber. Both get thawed, but only Jason (Kane Hodder) gets his hands on a machete and, eventually, a spiffy new mask and armor. People run, fight back in vain and die nasty.
None of this material is handled as seriously as in the first nine flicks, nor as humorously as it should be, considering recent horror comedies. The perpetrators of this gory franchise wised up to the fact that Scream and Scary Movie rendered slasher movies obsolete through bawdy satire. If you can't beat, impale or mutilate 'em, join 'em.
The best parts of Jason X -- heck, the only good parts -- occur when rookie director Jim Isaacs toys with the series' cliches, especially the one about sexually active victims dying first and worst. Jason's initial signs of life after cryogenics happen only because someone's moaning nearby. A virtual reality return to Jason's Camp Crystal Lake has nude women in sleeping bags egging on the big fella until he uses them for a pillow fight with a tree.
But the movie is seldom that satirically ambitious, and too repetitive, with undistinguished characters sticking around just long enough to be slaughtered. Too many victims, not enough purpose. The only standout is Lisa Ryder as Kay-Em 14, a Vulcanized android upgraded to Matrix babe with blazing guns and a wicked smile. She wages the most formidable single-handed assault Jason ever faced. Of course, to no avail. The path is left clear for Jason XI. That's 11, for all those gorehounds.
Jason X
- Grade: D
- Director: Jim Isaac
- Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Jonathan Potts, Peter Mensah, other unknown actors playing dead
- Screenplay: Todd Farmer
- Rating: R; grisly violence, profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity
- Running time: Everybody's running for 93 minutes.
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