Jason X (2001)

“Guys, it's okay! He just wanted his machete back!” – Professor Lowe

Eight years after the release of the largely badly received release of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, New Line STILL didn’t quite know what to do with Jason Voorhees. But they knew they wanted to some something. Never let it be said that they were shy of trying something new, though. The script they eventually chose, by Todd Farmer, would break new ground and literally take Jason where he had never been before – into space.

I remember when I heard about this notion the first time, I had my doubts, but I quickly warmed to the idea. After all, where else could the character possibly go? But wait just a second – wouldn’t he have to escape from hell first? That was where he was sent the last time. Not only that – Freddy Krueger had grabbed his mask.

In fact, as Jason X (New Line didn’t have the rights to the Friday the 13th title, if you recall) goes through its title sequence, we actually seem to be in hell. We see structures, flames, underground caverns… but this is revealed as a macro view of Jason’s molecules (or something). Basically, it’s a microscopic view of Jason’s insides. Jason (Kane Hodder in his fourth and to date, final appearance) has finally been caught, and as the camera pulls back to a less magnified view, we see he’s being examined by a medical team.

We’re in the more-or-less present day, and Jason is held, heavily chained in the Crystal Lake Research Facility, where he’s the subject of some controversy. It has been discovered that he keeps coming back time after time because of some cellular regenerative power he has. (So, nothing to do with his being a zombie since Pt VI, then. I’m guessing that this is a re-set which means he didn’t go to hell either.)

It’s agreed that the only thing to do with him is place him in cryogenic suspension, presumably to become someone in the future’s problem. BUT… (yes, there’s always a but). When another team arrives on the scene to move Jason to another facility where he can be further examined to see if his regenerative power can be replicated it’s already too late.

A young soldier guarding Jason is un-nerved by Jason’s unblinking constant stare. A close-up of Jason’s masked face shows Kane Hodder’s ability to be menacing with only the slightest of gestures, in the case a hate filled narrowing of the eye. The young soldier throws a blanket over Jason’s head, covering him. So, when the team arrive to take Jason away, they remove the blanket and it’s the dead young guard they find. Jason’s already loose and adding to his total of (as we’re told) over 200 kills. And that’s a considerable increase since The Final Friday.

Jason has a fine old time rampaging and killing whoever he sees, which is business as usual for him until he’s left with one final survivor, Dr Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) who lured him into the cryogenic freezer, locks him in and freezes him. As I said, there’s always a “but”. Before losing consciousness, Jason stabs her through the heavy steel vault-like door, the cryogenic gas escapes and the facility foes into an automated lockdown, leaving now both Jason AND Rowan frozen in suspended animation.

455 years later, Earth is uninhabitable. The human race has moved to a planet called, imaginatively, Earth II. Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts), his android assistant KM-14 (Lisa Ryder) and a party of students are on a field trip to old Earth, and discover the frozen bodies. Taking them back to their ship, they decide to revive Rowan who takes to being woken up 455 years in the future remarkably well. Her main concern is that they don’t revive Jason. Hearing the name, Professor Lowe recognises it, and as he’s seriously in debt, reckons that Jason, in his frozen state can be sold to a collector for a fortune, thus solving his problems.

BUT – (and there’s that word again) Jason has already thawed out and is wiping out the students and the crew and the military escort. The most imaginative of the kills is the first after he’s woken up. Here, he pushes a woman’s face in to some liquid nitrogen and shatters it against a working top.

Obviously at this point, it becomes obvious that screenwriter Todd Farmer is leaning heavily on both the original Thing from Another World (1951) and Alien (1979) for ideas, because the film is literally an amalgam of those two classics. But there’s more to come. Jason is blasted to pieces in a struggle with KM-14, but lands near the nanite medical station. While the remaining crew thinks they’re now safe, the computer operated medical station does what it’s programmed to do and uses nano technology to save a life. Thus, the crew have now got to deal with a half cyborg Uber-Jason. (So, we’re literally now adding Robocop to the mix.)

Going back to “borrowing” from Alien, Uber-Jason is eventually jettisoned out into space, and presumably is burnt to ashes in the atmosphere of Earth II. A teenaged couple sitting by a lake at night watch the shooting star of Jason’s re-entry and decide to see if it landed nearby, as what’s left of his mask plops into the lake.

In my latest viewing of this, I have to say I’m not really against its shameless rehashing of the three movies I mentioned, and the fact that those plot point have been lifted from the originals is done pretty shamelessly. If we’re watching slasher movies, the derivative and exploitive qualities are part of the fun, and it’s fair game. What really rankles me is the overall cheapness of the sets. The whole research facility at the beginning is obviously a very dimly lit, empty warehouse. The ship’s interior has the cheap look of a generic BBC spaceship interior from Doctor Who, Red Dwarf or Blake’s 7.

Overall, looking at it as a B movie, it’s not a bad one. It’s a good concept, but the execution (bad pun, I know) was sadly lacking. Despite Hodder and Doig doing their best to carry the film, and they really are the saving grace, some more money being spent on it would’ve nudged the film up a bit higher. But having said that, the CGI has dated remarkably well, and still stands up to scrutiny.