Movie Info
Movie Name: Jason X
Studio: New Line Cinema/Crystal Lake Entertainment/Friday X Productions
Genre(s): Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/B-Movie
Release Date(s): July 24, 2001 (Munich Fantasy FilmFest)/April 26, 2002 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
In space, no one can hear you freeze!
Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is captured and set for cryogenic freezing in an attempt to find a way to contain him until he can be studied. When the freezing goes wrong, scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) is frozen with Jason. Now after over four hundred years, both Rowan and Jason are being unfrozen by a salvage group. Trapped on a space ship, Jason finds himself facing a new type of target with new weapons and new means to combat him. Unfortunately for the crew, Jason is about to undergo an upgrade and become even deadlier.
Directed by James Isaac, Jason X (or sometimes referred to as Friday the 13th X: Jason X) is a horror slasher movie. The film follows Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday in 1993 and was initially screened at the Munchen Fantasy Film Fest in 2001 with a United States release in 2002. The film received some mixed reviews in regards to the decision to send the story into the future but largely negative.
She’s gunning for Jason
I’m on the side of the people who kind of liked Jason X. The Friday the 13th franchise had been dead for a while, and it needed a spark. The rumored Freddy vs. Jason film had yet to be released and this movie’s tongue-in-cheek approach to Jason was a nice change from the sometimes heavy handed too serious for their own good feel of the Friday the 13th series (as opposed to the too light Nightmare on Elm Street series).
The movie has no stars (except a rather odd appearance by director/actor David Cronenberg as Dr. Wimmer at the beginning of the film), but the movie doesn’t really need any stars. It is a sci-fi horror film, and those types of films have a tradition of being low-budget and low stars.
The movie smartly has Jason facing a lot of stuff that he’s never faced before. Jason battles the android KM 14 (Lisa Ryder) and finds himself trapped in virtual reality in two fun scenes…one where he finds the people he’s attacking aren’t dying and two in a scene where he’s given Jason’s dream (naked camper girls who he can try to kill forever). I don’t love the “upgrade” part of the film and find it a bit cheesy, but I also feel like it was meant to be. The ironic ending with the new Earth and new Crystal Lake also allows the franchise to reboot in a traditional Friday the 13th manner after the movie (though it never happened).
Who to kill first? So many choices…
The movie might be high tech in story, but the visuals don’t live up to what they need to be due to the relatively low budget of the movie. For the most part, the budget works with the visuals, but it might have been nice to have a better ship and some better VR moments.
If you’ve never seen it or just skipped it, give Jason X a chance. It is by no means any sort of masterpiece, but it is light popcorn horror and like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, I think it will be debated and re-evaluated over the years. The movie obviously didn’t work to reboot the series, and it is one of the least profitable sequels. The film was followed by Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. Jason X marked the official end of the original franchise and Jason Voorhees returned in a rebooted Friday the 13th in 2009.
Related Links:
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985)
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
