Jason X (2002) – Evil Gets An Upgrade

Horror movies come in many shapes and sizes.  There are some movies (The Shining) that are really creepy in a super natural sense and are legitimately scary.  There are others that break new ground to be scary (The Blair Witch Project, The Others, Scream) and there are other still that are blood and guts, slasher type flicks also known as “torture porn” (Saw, Hostel, etc.)  And then there’s the category that this one fall into… “so stupid it’s awesome”.

Jason X isn’t a good horror movie. There are some outstanding kills in here, but I wouldn’t even classify it as a good slasher movie.  But it’s absolutely one of my favorites to watch.  Believe it or not, I find myself coming back to this and Freddy Vs. Jason probably more than any of the others in the Friday The 13th series.  The only way I can defend it is to say that this one is “fun”.

Jason Voorhees (played here by Kane Hodder) has been captured and after several attempts, cannot be killed.  It is decided that he be placed into cryogenic stasis until a solution can be found.  After some shenanigans that indeed does happen, and Jason is frozen until the year 2455.  That’s right folks… Jason’s in the future.

I’m not REALLY going to bother going into the plot of a Friday The 13th movie here, cause let’s face it… they’re all pretty much the same:

• Kids go to an area where they’re isolated (in this case, a space ship)
• People have sex
• Jason shows up
• People die
• The hero(s) fight back
• Jason dies
• Or does he???

So that’s pretty much the plot, but there are some outstanding things here.  At one point, Jason is fighting some “space marines” in an (imagine this) enclosed space on the ship.  He naturally takes out an entire platoon on his own but the WAY he does it is what makes this movie so special to me.

UBER JASON
Any review of this movie would be incomplete without a mention of Uber Jason.  It’s in the trailer and it’s what people wanted to see.  At one point in the flick, Jason is “killed” by an android aboard the space station.  Jason is resurrected through the use of some movie magic and some future hocus pocus into the new and improved Uber Jason.  The mask is still here, but now he’s part bionic and 100% bad ass.  If you’ve never seen this movie you need to rent it just for this scene alone.

The one thing that’s missing from this version of a Friday flick is Camp Crystal Lake.  Luckily, the folks in charge took care of this over site late in the flick when Uber Jason is magically transported back to Crystal Lake through the use of a virtual reality machine.  If you’d been waiting for naked chicks, having sex and smoking weed… this is your scene.  Outstanding nod to the folks like me who love their Friday with a throwback flair.

This flick was put together when Freddy vs. Jason was stuck in developmental hell.  It was purposefully set in the future to not mess with the continuity of the series and really is a stand along Jason Voorhees story.  With a budget of 14 million this one pulled in less than 17 million worldwide to make it the lowest grossing in the Friday The 13th series.  That said, I still think there’s some stuff worth checking out.