09/01/10 - Jason X

Jason X (2001, 91 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211443/

This is it. The final of the original ten movies from the Friday the 13th franchise. I'll still have the pretty recent remake left after this viewing but it's not part of the same continuity. I was anxious to see how a film with Jason was handled in space even if it did have tons of negative reviews.

The film starts off in relatively modern times and we get a short sequence where Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is cryogenically frozen along with a researcher Rowan (Lexa Doig). We now fast forward approximately 455 years when some scientists pick up the frozen bodies and thaw them out using future science. Naturally Jason goes on a murderous rampage but the film concludes with the group sending Jason's body hurtling through space only to be "destroyed" when it goes through Earth's (technically Earth 2's) atmosphere.

After the terrible Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday I'm not expecting much here. My last sights of Jason were of him being dragged to hell by huge hands and it was just really stupid. I was also told that the only way to permanently get rid of him would be to kill him with this magic dagger welded by a blood relative. Thankfully all of that was fixed up with Freddy vs. Jason (apparently) as we start in a time with Jason back in the land of the living. This is great because it means that Jason will actually feature prominently in the movie.

Anyway, I was hesitant about how this movie would pan out taking place in space and all. As it turned out I thought it was handled pretty decent. I could easily tell that quite a bit of work went into the writing of this film. There were obvious references to other films (Alien and Solaris to name two) and there was an attempt to make a coherent and interesting plot that wasn't like a typical slasher. There was also some fun fanservice with the repeated references to previous installments that were very enjoyable. I always love it when a franchise has fun mocking itself like this.

One major complaint I have with the film is how cheap everything looks. Just like the last film, there's a SyFy Original feeling going on as the sets look cheap and the outfits look like something more out of a television series than a big movie. Sure, Jason X wasn't a big budget summer blockbuster or anything like that but it still could've looked better than it did in my opinion. On the other budget point, it's hard to fault the CGI here as I believe that late 1990s and early 2000s CGI looked amazing for the time but just dated really poorly. However, when the CGI is used for the kills and that I think it looks really well. It's combined with standard makeup stuff and comes off looking good. The problem is the more scientific nanotechnology CGI which looks bad but overall that's forgivable.

Jason X does one thing really well and that's have a very good section that builds tension. The part of the movie I'm talking about is when Jason is taking out the grunts one by one. It's basically like cramming the entirety of Alien into about a four minute sequence. Jason methodically works to kill everyone and I know this is what's going to happen. However, the film still builds suspense as it's not obvious just how Jason is going to kill the grunts nor in what order. It's a really well handled couple minutes of the movie and was actually one of the high points of about the last four movies in the franchise.

Overall, I gave this film a 3/10. Jason X might have some great fanservice and a cool section that resembles Alien. But what brings the film down is just the overall cheap quality of everything from the acting to the sets and everything else. It's not normally something I complained about in this series but it stood out so bad here that I have to dock the grade.