Jason X

After about 5-8 years, New Line must have decided the last movie, Jason Goes to Hell, wouldn't be the final Friday after all. Hell, they even decided to forget that whole thing about him going to Hell. No, no folks, this time Jason will go into the future and on into space. It is here that he will slaughter a bunch of WB space teens, a unit of space marines, an android, and fight it out to the end with the space marine leader. In the process, he causes a crash and inadvertently causes an entire space station to explode!

Jason X aka Jason in Space aka Friday the 13th Part 10 – taking an old worn-out franchise and sending it into the stars. Theoretically, this should have been interesting, but overall, the film plays like a glorified sci-fi after school special. But it does take the film more towards your standard b-fair anytime you send things into outer space.
This is an interesting step in Jason’s evolution.

As New Line Cinema’s 2nd story involving Jason, it drifts pretty far from the source material and even seems to ignore the lore it established in part 9, Jason Goes To Hell, or as others would say, The Audience Goes through Hell. At the moment, this is the last installment to have Kane Hodder to play Jason, as Freddy vs Jason has a different actor behind the mask.

Many Friday fans detest this episode, much like the two before it. It seems to rank down there with parts 3, 5, 8, and 9 for most fans, but I’m not from that school of thought. I find Jason X to be more of a "what if" similar to some comic experiments. What if Jason went to Space? Doesn’t mean the next film has to respect any continuity set up in X (like any of the other Fridays kept theirs). I like that they not only took it to b-movie dimensions, taking a hillbilly zombie into space to become a cyborg, but they also changed the plot formula. Of course, they balance making references and props to different Fridays (and other horror), but they also kinda rip off other elements (cough "Alien" cough cough). It’s arguable which is the case.

One thing’s for sure, the character names are very different in this one. No Tommy, Tina, Paul, or anything like that. No, we get names like Azreal, Waylander,

Anyway, let’s get this movie started.

Credits roll. It looks like they spent too much money on CGI for these credits when they could have invested it elsewhere. This is so not Jason music. We get the zoom out from Jason’s eye, but for some reason it doesn’t look as menacing as it should. We learn from the credits that doctors and scientists have experimented on Jason. Seems they could have made more of a plot point out of that, but we’re goin to space! Finally at the end of the credits we get the che che che hah ha ha

We’re in the nearer future and we find ourselves at yet another new building at Crystal Lake. This one’s pretty high tech. I didn’t realize they made maximum security prison cells huge and dark.

Jason’s awaiting execution. They’ve tried everything. Awaiting Cryo. We get a digital ticker that tells us all this. Jason’s all chained up, giving the guard the evil eye. Looks more like Kane than Jason. Guard wigs, puts jacket over Jason’s face. Cuts away.

Important guy with military guards arrives. Girl interposes. He wants to move Jason and study him for his regeneration. She knows it’s a bad idea. He went over her head to arrange this. They go in and discover the guard under the jacket!

Jason’s behind them – kills like 7 of them right away. Kills main guy. Chick’s outside, corpse flies through door – at least they tribute the old school Fridays that way. Military guy dies – she sees Jason behind her. She grabs the gun like it would matter. She heads down towards the cyro chamber.

See, a lot of people give this movie s**t but already there’s been more action than the entirety of part 3. Sure, it looks like a Sci-Fi channel special, but s**t’s happening. Ok we get to Jason in a cyro lab. She hides, just like old school. She pops out with the gun, blasting some useless shots, knowcking him back into some useless lights …o wait, she locks him in the cyro unit, but he stabs her through the door and they both get locked in, forever frozen.

Or not…

A couple hundred years later…Earth looks like Venus – harsh and lifeless. Some archealogists form Earth 2 discover it on a field trip. They scan the room for viruses and toxins before removing their masks. They discuss their discovery of two old bodies. K-Em, an android. They wanna open it. They reveal a frozen Jason, frozen solid in attack mode, about to swing his machete. They discuss his hockey mask. Professor likes it as a museum specifman.

Azreal is apparently supposed to be our comic relief but he’s naturally annoying. They discover the girl’s body next and realize she’s still alive. They decide to restore her. Azreal is f**king with Jason’s frozen body and it falls over and slashes his arm right off lol! K-em mends him and drugs his ass and he’s fine. They take his arm and the two artifacts off the storm-ripped earth and onto their shuttle. They transport the two bodies back to the mother ship.

We get to meet the captain and copilot of the ship. He’s an odd pilot, wearing a cowboy hat and spouting lame jokes. We meet some ship military personel and the sarge, a big bald black dude. We meet Crush, the engineering geek who’s sleeping. We see some Amiga graphic shots of the space ships, the shuttle, and some docking sequence. I want the Pilot to die now.

We get to witness a long useless docking sequence. The interiors of the ship are designed in the most opposite of user-friendly and practicality, especially the hallways. Azreal is established as pretty dumb since he thinks he forgot his arm. We establish that the one chick is b***hy. We meet horny chick. We meet programmer boy and his sex toy K-em.

We meet Sr blond chick, she’s going to check out Jason. Don’t get attached to her character. Doc wants all these scans. We get to see a slow sequence of nanotechnological healing microbes or something, which bring her back fast enough for her to give the doc a quick slap.

Azreal dumbass wakes up from a tanning bed and he has his arm back. Horny dude walks by and punches him in the arm. The horny couple join Sr Blond as they scan Jason. They share info with the doc and the rest of the students. Horny kids keep fooling around – Sr Blond sends them off. The horny couple head off to have sex, which naturally wakes up Jason about the same time the chick wakes up.

Lab Sr Blond pulls out Jason’s bad eye with a surgical tool. Some kids have fake sex which, as usual, raise Jason from the dead (there was no lightning around this time). He dunks the WB lab tech into the conveniently open nitrogen tank, freezing her face solid.

Rowen becomes aware that Jason is on board and insists he's not dead. Flash to zipping up a body and the space marines go on alarm. They suit up to take Jason out and the Doc makes a deal with the sarge to take Jason alive. Jason kills them one by one before heading for the lab area. It's reminiscent of Alien here, expect the fodder space marines have s**ttier dialog. We get real bad one liners from the marine leader before he dies...or does he?

Jason kills off all but a small group of students in the lab. He kills the pilot, which causes the ship to crash through the space station (their destination), destroying it completely while not really harming the ship all that much, at least initially.

He corners them in the lab and is about to waste them when K-Em, the android shows up, all decked out and armed to the T. They basically have a squash match with the android kicking Jason's ass all over the place (?!). She knocks him through a couple walls, shoots his arm off, and blasts his head to pieces. The group then leaves Jason's mangled corpse leaning against the nanotech repair equipment.

So surprise surprise, Jason gets repaired and becomes a cyborg! Both of his eyes work this time too! K-Em tries to fight him again but the bullets don't even enter him this time. He knocks her head off in one shot and gets the others on the run.

The silly girl who somehow hasn't died yet pulls a stupid stunt out of the Black Hole play book by crashing the escape shuttle into the ship during a botched ditching-of-the-friends escape attempt. That's pretty bad when you're stealing scenes from a piece of rolling turd like that.

And here's the best part - the remaining crew try to trick Jason in the Holodeck-VR chamber by making a program/illusion of Crystal Lake 1980 - along with all the appropriate sounds and everything. In the funniest scene of the movie, two girls "spawn" and offer Jason beer and invite him to poke some smot, "we love premarital sex!" They slip into their sleeping bags when Jason suddenly remembers a scene from part 7 and starts slamming the sleeping bags into a nearby tree. This whole sequence makes the movie.

Jason's about to wup some ass when -guess what? - Black Marine Captain wasn't dead after all! (Is that a subtle reference to the black guy surviving in part 3?). Anyway, him and Jason "apparently" have a rematch while the ship is crashing through the atmosphere. Marine chief plans to sacrifice himself to save the rest who are landing on Earth 2. Somehow, Jason and Marine Captain get outside of the ship and Marine Captain humps Jason while they fall inside the atmosphere.

The movie ends with a couple campers noticing the shooting star that is Jason the Humped Cyborg. And of course, one of them notes that it landed by a mysterious lake while the other suggests they should check it out. Groan.

The End

Things I've Learned From This Movie:

Jason can survive even the vacuum of space
Hockey will be outlawed in 50 years but violent video games will be the norm
Fake sex resurrects hillbilly-zombie-demons
Jason hates sleeping bags

Good

Plot wasn't predictable/telegraphical
Strong female characters
Focus on teamwork saves the day
Kay-Em the android
References to earlier Friday flicks (1, 3, and 7)
The Jason-Android fight was amusing yet misplaced
Jason gets a high body count, half of which is probably from the first 10 minutes
The VR sequence at the end - classic!

Bad

The one liners galore
Alien rip off
Fake sex scene
Annoying characters in abundance

Fugly

Jason's face revealed again
The lunch lady from the last one is so fugly that I had to mention her here again
The puns...my god, the puns ("he's screwed" for example)
Characters all named after Everquest players

Other Possible Names:

Jason Vs. the WB Network
Jason Vs. an Android One-Liner
We Love Premarital Sex!
Jason ninja loots a space suit from Luclin
Jason gets humped by a Space Marine
Cyborg Hillbilly vs the Terran