JASON X (aka FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 10, 2002)

Streaming on Tubi! Recently released on 4K from Arrow Films!
Directed by Jim Isaac.
Written by Todd Farmer, Lewis Abernathy (uncredited).
Check out the trailer here!!

JASON X begins in the far future time of 2010, an odd year to start, but I guess it was supposed to represent “the day after tomorrow” concept rather than the distant future. Jason Voorhees (again played by Kane Hodder for one last time) has seemingly been captured and is bound and chained in the Crystal Lake research facility and is set for cryogenic imprisonment. But instead of freezing this killer, Dr. Wimmer (played by David Cronenberg) wants to study how Jason is able to regenerate his body after so much wear and tear and attempts to move him to his Scranton facility. Things go…wrong, shall we say, and a cryogenics expert Rowan (played by Lexa Doig) ends up being accidentally frozen along with Jason. Years later, in the year 2455, a science team is exploring the uninhabitable Earth and recover Jason and Rowan, and bring them back to their ship, the Grendel, where both of them are thawed out for study and revived. This leads to Jason rampaging through the ship and terrorizing its crew in his usual manner, only this time…in space. But just when they thought they’ve defeated Jason, the ship’s medical tech reanimates him with nano technology, creating the all new, all metal, all attitude Uber-Jason!

JASON X was made in the New Line Era of the Friday the 13th franchise. The studio’s grand plan was to get a hold of the Friday rights in order to finally pair Jason and Freddy in one movie and plenty of articles and videos have depicted how insane the process was to get that made. In the meantime, they wanted to keep Jason in a public eye that was slowly shifting towards other horror subgenres like found footage and torture porn, as well as the self-referential sea change that SCREAM created. Now, I’m not one to fall for all of the conspiracy theories, though more and more, these theories are being proven true daily, but rumor has it that New Line never really looked at the Friday the 13th series with much respect. Sure, they were happy to cash a check if a Friday film they made was successful, but making the slasher true to the franchise, powerful, well-written, and most importantly, scary were not priorities. The studio was made by Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and they were and always will be Team Freddy. It is because of that bias that Friday had always been the lesser franchise that seems to fuel every aspect of the time the FRIDAY THE 13TH brand was owned by New Line.

It is because of this theory that New Line really didn’t give two figs about Jason or its fandom that I think I have always disliked JASON X as shuffling the scene to space is the most generic tonal shift a franchise can undergo. Hell, they couldn’t even throw the fandom a bone and call it FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 10, though I’m sure that was due to more legal reasons than disrespect. Still, I guess my desperate need for Jason to be taken more seriously has lessened with age, and returning to the film was much more enjoyable than it was when I first saw it in the theaters way back in 2002. But the film gets more wrong than right and I’ll deal with that in a minute as I’ll start out with the positives I took away from this revisit with JASON X.

While I think sci fi should be as far away from the series as possible, I do think that writer Todd Farmer and director Jim Isaac did well with the budget they were given. Yes, the film looked like one of those syndicated sci fi shows that used to be on late at night or on Saturday afternoons and the script reads like one as well as it lifts heavily from every popular sci fi movie and comic book one can think of. But a lot of the scenes like the gaming holodeck sequence where Jason slices a monster in two, surprising the two gamers playing the simulation as well as the scenes in space of the Grendel and the Solaris space station looked pretty cool as well. I especially liked the shape of the space rover that looks a little like the head of a hockey mask if you look at it in the right light.

I also love the backstory of how after his capture, they tried to issue the death penalty to Jason many times using various methods to no effect. The reason why all of this was glossed over in favor of the distant future sci fi theme is because they wanted to respect continuity of the series a little bit, by setting the film after FREDDY VS JASON, which was not made yet, and setting it that far into the future made is safer to skip over that film and still try to tell a cohesive story. Still, I’d much rather see the story leading to Jason’s capture and attempts at capital punishment than what we got with JASON X.

There are even a few side plots that I found entertaining, like the strange relationship between creator and creation between Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell) and Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder) which mirrored the relationship between some depictions of Dr. Frankenstein and the Bride. I also liked the play with simulation vs. reality which is used in some key scenes. These are not necessary themes I was hoping for in a F13 movie, but they are dealt with in a fairly interesting manner in the movie. There were also some fun characters like the sexually fueled Janessa (Melyssa Ade) who tries to seduce everyone on the ship and the badass Sgt. Brodski (Peter Mensah) who rivals only Stephen Williams’ Creighton Duke in sheer badassery. Hell, even writer Todd Farmer himself is a lot of fun in the few moments he was on screen, and David Cronenberg even put forth the effort to rewrite his own dialog for his cameo in the opening scenes. And I always kind of sig it when they put in an asshole character you can’t help but root for to get the tip of Jason’s blade embedded in them and Jonathan Potts does that well with Professor Lowe.

And while the gore isn’t particularly gruesome or excessive, there are a few inventive kills. Of course, the scene where Jason dips the woman’s face in liquid nitrogen is pretty cool, but it was lifted directly from an X-FILES episode. There is a more interesting kill as one of the soldiers is killed on a giant drill bit and slowly twirls down it before coming to a dead stop. One of my favorite sequences happens right at the beginning as Jason takes out an entire group of armed guards, whipping his chains around and ending with a spear through Cronenberg’s back. That is the cool type of carnage that I come to a Friday the 13th movie to see, though rarely get to see it. I also like the fun they had with the kid who gets his arm chopped off by a frozen Jason, which shows how far technology has come in the 400+ years the killer was in cryo-sleep. And for me, that’s pretty much all of the positive vibes I can muster for JASON X.

So let’s really get into the problems with JASON X. Fist and foremost, more so in this film than any other, Jason is seen way too much in this movie. As much as I like Jason Voorhees, he is best left in the shadows. There are far too many scenes of Jason just walking around in brightly lit areas and simply standing around looking mean. Sure, director Jim Isaac knows how to get a good ominous shot of the character, and I think the extreme closeups are good, specifically of the hockey mask with Kane Hodder showing how good of an actor he is simply by moving his eyeball. But the longer the movie goes, these ominous shots are exchanged with Jason simply walking around from one corridor in the spaceship to another. The most important thing about Jason is that he needs to be scary and apart from a scant few scenes towards the beginning, he isn’t. Especially after he is turned into Uber-Jason. It is as if they were so proud of the design that they had to light it brightly to show off every inch of it and by doing so, all horror is washed away from the character. By the time Jason is on the holodeck killing the bimbettes, all menace in the character is gone. Jason is at his core an outsider. He wears a mask because he is ashamed of his face. He doesn’t want to be seen, so being in the open like he is in this movie should be a weakness. Instead, Jason walks through the corridors of the spaceship as if he is John Travolta in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER at times.

JASON X really drives the point home that sex/drugs/partying is Jason’s prime motivator to his mayhem. Now, this has been implied from the beginning, but it’s in this installment where all nuance is thrown off a cliff. The not-so-subtle way that Jason’s killing spree representing the moral decay of America’s youth was just shoved in your face in JASON X to the point of parody, which of course, murders all sense of gravitas of the message. When Jason wakes up on the ship, numerous people on board are having sex, which makes Jason sprout up like an erect penis on the operating table and go on another killing spree. While this re-awakening is ok as it does play with metaphor, the sex/death thing is done to death and I feel Jason is more than that. Or at least, the writing should be more than that.

Yes, many an essay has been written dissecting the association between sex and death in horror movies, specifically the Friday the 13th series. Yes, SCREAM happened, which thinks it is honoring slasher films but really seem to be belittling them, breaking them down to simplified rules to get a laugh. But in examining and dissecting the slasher film to this degree, it explains the joke and any element of effectiveness evaporates. So a horror film that basically acknowledges the tropes of the genre isn’t really there to scare. It’s there to poke fun at it. In JASON X, the worst thing happens—Jason isn’t scary. He’s not scary because he is shown too often, but also because it really doesn’t seem like he poses much of a threat to these Whedon-esque quippers. Everyone but Jason has a one-liner in JASON X and the one person who should always look cool is Jason. When someone comments on the way he looks in a sarcastic manner, when someone quips after shooting him or hitting him, or when someone makes fun of him, he’s simply not scary anymore. Jason is judgment coming after you for simply being in his vicinity, because being near Jason means breaking his rules—you are trespassing, you are crossing boundaries, and you are probably having a good time while doing it. So when Jason finally appears, you are in trouble.

I get it. There needs to be laughs in a horror movie in order for there to be a release. There has always been comedic elements to these Friday the 13th films. But when the axe falls, things get dire and the quips should die when people realize they are in deep shit. That doesn’t happen in JASON X. Even after their crewmates have been murdered, jokes are told. Sure, I liked the line “He just wants his machete back!” too and that absurd line shows how out of touch that particular character is, but it also makes us laugh at Jason, standing there, brightly lit, in the open.

The point for this lengthy dive into the themes of FRIDAY THE 13th is that it wasn’t taken seriously and never really respected by those in front of or behind the camera, and especially the dollar people behind the movie. This point couldn’t be illustrated more clearly as it is during the climactic holodeck sequence where somehow, the scientists on board the Grendel, understand Jason so much that they put together a cartoonish sequence of two gals stripping in front of Jason. Sure, the punchline with Jason pummeling the two gals together in sleeping bags is good for a laugh, but it also lampoons one of Hodder’s and Jason’s most iconic kills. The entire goofy sequence takes place at a time when things are most dire. Most of the crew of the Grendel has been killed. And undercuts all sense of horror, again, just for a laugh. Jason isn’t scary here. He’s the lead-in for a joke and that, pissed me off as much then as it does now. Again, first and foremost, Jason should be scary. And here it shows how all involved got the character wrong and maybe never understood him or wanted to understand him in the first place.

Since he first donned the mask in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 7: A NEW BLOOD, Kane Hodder has owned the role of Jason. But in JASON X, he really tries his hardest to bring the menace. In the first scene, Jason simply stares at the ground until a guard enters his perimeter, and then he looks his way and simply squints his eye in hatred. This scene speaks volumes. If Jason were free, the guard would be toast. And as I said earlier in this review, Hodder shows how good of an actor he is simply by eye movement here. While I don’t really like the baggy, shredded clothes, I understand why they did that. It makes him more of an unidentifiable shape than a man of substance and weight and with that mysterious form, comes atmosphere. Still, I would have love to have seen Jason sporting some kind of prison jumpsuit. I think it would have been an interesting new look for the killer. I doubt anyone would be able to get near the guy to dress him in it, but it would have been an interesting new look. Uber-Jason? Sure it’s cool. Looks a little too much like the Predator mask, but I think that is purposeful. The battle armor makes him look more like a Power Ranger than a serial killer, but for what it was, I guess the design was ok. I think it feels more like a remnant of the excessive and extreme geared up look of superheroes in the 90’s like Cable and Ghost Rider, but it works. I do like it that Jason has stubbly hair at the beginning and then it is burned off in favor of a pulpy baldness after his upgrade though.

Though I think the story handles sci fi elements well, it does basically cast Jason as the Xenoporph and pitting him against scientists and space marines. Farmer gets a little too close to Scott’s ALIEN and Cameron’s ALIENS for my tastes as he apes the scripts almost beat for beat.

I don’t mean to be a dud and take a fun romp like JASON X too seriously, but someone has to. It certainly seemed like all involved were simply interested in making a goofy sci fi movie with Jason in it rather than a scary Jason movie with sci fi elements. A slasher on a space ship can work. ALIEN did it and Todd Farmer’s script got on it’s knees and opened wide for that film. But instead of sheer terror, Farmer filled the movie with camp and director Jim Isaac reinforced it by increasingly losing a grasp on the horror. Maybe there was a point in JASON X where there was a more serious tone. Who knows? But the final result was a film that definitely was better than that hunk of turds JASON GOES TO HELL, but still manages to be less scary than that disaster of a sequel. After I finish reviewing all of the films (and I only have two left), maybe I’ll rank all of the Friday the 13th movies, but I know JASON X is not going to be too high on it. If I reach down deep and try to drown out that FRIDAY THE 13TH fan that winces every time this movie misunderstands and misinterprets my favorite horror movie franchise, I guess I can see this as a fun sci fi romp exemplative of the Whedon-esque era of the genre. But it still hurts a little watching it, if I’m being honest.