Lost in Space
Jason Voorhees went to hell. This was the ostensible premise of
the last installment of the Friday the 13th series,
1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Here the
Camp Crystal Lake serial killer fought and lost to the Devil
himself, and found himself dragged down to the fiery pits.
Sounds like closure, no? Hardly. As even the most casual viewer
of slasher films can tell you, the killer always comes back.
But how to get Jason back from hell? Screenwriter Todd Farmer's
answer is to relocate the character's hell within, to make it
more personal. So, the film after the "final" film, Jason
X, opens with some pretty neat CGI of a fires-a-blazin'
landscape. We quickly realize that we are privy to a microscopic
journey through the mind of Jason Voorhees (here, as in the last
three installments, played by Kane Hodder), as computer wizardry
takes us out one ear, around the famous hockey-masked visage and
back inside through the opposite ear. It turns out that Jason
never really went to hell at all nine years ago. Instead, he went
inside a psychological horrorscape, where he's since been living
every day of his preternaturally long life.
Okay, it's a pretty lame set up. But what slasher sequel doesn't
go to great lengths to reinvigorate its monster time and again?
And to be fair, Jason X does recognize its own history
and the savvy of its audience. We know Jason is supposed to be
in hell, and at least Farmer and director James Isaac try
to find some way out of this bind. This isn't to say it works.
Still, the film is filled with attempts at self-consciousness,
humor, and irony. The best bit comes near the end, when the few
remaining youngsters try to confuse Jason by throwing up some
Star Trek: TNG holotechnology around him that recreates
Camp Crystal Lake, circa 1980. Here, the killer encounters some
straight-from-the-'80s holo-girls, sporting naught but T-shirts
(which they immediately peel off) and panties. They entreat
Jason: "Do you want to have a beer, or smoke some pot? Or have
premarital sex? We love premarital sex!" Jason, of
course, kills them, even though they are just digital.
Unfortunately this is the only clever bit, it's hardly reward
enough for the 80 minutes of astonishingly bad film that comes
before it. There's no need to bore you with the details of the
many ways in which Jason X bites. Even the Jason
fans-for-life at the preview I attended couldn't stomach it.
I've never seen so many people leaving in the middle of a free
movie. And, as one very sensible young man said, loudly, about
halfway through: "This film sucks! It should have gone straight
to video."
Indeed.
In case you are interested in the "plot," Isaac and Farmer try
to revitalize the Friday the 13th franchise by relocating
the killer some five hundred years into the future. It seems
that back in 2010, Jason was captured, but his struggle with
sexy scientist Rowan (Lexa Doig) inadvertently left both
cryogenically frozen. Jump to 455 years into the future, and
both Rowan and Jason are "rescued" by a team of young students
(of what is never really explained), led by Professor Lowe
(Jonathan Potts). They take the two 21st-century Popsicles back
to their space ship -- the earth has become inhospitable to
human life you see -- and reanimate them. Mayhem and murder
ensue.
To be sure, the body count in Jason X is way up there.
One of the more "creative" killings involves yet another sexy
scientist, Adrienne (Kristi Angus). Jason dips her head in a vat
of liquid nitrogen, and then shatters her frozen face all over
the countertop. Nice. The problem with such cleverness is that
it leaves precious little time for things like suspense. The
real pleasure of horror films is the visceral response they
elicit, which the first few Jason films surely cultivated.
There's no such build-up here. Jason X merely proceeds
from one bloody splatter shot to the next, with very little
tension, much less story, in between.
The only really scary part of Jason X comes in the
killer's transformation into cyborg juggernaut. In another
ST: TNG rip-off, after half of his head is blown away and
it appears that Jason in finally and undeniably dead, some
(Borgian) nanotechnology reconstructs his body, replacing
irretrievably lost flesh with circuitry and metal plating.
What's frightening here is what Cyber Jason signals for the
franchise. As he bears a striking resemblance to Arnold
Schwarzenegger's Terminator, one might wonder whether Jason will
once again return for Chapter 11, only this time as the
messianic savior of the human race, a la Arnie in
T2. Let's hope not.
— 25 April 2002
