47. "Jason X" (2001, Isaac)
By Eivind Langdal
19th Feburary 2010

Right from the moment the opening titles make their entry in Jason X, it’s clear that this film is different. Not different in the way David Lynch films are different, but different from the other entries in long-running (and horrid) saga of Jason Voorhees. If you ask me, it was about bloody time. The Friday the 13th films have been treading the same waters since the early 80s, and to return almost a decade after the series seemingly ended without a fresh angle would just have been foolhardy. So, Jason does what Pinhead did in the fourth Hellraiser: go to space. Involuntarily, of course.

It’s not just the setting that’s different in Jason X; the tone has changed radically too. Instead of expecting the film to be an incredibly scary thrill ride, the filmmakers have adopted a less serious approach, full of punch lines and inventive kills that strain logic in a more self-aware fashion than the previous installments. Make no mistake, this is not a very good movie, but it’s better than all the previous Friday the 13th films put together. That may not be saying much considering how much of an insult they are to cinema, but it’s still important to point out.

As the film begins, it is the near future, and Jason is locked away in (what I hope is) a remote facility. Mankind has given up on killing him (understandably so, as he apparently survived several executions, not counting those in the previous films), and has decided that until they find a way to end his life, he serves his purpose best when kept away. Of course, money- and fame-hungry scientists can only keep their hands idle for so long, and soon enough, a crew (lead by none other than David Cronenberg) arrives at the facility to take Jason with them for research purposes. This happens to be the same moment that he makes his escape, leaving everyone but a female scientist dead. By sheer coincidence, she manages to lock Jason in a freezing chamber, where both he and her remain for several hundred years.

Fast-forward, and it’s the distant future. A space ship finds Jason’s frozen remains and decides to thaw both him and the scientist, which is approximately the dumbest idea anyone has had since someone thought it would be wise to re-elect George W. Bush. Soon enough, the crew (which consists of a lot of young attractive science students who have a lot of sex) has to fend off a Jason that apparently used the years to become a hell of a lot angrier and quite a bit more creative with his killing techniques (two words: “cold water”). It certainly doesn’t help the crew any when he, two-thirds into the film, becomes “über-Jason” (that’s actually what he is credited as). I’d say more about that, but I wouldn’t ruin the opportunity for you to see his first appearance in his second form for yourself.

Jason X marks the first time where I actually thought Jason was cool. I have long given up on trying to find him scary, and I thought I had given up on trying to find him interesting, but I have to admit, he is quite badass in the film’s first scene (and in other various points in the movie). Unfortunately, the other characters are, predictably, less interesting, as half of them are science students who apparently applied through the “Denise Richards in The World is Not Enough” school of science, while the other are space marines who wear armors that looks they could be penetrated with scissors, let alone resist one of Jason’s machetes. Not to mention, they look like they’re taken from some children’s science fiction cartoon. Edgy.

You see, it is with its tone that Jason X makes most of its missteps. The filmmakers try for a Scream-like atmosphere, where screams from the audience are supposed to be paralleled with laughter from the film’s jokes and clever references, but they never manage to create much tension, and the jokes ruin what could have been a tense piece of entertainment. Somewhat surprisingly too, is the fact that the space ship does not share the grittiness of the design in Alien, but looks… bright and shiny. That’s right, bright and fuckin’ shiny. Light grey, yellow, purple, red, blue; these are not colors that are supposed to make up the palette in a horror movie. Who knows why it is like that. Maybe they simply ran out of black.

I will say this, though: unlike any other film in the Friday the 13th series, Jason X is actually watchable. It’s not high art, but if you’re in the mood for something uncomplicated, I’d recommend it. There is something special about it, really. It’s like the filmmakers finally realized how silly the entire premise of Jason is, and how inept they are at making him scary, that they decided, in a bright moment, to perhaps make the silliness intentional. It’s the only way to describe the film’s most memorable sex scene, which is the strangest depiction of coitus since… no, wait, I don’t think have I have ever seen sex this odd in a movie before. It is, strangely enough, both the film’s scariest and funniest moment, which, admittedly, was precisely what I guessed what the filmmakers’ intention was. Maybe they succeeded anyway, then.