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Killing season resumes in 'Jason X'
When "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday," which was ninth in the "Friday the 13th" series, grossed a puny $16 million in 1993, it accomplished what all of the characters and all of the critics had failed to do: It killed off the franchise. For a while.
In recent years, there was talk of combining "Friday the 13th" with another dormant franchise, "Nightmare on Elm Street," on something to be called "Freddy (Krueger) vs. Jason."
"Jason X" got made instead. Or first.
Tentatively scheduled for release 54 weeks ago but inflicted today at last, it revives the machete-wielding, hockey-masked Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) without a single original moment.
You have to pity a screenplay that begs the audience to hoot at lines such as, "Believe me, he's definitely dead" and "Wait! Are you saying we can bring him back to life?"
We're told that after killing nearly 200 people (not one of whom had the dimension of a stick figure), the indestructible Jason survived at least four executions in 2008 and wound up in cryogenic suspension.
While Jason was hibernating, Old Earth, as it's called, was wiped out by global warming. (Oh, then it won't be bad movies that do us in.)
Jason is revived in 2455 on a Class-4 Category Transport Ship, that is being operated as a field trip by horny young Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts).
Let me get this straight: A spaceship 453 years from now is entrusted to a bunch of sex-crazed college kids who haven't graduated from Happy Meals to a grown-up menu yet? Without anyone old enough to play chaperone? Or to manifest human qualities such as grief, thought and planning?
Jason, played wordlessly from behind a mask for the fourth consecutive time by Kane Hodder, decapitates or plunges his blade through an uncommonly colorless ensemble.
Among his more durable prey are the human Rowan (Lexa Doig) and the tech-droid KAY-EM 14 (Lisa Ryder).
Azrael (Dov Tiefenbach) exists briefly as the dorky comic relief. Did I say comic? Relief?
Not even in their dreams did the crew of this spacecraft ever go through the space program. Or Ding Dong School. An underwear commercial maybe.
The one inside joke by director Jim Isaac and writer Todd Farmer is that Dr. Wimmer, who plays the equivalent of a Dr. Frankenstein character, is acted in the opening segment by David Cronenberg, who directed "Dead Ringers," "The Dead Zone" and some horror films.
A preview audience, whose only interest seemed to be to cheer Jason on, became progressively rowdier throughout, laughing with exaggerated volume in a futile attempt to turn the experience into an event for each other.
Still, I was surprised at the end when one mouthy guest, who had whooped it up quite a lot, stood and declared to the rest of us held captive: "That was a terrible movie." She could have fooled me.
| 'Jason X' |
Director: Jim Isaac
Stars: Kane Hodder, Lisa Ryder, Lexa Doig
MPAA Rating: R, for strong horror violence, language and some sexuality
