Jason X Review

2/10

There have been many times that famous characters have gone to space in our time. There has been Abbott and Costello, Tom and Jerry, The Muppets, along with many others.  Who would've ever thought that Jason would be the next in line?  This could've been a good film, and something very different, but this movie failed on most possible levels. It lacked likable characters, a decent plot, good effects, the majority of things that made the originals good. 

The first point I would like to bring up about this film is the name "Jason X." In reality, this name  doesn't work well at all, being Pamela was the killer in the original, and Roy was the killer in part 5. So technically this would only be the eighth film to have Jason as the villain, and therefore makes the name quite irrelevant.  While this doesn't bug me too much, I just think that the filmmakers should've chosen a name a little more carefully. 

As the movie starts, we find out that Jason has been frozen by the government, and they want to transfer him. There is a lot of controversy about this decision, with the fear that Jason would escape and kill.  Even though they give in, they are too late; as Jason slaughters them all.  If this film hadn't been part of the series, this would be cool, but in continuity standards, this makes no sense at all. First off, the last we saw, Jason was taken to hell, but now he is back on Earth?  Even with the time jump of 1993 to what is supposed to be 2010, this scene is completely irrational, because even for Jason, it would logically be impossible for him to come back from hell.  

The movie then jumped forward to 2455, where Jason is shown to be frozen. As the scientists begin to start doing experiments on him, he thaws out and begins his killing spree. Honestly I don't like the futuristic aspect of this film for many reasons. First off, I like the vintage feel of watching the others in the series. I really miss the 80's nature of the original films, and this 400 years forward thing came across as very cheesy.  Another reason I didn't like this idea was the costumes. I don't think the "Power Ranger" suits and elf shirts looked good at all, and it made me feel like I was watching a bad alien movie.  I also really disliked that the film was turned into more of a scifi film than anything. It takes place on a spaceship, looks like "Star Trek," and feels like "Alien Resurrection."  This is not what I wanted to see in a Jason film. While I think that the space idea had the capability of being neat, I feel that it was a failure in this form.  It would've been much cooler if it was astronauts in present day, because it would have much more of a horrific feeling, because the future almost takes away from the tensity, being it will never happen during our life time.  It actually made the film take itself way too seriously, with the constant melodrama of the ship, and the cheesy monologues coming from the captains and such. 

One of the positives I happened to find in the film was that at times, there were fun moments like the originals. There was times where I laughed a little, and I mean because the scene was genuinely funny. I liked how the dialogue was often witty, because it helped balance out the otherwise boring tone of the film.

The other main positive of the film was that Kane Hodder played a very good Jason once again. He was big, brutal, intimidating as ever, and his fast walk really kicked butt. I think that this was his second best performance as the character, behind his portrayal in "The New Blood."  Jason also looks pretty good in the first half of the film, with the exception of that the stupid hair that the makeup artists added to his head in "Jason Goes To Hell." 

Things really went downhill with his appearance after his new costume appeared. He is completely metallic, and looks like a cheap robot.  I found this to be extremely dumb, because he looked like a low grade General Grievous, and the lack of his hockey mask takes away from the character completely.

I personally felt that the special effects in the film were pretty terrible. They were fake CGI tricks, and not once was I blown away.  The sets looked extremely fake, and so did everything else surrounding the characters.  The earlier films worked really well when they used fake blood, because there was much more of a authenticity than this computer junk squirting all over the place.  The frozen head kill in this movie was one of the most creative murders of the entire series, yet I felt it was dragged down by the shoddy gore shown. Overall I wish that the filmmakers stayed to doing these effects much more genuinely, but obviously they wanted to stay with times, and there is no way of changing it now. They just have to pay the price of looking back at this and seeing how crappy of a job they did. 

Another terrible aspect of the film was the acting. In the previous films I can't say there was any Oscar winning performances, but at least the casts were somewhat enjoyable.  In this one, it is almost unbearable to watch some of the people. They have a whiney tone to their voice, and no sense of delivery at all. One of the best examples is the scene where Jason is brought to the fake world, and those two girls in the sleeping bags try to lure him over. They were two of the worst actresses I have ever seen, and it seemed like there was no effort in their lines, and no effort at all by the cast director to have picked them. 

The ending is another thing that really bugged me in this film.  There was no shock whatsoever, and it was a cheesy happy ending that shamefully ripped off "Alien" and "The Empire Strikes Back" in one instant. I don't know why this was done, because often in the past really crazy things happen at the end, and it's often the scene a viewer remembers best from the film.  

In the end, this movie sucked big time. It is most definitely my least favorite of the series, and one of the worst movies I've ever watched. There was such a bad ratio between positives and negatives, because in the midst of two good things, I found at least ten horrible problems.  I really cannot recommend this film to anyone, because it is a waste of 93 minutes.  Watch the original nine films, and skip to "Freddy Vs Jason," but stay far far away from this film, because it is hell.