Jason X

Jason Voorhees is still alive but now he’s frozen in space in the year 2455. Despite the changes around him, the man famous for sporting his hockey mask wherever he goes, hasn’t changed much and still has “killing” and “teens” on his mind. The killing of teens ensues.

Since I’ve already seen a couple of cool, popcorn horror thrillers this year in RESIDENT EVIL and the superior BLADE 2, I had certain expectations from this movie as well, hoping for it to deliver the similar fun punches as the former films. Unfortunately, this flick isn’t in the same league as the others with little action, almost no suspense or believable tension, one-dimensional characters up the wazoo, an embarrassingly lame score and sets that can only be described as “sci-fi generic”. What sucks even more is that the film does actually have a pretty cool premise (for a “slasher” flick, that is) and an ultra-cool opening credit sequence. In the 10th installment of the FRIDAY THE 13th series, it seems as though Jason, the unstoppable killing machine that he is, wakes up in the year 2455 and still wants to kick that ass. It’s cool that they tried to change the environment around the uber-murderer, so that it would be a little different from the previous installments, but unfortunately they forgot to spice the film up with the required energy, interesting characters, thrills or a reason to give a shit about anyone on screen. Starting with a decent opening scene featuring a cameo by director David Cronenberg, the movie quickly downshifts into space and presents us with many faceless teens parading around in as less amount of clothing as possible, and expects us to give half a rat’s ass about them, even though they all come off like complete morons (it doesn’t help that the actors are all pretty stale as well).

And the girlie-girls, you might ask? Well, there was this one hot babe, you see, and…well, yeah, she’s one of the first to go (great move, Mr. Director…why not kill the only guy with balls on the ship next, so that we really don’t want to have anything to do with the movie!) I will admit that the way in which the hot babe is killed is definitely one of the cooler kills that I’ve seen in quite some time though. And I only wish that the film had continued that trend, but it doesn’t, and most of the rest of the kills are pretty generic, with little gore and CGI-obvious, save for a couple of other doozies. Jason, of course, still kicks a lot of ass but that can only take you so far (unless you’re a major fan of the dude, and if you are, you shouldn’t care about reviews in the first place), but even he’s not given the rightful support with an extremely weak score (was that an organ playing in the background?) and almost no rock music!! (now this, I can’t forgive) Sure, the film slaps a couple of tits our way near the end of it all, during a fantasy sequence that is actually pretty fun, but most of the chicks in the movie aren’t appealing, the action (aka killings) are okay but don’t really blow you away and the one action sequence that was fun, featured a robotic chick and Jason going head-to-head, but God knows how she suddenly achieved her Matrix-esque like powers (which reminds me, I don’t mind stretching the believability factor in a movie that features a man who can never die as the lead, but when said nutball is killing everyone in sight, don’t have two of the characters suddenly discover that they love one another and start making out-it’s not the right time…there’s a madman on the loose, dammit!!)

I will say that the one character of Sergeant Brodski, played with commitment by actor Peter Mensah was a lot of fun to watch (“That oughta do it”), and actually made me think of how the film might’ve been improved if the characters had all been hard-nosed adults, instead of weak-assed, bad acting teens. Overall, the film might entertain some who enjoy watching Jason chop through people (I haven’t followed the series, so if that makes a difference to you, I saw this film “as is”, with no baggage from previous installments), but for any regular moviegoers wishing to find a thrilling, action-packed movie with well-developed characters and mucho originality, you’re barking up the wrong Jason movie. Dead on arrival?

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian