Review: Jason X

Welcome to the Crystal Lake Research Facility, a doomsday machine waiting to happen.

Jason X
Photo: New Line Cinema

Welcome to the Crystal Lake Research Facility, a doomsday machine waiting to happen. The motto here is: “If you can’t beat him, freeze him.” Jason Voorhees is in regenerative flux and the powers that be want to transport him over open territory. After a deadly swirling-steel opener, Jason goes cryogenic courtesy of headstrong lab assistant Rowan (Lexa Doig). Four centuries later, hockey masks are passe but ’80s psycho killers are collector’s items. Lucky for Jason that the New Line publicity department and Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts) are hard up for cash. On board a ship headed for Earth 2 (Earth 1 went bust soon after Jason froze over), Crystal Lake’s wily killer melts and starts slicing a group of 26th-century teens who’d rather poke their robots than make them. Jason X is positively anti-Darwinian: Nine sequels and 400 years later, the teens are none the wiser and Jason still kills on auto-pilot. Two-dozen deaths later, one teen’s Small Wonder goes robo-crazy on Jason. It’s a ferocious fight sequence but when Jason stops engaging Alien and starts going Terminator on the ship’s remaining pin-up crewmembers, you’ll have to suffer another tedious dry spell before a hysterical virtual reality sequence suggests that Earth 2 may have actually learned something from the mistakes of its ancestors.

Score: 
 Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell, Jonathan Potts, Peter Mensah, Melyssa Ade, Todd Farmer, Melody Johnson  Director: James Isaac  Screenwriter: Todd Farmer  Distributor: New Line Cinema  Running Time: 93 min  Rating: R  Year: 2002  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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