HALLOWEEN 2K18: A Review of "Jason X"

Jason visits the clothing shop in Los Santos

So the 90s went by quick. The 1980s was the decade of Freddy and Jason's heydays. There were eight Jason entries and five Freddy entries. The '90s on the other hand? We got two more Freddy entries but only one Jason entry. The fire had definitely been extinguished as both men's best days were undoubtedly behind them. Well, now it's the 2000s and two very terrible things befell this decade. One of which was September 11th, 2001 and the other of which was Jason X. A movie that teaches us that you don't have to honor the previous movies, do them justice, respect the franchise or the legacy and mythology it's built, be coherent, be funny or witty, or really do anything right in general... if all you want to do is cash-in on taking Jason Voorhees and tossing him into outer space. It just sucks, sucks, sucks. It's obviously like The Room, in the case that it was made to suck. But if we're going to review it as a horror movie, it's not even remotely scary. Not even close. If we're going to review it as a comedy, I mean it's funny, but only painfully and accidentally. It's just dreadful to sit through. I had to dig into this shit-heap, for you, and find out why. Let's roll.

Yes... "scientist".

In the distant future of 2010 (Cue the laughter), Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) is captured by the United States government and held at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. Right off the bat, continuity is tossed out the airlock. It's evident this movie doesn't follow any continuity because Jason was dragged to Hell at the end of... well... Jason Goes to Hell. So it's pretty evident that this was just some arthouse boner's acid trip that he put on an 80-page script and said "GOLD". Government scientist Rowan LaFontaine (Lexa Doig) decides to place Jason in frozen stasis after several failed attempts to kill him. While Private Samuel Johnson (Jeff Geddis) places a blanket on Jason, Dr. Wimmer (David Cronenberg), Sergeant Marcus (Markus Parilo), and a few soldiers hope to further research Jason's rapid cellular regeneration and try to take Jason. They pull off the blanket covering his body, but find Johnson dead, instead. Having broken free of his restraints, Jason kills the soldiers and Wimmer. Rowan lures Jason into a cryogenic pod and activates it. Jason then ruptures the pod with his machete and stabs Rowan in the abdomen, spilling cryogenic fluid into the sealed room and freezing them both.

Four hundred and forty-five years later, in 2455 (We'll have a hard time hitting that one), Earth has become too polluted to support life and humans have moved to a new planet, Earth Two. Three students, Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell), Janessa (Melyssa Ade), and Azrael (Dov Tiefenbach), are on a field trip led by Professor Braithwaite Lowe (Jonathan Potts), who is accompanied by an Android robot, KM-14 (Lisa Ryder... basically our "Milla Jovovich" copycat for this movie). They enter the Crystal Lake facility and find the still-frozen Jason and Rowan, whom they bring to their spaceship, the Grendel. Why? Great question. You'll have a lot of those watching this. Also on the ship are Lowe's remaining students, the rest of our killing gallery, Kinsa (Melody Johnson), Waylander (Derwin Jordan), and Stoney (Yani Gellman). They reanimate Rowan while Jason is pronounced dead and left in the morgue. Lowe's intern, Adrienne Thomas (Kristi Angus), is ordered to dissect Jason's body. Lowe, who is in serious debt, calls his financial backer Dieter Perez (Robert A. Silverman), of the Solaris, who recognizes Jason's name and notes that Jason's body could be worth a substantial amount to a collector. Why? I don't know. You ever wonder if Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer are worth a substantial amount of money now? Doubt it.

Our discount Samuel L. Jackson for the movie

While Stoney and Kinsa are having sex... weird, odd, fetish sex... Jason thaws out and attacks Adrienne (who doesn't even dress like a scientist), then freezes her face with liquid nitrogen before smashing her head to pieces on a counter. Movie gets some credit...  decent kill. Jason takes a machete-shaped surgical tool and makes his way through the ship. He stabs Stoney in the chest and drags him to his death, to Kinsa's horror. Sergeant Brodski (Peter Mensah) leads a group of soldiers to attack Jason. Meanwhile, Jason attacks and kills Dallas by bashing his skull against the wall after breaking Azrael's back. He then tries to attack Crutch, but Brodski and his soldiers save him. Jason disappears; after Brodski splits up his team, Jason kills them one by one. Lowe orders Pilot Lou (Boyd Banks) to dock in on Solaris, a nearby space station. As he is talking with the Solaris engineer, he is hacked apart by Jason. With no pilot, the ship crashes through Solaris, destroying it, and killing Dieter Perez and everyone else on the Solaris. The crash damages one of the Grendel's pontoon sections. Jason breaks into the lab, reclaims his machete and decapitates Lowe. So, business as usual in this point in the flick... just if Jason Voorhees somehow attacked the Sulaco from Aliens and started hacking Colonial Marines to pieces.

Our parody Aliens staff with our Resident Evil
Milla Jovovich clone

With the ship badly damaged, the remaining survivors head for Grendel's shuttle, while Tsunaron heads elsewhere with KM-14. After finding Lou's remains, Crutch (Philip Williams) and Waylander prepare the shuttle. Rowan finds Brodski, but he is too heavy for her to carry, so she leaves to get help. Waylander leaves to help with him, while Crutch prepares the shuttle. Jason kills Crutch by electrocution. On board the shuttle, Kinsa hears of Crutch's death and has a panic attack... which is just bad timing to start having a mental breakdown. She attempts to escape alone and leave everyone else for dead by launching the shuttle but forgets to release the fuel line, causing it to crash into the ship's hull and explode, killing her. Tsunaron reappears with an upgraded KM-14, complete with an array of weapons and new combat skills. She cartwheels and fights Jason off and seemingly kills him, knocking him into a nanite-equipped medical station and blasting off his right arm, left leg, right rib cage, and, finally, part of his head. Don't mess with Milla.

Walking into a VR lobby like "SUP."

The survivors set explosive charges to separate the remaining pontoon from the main drive section. As they work, Jason is accidentally brought back to life by the damaged medical station, rebuilt as an even more powerful cyborg called Uber Jason... the kind of Jason that you can summon to take your drunk ass to Taco Bell at 2 AM for some quesaritos (ba dum tss). Uber Jason easily defeats KM-14 by punching her head off. As Tsunaron picks up her still-functioning head, Jason attacks them but is stopped by Waylander, who sacrifices himself by setting off the charges while the others escape. Jason survives and is blown back onto the shuttle. He punches a hole through the hull, blowing out Janessa. A power failure with the docking door forces Brodski to go EVA to fix it. Meanwhile, a hard light holographic simulation of Crystal Lake is created to distract Jason, along with two virtual teenagers to distract him, which works at first but he sees through the deception just as the door is fixed. Nice little touching throwback to the Friday the 13th movies of old. God how I miss them by comparison. Gotta give this scene credit, though. Sure makes me want to stop this movie and go watch one of those. Brodski confronts Jason so that the rest can escape. As they leave, the pontoon explodes, propelling Jason at high speed towards the survivors; however, Brodski intercepts Jason in mid-flight and maneuvers them both into the atmosphere of Earth Two, incinerating them. Tsunaron, Rowan, and KM-14 celebrate having escaped successfully, and Tsunaron assures KM-14 that he will build a new body for her. I'd sure like to see how Jason will survive atmospheric incineration, but if the Hollywood dollar is powerful enough, he'll find a way. I'm almost right... because on Earth Two, a pair of teenagers beside a lake see what they believe is a falling star as Jason's charred mask sinks to the bottom of the lake. The teenagers go to investigate and then nothing happens, setting up a possible DNA rebirth in yet another sequel that doesn't happen.

"What's wrong lady? Stiff upper lip? Lolololol"

Jason X sucks. It's like a very bad parody of Aliens that somebody through Jason Voorhees into just for shits n' giggles. It's entertaining at least, but it's not a scary nor is it purposefully funny. The stuff we're supposed to find funny sucks and the suck-ass stuff that isn't meant to be funny is funny. None of the characters are memorable, obviously. Jason is alright and Uber Jason just seems like overkill. It's just a bad, bad sequel. It's not even part of the most recent Friday the 13th blu-ray boxset. Of course, neither is Jason Goes to Hell, but that one's hit or miss with fans. You either love it or you hate it. With Jason X, there is no loving it. You either hate it but watch it to feel sorry for yourself or hate it and don't watch it at all. You tell me.

Well that was Jason's final original series entry. Ten for Jason, seven for Freddy. Tomorrow is Halloween, so the fun will pick up full force soon enough. One more to go, people. This is not a drill.