I have a confession to make. This is actually my second favourite of all the Friday the 13th movies (after Jason Lives, that is). It's very much a guilty pleasure movie, since when I try to look at it objectively I can see that it isn't really that good at all, but there's just something about it that makes me grin whenever I'm watching it. It's probably the movie's sense of humour - something we hadn't properly seen since Part VI, that does it.
So, Jason X. In the not-too distant future, Jason Voorhees is a prisoner at the Crystal Lake Research Facility (let's not think too hard about how they captured him this time, although my own personal canon involves a naked co-ed on a stick). Everything is going well until the military (led by none other than David Cronenberg in one of his rare acting roles) turn up to take Jason so they can make super soldiers out of him. Jason escapes, everyone dies bar one scientist and she and Jason get cryogenically frozen together. 455 (or so) years later, a school space trip comes to visit the now-abandoned Earth, finds the two of them and decides to take them back for examination/saving/selling off to a museum (depending on various characters). So of course it doesn't take long for Jason to thaw out (rather wonderfully, the movie cuts the scenes of him coming out of the cryosleep with scenes of two teenagers getting it on, giving the strong implication that Jason's nookie senses are tingling and that's what's waking him up) and he's soon back to his old slaughtering ways.
I still can't defend it completely, however, no matter how much of a guilty pleasure the film is for me. At about one-third of the way through Jason X suddenly decides it wants to be just like Aliens, with Jason in the role of the xenomorph. Not only is this jarringly out of place with the rest of the movie, which is essentially stalk-and-slash in space, but the whole section looks as though it was shot at a LaserQuest of the Future, including the space marines' armour. Another glaring flaw is the character of android Kay-Em 14. Oh, for most of the film she's inoffensively fine, but then near the end she gets a "combat upgrade" and more or less turns into a video game character, except with worse dialogue. It makes me want to break something.
If you can manage to ignore those parts, however, you can manage to enjoy the film. It's got moments of pitch-black humour, and some really quite amusing throwaway lines ("Hey, you're lucky you weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. Hell, we were beating each other with our own severed limbs."). It's also got by far the highest body count of any of the Friday the 13th films - 28 kills is the "official" count, but if you factor in the people who were on the space station that Jason inadvertantly makes the ship Grendal plough through, that's got to put him in at least triple digits, and most likely quadruple. And finally, it has the kill that just about everyone remembers - Jason beating a camper to death with another camper trapped in a sleeping bag. It's an amusing little touch that's greatly appreciated.
(Also, despite what some claim, Jason X does in fact fit in with the incresingly convoluted timeline of the Friday the 13th movies, although we'll have to wait till tomorrow's movie to see how.)
(...Wait, is that Optimus Prime doing the voiceover?)
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