Freddy vs. Jason – No, you mean Jason X – Not yet, guy, bear with me! Freddy vs. Jason became New Line’s central Friday/Elm Street focus, once those two franchises had reached their own individual ends. Let’s assume this is around ’94, ’95 now, as that long-rumored crossover enters legitimate preproduction – and gets stalled there for another nine years or so. Ignoring for today the Freddy vs. Jason-specific issues, American horror changed during the hibernation of its two foremost slasher franchises. Scream, itself a Wes Craven joint like quite a few Elm Streets rejiggered the slasher template for an audience needing acknowledged irony in their bubblegum horror. Ignoring these details as well for another day, the late ‘90s were a bad time to be a horror icon. Those who persisted in this new environment did so by adopting certain traits of the nouveaux slasher, notably its jaded, unserious humor. Hence disparate interpretations such as Halloween H20 and Bride of Chucky.
And also Jason X, which I promised we’d get to. Growing sick as the Freddy vs. Jason delays neared the new millennium, renewed Friday producer Sean S. Cunningham (director of the first, back on board only since New Line’s Jason Goes to Hell) decided that, come development hell or high water, there will be another Friday the 13th movie, damn it. Lacking a crossover, this is a desperate, mercenary gambit, justified in order to keep the public up-to-date on the complex mythos of Jason Voorhees. Because “has a machete, kills people” is such a difficult concept, it takes ten entries to flesh out.
The Friday continuity is completely shot to hell at this point. Following up on the vomitous mumbo-jumbo of Jason Goes to Hell would be bad enough, but the accursed Jason X team didn’t even know whatever form a potential Freddy vs. Jason would take. So, to avoid cockblocking the franchise’s other prospect, Jason X takes place after it…though that rather presumes Jason survives his tangle with Freddy – Yeah! As though they’d actually kill one of ‘em!
So Jason X, amidst its many other sins, is a sci-fi horror sequel.
Conceptually, the notion is to push Jason (Kane Hodder, in his final turn) into another unfamiliar setting – because we saw just how well that worked out in Jason Takes Manhattan! The Jason X production must’ve been clouded by some mighty brain-deadening gases, because it seems no one involved realized the first rule of horror sequels: Once you go to space, you’ve officially shat the bed. This is late in the game, even, with the negative examples of Hellraiser: Bloodline, Leprechaun 4, Critters IV – yeah, the others are all somehow Part Four. So to the inevitable flaws of being an unwanted tenth Friday the 13th released wildly out of sequence, Jason X: In Space compounds them by adding the inevitable flaws of an under-budgeted SyFy Original wannabe Aliens clone. Add all this badness up, and we have something which rivals the mighty A New Beginning as the worst of the franchise.
We open at…some point in human history, at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. (This date becomes a big point of contention later; no matter, the “Research Facility” thing already executes credibility.) Jason Voorhees is a medical test subject, awaiting cryostatis. Oh, you’re just taunting me with your inanities, aren’t you, Jason X? Up saunters David Cronenberg, whose scanners indicate Jason’s history of violence grants him a dead zone ability to brood new tissue. Um…translation: Jason’s evident immortality makes him an attractive guinea pig for scientists, who essentially wish to do the stupidest things possible with him. Inarguable Final Girl scientist Rowan (high school dropout Lexa Doig, forever wedded to the sci-fi genre) is the lone generic voice of reason, whose warnings will undoubtedly be ignored, affording Jason’s latest rampage.
Actually…Jason just escapes even before Cronenberg can do his meddling. For no given reason. That is, this would’ve happened, even under Rowan’s “watchful” guidance. Then Jason kills, well, everybody – something like five people in as many seconds, to my complete desensitization – excepting Rowan, of course, who lures the big lug into that cryogenic freezing chamber from “Futurama,” Austin Powers, Demolition Man…well, a whole boatload of sci-fi, basically, and ain’t it telling the rest are all comedies? She freezes Jason, which was her Nobel Prize-winning plan all along (to preserve him until better Jason-killing technologies are developed). But Rowan displays characteristic thoughtlessness, as she celebrates by standing too close to the chamber. Hence Jason shoves his machete out into her (machetes simply litter research facilities). Hull breached, they both freeze, taking us too…
The Future. Getting to the point, it’s unquestionably 2455 A.D. Earth is now a barren, inhospitable wasteland, like Nevada. It would be fruitless to pause at each cliché detail other sci-fi movies do better, so let’s get this out of the way now: Jason X steals from every good sci-fi movie ever.
Anyway, a team of…um…let’s say space archeologists uncover corpsickles Jason and Rowan, engage in some buffoonery to pad time, and carry both of them off to their mothership, the Grendel – a “Beowulf” reference in a Friday the 13th catches you completely off guard. Okay, this dippy scenario demands a little more exploration. The immobile Jason has, through his unerring good luck, fallen into the clutches of space teenagers, evidently students on a fieldtrip making a desperate, random investigation of Earth. And leaving immediately, simply because plot mechanics dictate the rest must occur on a single spaceship which resembles a Canadian warehouse – you know, ‘cause Alien did it. And like any fieldtrip, this one is chauffeured by a platoon of Space Marines™. Not arbitrary at all!
Actually, the Grendel is jam packed with worthless body count padders, most of them so blatant they don’t even get the sort of cursory characterization of even your typical Friday victim. (Thank you, writer Todd Farmer, and thanks for essaying one of those nonentities on screen, so I have a roided-out, wrestling-obsessed meathead to connect to the name.) With so many asses on display, it behooves us to focus solely upon those who matter (for a rare use of the word “matter”):
Leading the fieldtrip is Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts – voice of Link in the TV series!). Plot utility drives his characterization, which is “desperate.” Short up for space cash, Lowe shanghais our man Voorhees to take on the traveling space carnival circuit, apparently. (He has similar plans for the now-revived Rowan, perhaps including space prostitution.) These sorts of mental leaps, so sudden and arbitrary, characterize the whole of Farmer’s script, and transcend comment.
Sharing command with Lowe is Space Marine™ Sergeant Brodski (Peter Mensah – whoa, I just wrote “Mensa” in a Friday write-up!). We know the tough-as-nails military hard-ass type. We know even the type’s specific manifestations when played by a black man. That’s Brodski, Polish name and all, with no variation on the usual template.
And because it’s an Alien/Aliens clone, we’ll need our milk-spewing android. That’ll be KM-14 (Lisa Ryder, yet another Canadian sci-fi TV actor). Apart from Hodder, naturally, count her as the film’s MVP, for there’s at least an iota of playfulness here, the sense that somewhere the sci-fi premise is being taken advantage of.
But at least by Friday terms, these are unusual personalities – even if we’ve traded off for the decades-tired clichés of a different genre as a result. The rest are – mostly – the same teenaged targets as always, summable by their token role.
The Nerd: Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell, of “Stargate Atlantis”)
The Black One: Waylander (Derwin Jordan)
The Bitchy Whore Slut Tramp: Janessa (Melyssa Ade, of Canada)
There are other expected standards, like the Stoner or the Horny Couple, but who cares. You’d think with centuries gone by, and a science fiction milieu, malignant personality flaws would have a chance to evolve, unless it’s a conscious choice to replay the choppy elements of before. Given an ostensible tongue-in-cheek attitude, which tries most limply for Scream but doesn’t even meet this series’ own Jason Lives, that’s possible. Actually, so much of Jason X is founded upon a fundamental misunderstanding of irony – the idea that snark excuses whatever crappiness precedes it. This excuses the filmmakers from whatever sloppiness they wish to commit, but the result is just contemptuous.
Okay, this is boring, and it’s taking forever. Jason knows this. So he unthaws, and murders somebody.
Even the worst Friday can have its moment, and the way Jason does in a talentless model with delusions of acting is really rather promising. A nitrogen-freezing/head-smash combo is novel (let’s ignore the foolishness of an open sink full of liquid nitrogen). It suggests a series of sci-fi-themed kills to come. But Jason instantly finds himself a space machete (!!?), and we know it’ll just be business as usual from here on out. Sigh!
Director Jim Isaac (even after reviewing his IMDb page, I’ve no idea who he is) has no idea how to stage an effective horror visual – The whole of Jason X is visually cluttered with semi sci-fi bric-a-brac, ugly angles, and so much other aping. Tone is a big problem. After Scream, it wasn’t “cool” to be a straight-up horror movie – something of a defense mechanism in a Puritanical film world which disallows the usual Friday ultra-violence. There’s that futile irony, which undercuts any chance of seriousness. But there’s never enough levity to call this a comedy.
Rather, Isaac employs a sub-W.S. Anderson, sub-Kurt Wimmer approach, a “kitchen sink” filmmaking which steals random moments from wherever. The Alien movies, that’s a given. The Terminator, Predator, Blade Runner, ilk such as that, that goes with the Aliens territory. (There’s no excuse for CGI liquid metal in 2002 to look worse than it did in T2.) The Matrix, that’s because no turn-of-the-millennium action movie could do otherwise – And why is a Friday sequel again trying to be an action movie?! Seriously! There’s actually a phenomenal lack of depth to the genre cribbing going on here, as though all involved could barely be arsed to know the very genre they’re dabbling in. Which leaves a “Doom” video game reference as the subtlest thing on display, to show you the upper end of Jason X’s brainwave.
Oh, stupidity permeates! Jason’s presence isn’t a secret for long, as he’s mostly given up on his old corpse-hiding ways, so artful he used to be. Now it’s a direct fight! And it’s usually only the cast’s own foolishness which makes Jason a threat. First, there’s that tactical error of sending all the Space Marines™ after him at once – the result of everybody again ignoring Rowan’s warnings, for as little good as she does. So grant a ten minute glorified stalking sequence, wherein Jason ends the Marines’ lives in unimaginative ways – excepting one impaling-via-screw. That yields a typical sarcastic response: “He’s screwed.” That’s a joke, son, you’re supposed to laugh, now.
Actually, here’s a problem with first showing your villain killing on a per-second basis. All he does afterwards inevitably pales. And when the unarmed civilian teenagers later give Jason more trouble than the Space Marines™, well, it’s hard to credit any consistency to Jason’s actions – the one element which should be a complete cakewalk.
Now…in Alien, when fighting the xenomorph proved unfeasible, what did the Nostromo’s crew do? They escaped on the space shuttle, and exploded their mothership. By Ridley Scott’s control of tone and pace, it was the climax by this stage. It’s merely halfway through Jason X when its survivors ought to ponder a similar tactic. (They do, eventually, but far too late.) Instead, the moron brigade holes up in the same single laboratory set where half the movie occurs, and just…waits. (Rowan, for her part, just points and makes a constipation face.)
The idea is that they’ll dock with the space station Solaris – And you can’t honestly think a Friday the 13th is referencing a Tarkovsky movie now, can you?! – where a new batch of interchangeable Space Marines™ shall try what’s already failed. Idiocy! This doesn’t quite work out, as Jason (sensing where plot needs him most) now kills the pilot – off screen, damn it! And, oh, with this one guy dead, Grendel destroys Solaris!
Okay, hold up! Are you telling me there’s no failsafe one amulti-acre spaceship if its pilot dies?! Are you doubly telling me a space station ten times larger can then be destroyed, because its designers had the complete and utter retardation to design it out of glass?! Apart from justifying a truly abysmal CGI/model effect, this sequence exists solely to up Jason’s alleged body count by untold thousands. This is even worse than the “death by dialogue” which does in some 40 or so people in Jason Takes Manhattan. With smartness, Jason wouldn’t even be a problem!
Upon philosophical meditation, it’s questionable who the dumbness more greatly affects: the fictional characters or the filmmakers. There are other fundamental mistakes in Jason X which suggest Isaac, Farmer et al simply honestly believe this is how space travel goes down. Let’s at last open up the scab that is this movie’s chronology. Now…we know it’s now 2455. KM (or Kay-Em, if you prefer – God, they ripped off Star Wars!!!) says Rowan has been asleep for “4.55 centuries” – that is to say, 455 years. Using the basic arithmetic I learned in first grade, that means the opening scene takes place in 2000 – the year Jason X was made. (Never mind Jason Goes to Hell takes place in 2004 – I swear it does.) What bungs this all up is Rowan’s insistence that they first tried executing Jason in 2008 (continuity error!), or the freezing chamber wasn’t invented until 2010 (continuity error!). That’d be like if a Back to the Future film suddenly forget Marty’s from 1985! For a movie with (forward-only) time travel, this is an enormous problem.
While we’re on Rowan…She is new to this future. She is the only one familiar with Jason. She really should be our access character, and the key to battling Jason when all else fails. She is not. Rather, the obvious notion (escape shuttles, finally) is her idea, of all people’s – this makes not the sense. Oh, and when they do start using Voorheesian knowledge to counter Mr. Machete, it’s Tsunaron who does so. These are mistakes, people, though it isn’t clear if everyone is just that stupid, or if it’s that damned “irony” thing again.
Okay, you’re saying, there are a lot of problems with this Friday the 13th. We’ve come to expect – nay, accept that. We want it. Fine. But you wait. Jason X is about to go “full retard.”
Tsunaron gives KM an “upload” – a tasteful way to say “I just fucked this robot.” This somehow transforms the android into a pale copy of The Matrix’s Trinity – that is, we’ve another variation on Resident Evil’s Alice on our hands, wearing the leather of approximately sixteen cows. And now outfitted with the unscavenged weapons they just had lying about the ship, KM treats Jason (or “slappy,” as they now take to calling the lumbering undead psychopath) to a royal beatdown. Guns – the same guns the Space Marines™ used to no effect – now hurtle Jason helplessly down hallways. And despite Rowan’s insistence that 21st century weaponry – even nukes – have zero effect upon Mr. Voorhees, well, with a bazooka KM blows Jason’s head up. I cannot accept this.
There’s plenty of movie to go, and even with Jason dead (hah!), our beloved heroes (hah!) are not out of danger. The Grendel is rapidly falling apart, because it was designed in the shape of a goddamn catamaran! [I scream loudly into the void for a good, long while.] Like a spaceborne Irwin Allen disaster, the remaining doofuses set about fixing this problem – by exploding half of the ship. When all else fails, blow something up.
Oh, but Jason ain’t dead. He landed on the nanobot body replicating machine – the same one which resurrected Rowan (and no one else amongst the countless recent corpses – untapped potential!), which no one no notices Jason is upon. But resurrected he is, with sickeningly horrid CGI. And the computer technology of 2455, in its wisdom, crossbreeds Jason with an ersatz Terminator, creating…Mecha Jason!
Michael Jackson? No, that would be scary. Mecha Jason, a complete abortion of concept and design and function. Made “better,” reborn as a stabbing robot, Mecha Jason kills…nobody.
Oh, sure, people still die for a little while more, but through oh-so-deadly foolishness. Mecha Jason seems perfectly content to stand utterly still, and let the nearby morons freak out. This is beyond even the off screen teleporting in Jason Takes Manhattan; this is a psycho-killer’s nascent laziness come to full form. At least now Jason is immune to KM’s old Kate Beckinsale routine, for as rubbery as his metal looks.
The morons run. Mecha Jason creates a hull hole (heh). Janessa earns the same under-icky death as befell the humalien in Alien: Resurrection. And with that one death, the decompression…ceases. Yeah, it just stops, like an airplane leveling out at lower altitude. Explosions in space are acceptable (usually) as a movie commonplace, but this shall not stand, man!
Well, most of the expendable meat is now deceased, though points off to Jason for slowing down. Rowan and a couple of others I don’t care to name escape in a new shuttle pod (not the one they’d originally intended), and the Grendel explodes – So we get the Alien ending one way or another, despite all the hiccups in between. That’s just the narrative’s climax, and it’s so desultory, it barely registers until you suddenly realize the movie is over, and life can now resume. The climax to stupidity, however, comes a little sooner, and is a marvelous example of complete tonal implosion.
Tsunaron (not Rowan) creates a holographic projection of Camp Crystal Lake, circa 1980 – a ready-to-use file all computers have in 2455. The utterly fake resulting forest set (it resembles an REI) confounds small-brained Mecha Jason. (Space camp.) And let the Screamization of Friday the 13th commence! A duo of topless bimbo holograms plies Mecha Jason with a hateful summation of the franchise’s clichés: “We love premarital sex!” This is not wise, undercutting what little dignity this franchise enjoys. Besides, there are just so many arbitrary, strange words in my summation! A robot zombie? Ironic holograms? It’s almost impossible to chart how we got to this point, when the series started at “vengeful mother.”
Oh, and if destroying the unkillable Jason has been a challenge before, what of it now that he’s Mecha Jason? Nothing short of burning up in the atmosphere of Earth II (the sequel) will suffice, complete with a witless attempted Dr. Strangelove reference. Ah, but immediately after that, we get the inevitable sequel tag – the dumb promise that nothing can stop Mecha Jason’s future rampage upon Space Earth.
It’s the most deluded of wishful thinking to assume a direct sequel could come of this. Through some inexplicable Cunningham-based line of thought, they did make an effort to extend the turgid Jason X line, with assorted cheapjack dime store novels. That adds to the other young adult Jason novels New Line churned out simultaneously, for want of actual movies. I provide many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many links, as proof of this ridiculousness.
Cinematically, though, Jason X wasn’t just unworthy of sequels, it was unworthy of distribution – and that’s even with the highest budget of any solo Friday. They made this thing in Canada in 2000, then shelved it. Well, Sean S. Cunningham, when you make an unwanted movie out of frustration, that’s what happens.
Ironically (maybe – stupid confused word), Jason X was only saved by Freddy vs. Jason. That one was given a 2003 release date. So with its production ramping up, Jason X finally invaded the world in 2002. It flopped, hard, making the least money of the series – and factoring in inflation, that’s even worse! Such failure isn’t because Jason was unloved or forgotten – they’d better hope not, with Freddy vs. Jason looming – but because audiences can sense sweaty desperation when they see it. And that’s what Jason X is, a terrible, hell-borne idea inexplicably given life – and punished for its hubris.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Friday the 13th (1980)
• No. 2 Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
• No. 3 Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
• No. 4 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
• No. 5 Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
• No. 6 Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
• No. 7 Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
• No. 8 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
• No. 9 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
• No. 11 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 12 Friday the 13th (2009)
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