Three out of
five stars
Running time: 93mins
Once upon a time horror films were visceral,
pant-wettingly scary one-offs and sequels were an
afterthought. There were no burger chain merchandising
tie-ins, collectible figures or three-picture
contracts. Mrs Voohees was the knife-wielding nut of
Friday the 13th and her son Jason merely her motive.
Not anymore. After the lean years of shoddy,
snigger-inducing sequels (lest we forget Jason Takes
Manhattan) horror became self-reflexive, post-modern
and cool. So what’s a mask-wearing psycho to do when
it comes to his tenth cinematic outing? Get ironic and
go into space, of course.
Human Popsicle
This time around our Jason (Hodder) has been
cryogenically frozen during a spat in the 21st century
with perky scientist Rowan (Doig) who has also made
herself a popsicle in the process. Fast forward to
2455 when humans have colonised space and merely take
field trips to earth. During one such trip a group of
students unearth the icy bodies of Rowan and Jason and
load them on-board their spaceship to thaw out.
Horny Teens
Naturally no-one listens when defrosted Rowan tells
them Jason’s dangerous (his sartorial choice of hockey
mask and machete might have been an indication) and
before you can say Aliens Jason is loose, various
crew members are wandering down dark corridors alone
and horny teens are meeting inventively gruesome ends.
There is nothing original or skilful here but take
heart in the fact that the filmmakers have got be
extracting the Michael. Why else would the effects be
so shoddy, the screenplay so derivative and the script
so wilfully useless? It’s so wonderfully rubbish,
campy and frankly, un-scary, that it’s rather like a
panto version of Friday the 13th. A youth listening to
a Walkman fails to hear Jason’s approach, an android
(Ryder) blasts old hockey mask away screaming “Who’s
your Momma?!” (gedditt?) and a grasping scientist
quite literally gets iced. Go on, you just can't fail
to smile.
Although purists will argue this is no way to treat
such an icon of the slasher genre, Jason X does
exactly what it says on the tin - offers
unpretentious, no-brainer, disposable entertainment
with a bum-friendly running time. A guilty pleasure.