Kids just aren’t as scared of summer camp as they used to be. Maybe it’s because they aren’t even going away to summer camp unless forced to by the state.
Still, the nostalgia of summer camp is enough to help us begin our Summer Camp Slasher Series, a tribute to horror movies featuring campers, camp counselors, and the maniacs who murder them.
We continue this summer horror series with Jason X.
Movie: Jason X (2001)
Plot: After being cryogenically frozen for 445 years, Jason Voorhees is thawed out in space to wreck havoc on an unsuspecting crew of students and space marines. Because Freddy already went to Hawaii, so this was the next best thing.
Killer: Jason Voorhees, later new and ridiculously improved!
Critique: We complained, and New Line Cinema listened. It’s a bittersweet conclusion when talking about Jason X, but you have to take away positives when a film is generally a negative towards its franchise.
What New Line Cinema listened to from us was our horror (unintended) of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. This film tried to explain what we never wanted to explain: why Jason Voorhees was unkillable. So New Line Cinema did the best thing it could do: moved on with the Friday the 13th franchise as if Jason Goes to Hell never happened. no, he didn’t get dragged into hell by dirt demons. Instead, he’s been locked up in a government research facility. Not the greatest 180 disavowal of Jason Goes to Hell but, after that garbage, enough to keep the franchise limping along.
Jason X, aka “Jason In Space,” is a horror film caricature. It’s set in the future, in space, with women in clothes that make me look forward to those clothing fads. It has Jason going up against androids and space marines. It has him escaping death thanks to nanotech bugs that rebuild, and replace, lost tissue. It has him flying through space to keep the hunt alive. And that’s really it.
Jason X plays out more like an action movie than a horror movie. Sure, people die in horrible ways, but this is a Friday the 13th movie. It’s expected, so we are numbed by those scenes. Is it better than Jason Goes to Hell? Absolutely, but not by much.
Scene of Awesomeness: The VR campers asking Jason if he wants to partake in drinking beer, smoking pot, and engaging in a three-some before being sleeping-bagged to death is the high-point of Jason X because it is a homage to the past of the Friday the 13th franchise while not taking itself too seriously. Unfortunately, this scene takes way too long to get to in the film.
Scene of Ridiculousness: This film is “Jason In Space.” It’s already ridiculous, but turning Jason into a RoboCop / Wolverine hybrid killing machine jumps the shark jumping the shark.
Body Count: 26 (plus however many people were aboard that space station)
1 vague death leading to soldier switching places with a chained-up Jason
2 clubbings to the head
1 soldier thrown into friendly fire
1 chain choking
1 spearing by a vague metal object
1 death by being thrown through a steel door
1 unknown after counting up the bodies in the holding area and actual kills
1 head shoved into liquid nitrogen and then smashed into fragments
1 machete stabbing to the gut
1 body broken over the knee
1 head banged against a wall
1 neck snapped
1 impaling on a giant drill
1 throat cut
1 body cut in half by a space machete
1 impaling on a space anchor
1 machete hacking
An entire space station blown up with unknown casualties
1 off-screen beheading
1 electrocution
1 by space shuttle crash
1 blown up
1 sucked through a steel grating
Double sleeping bag kill (Awesomely Overkill Award)
1 burn-up falling through a planet’s atmosphere
2 pairs of breasts
1 pair of extremely artificial breasts
Actors/Actresses of Note: The biggest name in this cast is David Cronenberg, and he has a screen-time of about 50 seconds.
Quote: “Hey, you’re lucky you weren’t alive during the Microsoft conflict. Hell, we were beating each other with our own severed limbs.” – Crutch
Grade: D+
We complained, and New Line Cinema listened. It’s a bittersweet conclusion when talking about Jason X, but you have to take away positives when a film is generally a negative towards its franchise.
What New Line Cinema listened to from us was our horror (unintended) of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. This film tried to explain what we never wanted to explain: why Jason Voorhees was unkillable. So New Line Cinema did the best thing it could do: moved on with the Friday the 13th franchise as if Jason Goes to Hell never happened. no, he didn’t get dragged into hell by dirt demons. Instead, he’s been locked up in a government research facility. Not the greatest 180 disavowal of Jason Goes to Hell but, after that garbage, enough to keep the franchise limping along.
Jason X, aka “Jason In Space,” is a horror film caricature. It’s set in the future, in space, with women in clothes that make me look forward to those clothing fads. It has Jason going up against androids and space marines. It has him escaping death thanks to nanotech bugs that rebuild, and replace, lost tissue. It has him flying through space to keep the hunt alive. And that’s really it.
Jason X plays out more like an action movie than a horror movie. Sure, people die in horrible ways, but this is a Friday the 13th movie. It’s expected, so we are numbed by those scenes. Is it better than Jason Goes to Hell? Absolutely, but not by much.