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Ethos Movie Reviews
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
1.5 out of 5.0
Now Playing: Jason X (2002)
Topic: Horror
     

     The year is 2455 A.D., Earth has become far too polluted for human life to inahbit it. This once mighty planet, full of life, is reduced to endless storms of dust and debris, but on one faithful day, a team of scientists venture back to Earth and find two humans cryogenically frozen inside an old science facility. The two subjects are brought onto a spaceship for further study - one of which is a woman who is believed to be a viable candidate for revival, the other, a giant sized man in a hockey mask, is left for further study. The transition from cryogenic stasus to full revival was a fairly smooth one for the young lady frozen for nearly 400 years. Alright, enough! Enough plot description. You know what happens, I know what happens, Jason Voorhees is the man in the hockey mask, and surprise-surprise, he magically wakes up and goes on a kill fest of typical slasher proportions. Did we need all that other exposition?

     This movie is horrendous! From beginning to end you'll be wondering why this terrible film was ever made. Jason X, the tenth installment on the historically poorly made series (aside from the first two films), is made nine years after its predecessor, Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday. My first question is what motivated any Hollywood studio to revive this dead horror franchise? Yes, the Friday The 13th franchise has been rather popular since its debut in 1980, but over the course of its run in the box office, the films quickly deterioated into the absurd and just plain rediculous gahbidge you would expect from a badly made horror flick. My second question is this: if you are going to revive this franchise, in an effort to reinvigorate it after nine years of silence, then why did you settle on this storyline? This incredibly tacky and just plain stupid concept of Jason killing people in outerspace in the year 2455! Really?! That's the best you can come up with?!

     Before I go any further, it should be stated that this film should not be taken seriously in any respect. Clearly, the storyline is awful, the acting for the most part is stiff and unconvincing, and the dialogue...yuck. There are tons of dumb cliches and idiotic lines spewing from all places, like that stupid teenager with the wily hair who gets his arm accidently chopped off by Jason's frozen machete only to get it back by the tricks of modern science - that character really irritated me. Speaking of cliches, there's the frisky teenagers who obviously get killed (or at least one of them does), and also the corrupt Professor. No horror flick is complete without a corrupt, evil-doing Professor who sidesteps issues and backstabs those around him at every turn. What motivated this Professor to turn so corrupt? Well, in one of the most unconvincing of delieveries of a line by any actor I've ever seen on film say, he said, "I need money." Wow. Just like that huh? Lame.

     To its credit though, Jason X does often mock the rediculousness that the franchise has come to been known for. So, fortunately, there are many times that this movie is self-aware of its cheesyness. For instance, toward the end, where we see Uber Jason - a half-human, half-genetically enhanced metallic Jason - he becomes trapped inside a simulation in an effort to distract Jason as the survivors escape. The simulation is that of Camp Crystal Lake where there are two scantilly clad girls who Jason ends up killing by slamming them about in their sleeping bags, which is paying a homage to Friday The 13th: Part VII's infamous "sleeping bag death scene." Also, there's this grizzled soldier aboard ship who gets stabbed in the back by Jason and he says, "you think a little poke in the ribs will stop this old dog?" Then Jason stabs him again, and he exclaims, "that ought to do it." A legitimately funny moment in the film, and its best line, but other than that, it's just plain silly.

     So, aside from a few blatantly silly lines, homages and parodies to and of previous installments of the franchise, Jason X is pretty unwatchable. I almost wanted to stop watching after the first half-hour because it was so terrible. It's a flick that should have favored the comedic side some more because it would have made it a lot more enjoyable. I feel that it wanted to be both scary and silly, but in the end, failed to achieve either, compromising both aspects. Clearly with the outrageous storyline, the film couldn't have been taken seriously at all, so, why not make it a little more funny then? Well, it's over now in any case. And to no one's surprise, more Jason movies have been released since this one.

     If you're a big time horror/slasher movie fan...I still don't think you'll like Jason X. Avoid it at all costs.

-Kurt L.

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Posted by ethosreviews at 12:01 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, 19 January 2010 12:08 PM EST
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