So I finally got around to watching the latest offering to the Friday the 13th series, Jason X. He's come a long way from running around with a bag on his head, I tell ye that. As expected, this film is utterly awful, but I wonder. It bears all the hallmarks of 'self parody', despite the extremely serious tone of the blurb on the back of the box (promising "NERVE-RENDING TERROR"). So, if I were to take the piss out of this film, who's the idiot? Me for thinking they weren't actually playing for laughs, or them for thinking the exact same thing?

Speaking of blurbs, I found it interesting that the quote on the front of the box is simply "FANTASTIC" and three dots, attributed to the News of the World. As any media student will tell you, that could so easily have been taken out of context. Perhaps the full quote is "I find the fact that this film was actually commissioned to be simply fantastic", or "This film is fantastic, if by 'fantastic' you mean 'gay'". But then, that sounds a bit too clever for the News of the World.

Anyway, the film begins, after a series of wholly appropriate trailers for mostly romantic comedies. It's 2010, and Jason has been captured (figure that one out). They keep him in a big research centre where the staff consists of two people and no-one ever turns the lights on. They've tried every possible way of executing him, all to no avail, as he seems to be able to regenerate lost or damaged tissue.

Here's something stupid: apparently, they tried electrocution, gas, lethal injection, firing squad, and nothing worked. Then, and I quote, "we even tried hanging him". Yeah, bullets didn't work, but surely not even unkillable Jason can escape the deadly noose of death! Judging by the way they said it, they were all really disappointed when it didn't work.

Finally they decide to freeze him cryogenically, but some government official decides he's too scientifically valuable, and is about to take him away against the wishes of one of the two people at the research centre, a beautiful female scientist. I'm sure we're all familiar with the equation:

Beautiful female scientist = good, government official flanked by soldiers = bad.

And here's the same equation for C++ programmers.

beautiful female scientist == good;
government official flanked by soldiers == bad;

So anyway, you don't need me to tell you that Jason kills all the soldiers and the government official, so Doctor Hot Chick lures him into the basement where they both get cryogenically frozen. 450 years later, they're found by a bunch of students and taken up onto their spaceship academy place. Apparently, the selection process for Space Academy includes a swimsuit competition, as they are all hot. Actually, since the professor who runs the place is banging at least one of them, that swimsuit thing wouldn't surprise me.

They bring Jason and Doctor Hot on board and use nanites to rebuild the latter, as Jason is apparently too far gone. Not so! He don't need no cissy nanites! He gets up and kills the extremely hot scientist in the revealing outfit who was poking him. Then, somewhat predictably, a lot of people get slit up a treat. The students and Dr. Hot all seal themselves up in the lab while the overconfident security staff try to take down J.V. with their guns, splitting up and forgetting to turn the lights on as usual. About fifteen minutes into the chase, Dr. Hot suddenly realises that that's never worked before and won't now. All I can say is, if she doesn't have ADD, there must have been something really interesting happening off-camera to distract her. Like a meteor shower or the second coming of Christ or something.

Lo and behold, all the soldiers are dead and Jason comes after the students. They make for the nearest space station, but then Jason kills the pilot and they plough into it instead. Fortunately the ship was sturdy enough to survive, unlike the space station. Space stations are evidently made of cardboard in the future. Imagine the ship was a big knife and the spaceship was made of warm butter. It was just like that.

Anyway, some bright spark has the idea of escaping on the ship's only escape shuttle (cue sound of cinema audience slapping their foreheads), so they all immediately split up to perform various tasks before they escape (cue another sound of cinema audience slapping their foreheads). Jason picks off a couple of others while an idiot male student decides now is an ideal opportunity to shag his pet woman robot. I kid ye not. Then the emotional girl climbs into the escape shuttle and launches it without any of the others. She forgot the docking clamp and the cardboard escape shuttle enjoys the same fate as the cardboard space station. Thanks to her, an entire cinema audience have sore foreheads.

Pervert robot fucker (which I believe is what he puts on his CV) then introduces Jason to his robot, who has apparently been transformed into a gun-toting indestructible warrior woman by his magical cock juice. She blows Jason to bits, but those silly nanites take it upon themselves to rebuild him as an unstoppable robot monster. Oh, for silly luck! The rest of the film basically involves the heroes running away from him and towards some ship that has come to rescue them. At around about this point is the highlight of the film, when they create an artificial lakeside setting with the ship's equivalent of a holodeck and get two hologram girls in panties to distract him by letting themselves get horribly killed. And let me tell you, ten years from now those two actresses are going to look back upon this role and make their foreheads as sore as possible, before pulling themselves together and concentrating on making Big Macs.

Let's get those ratings down!

Fingers In Ears Rating: 4/10
Really Jason X is trying to be more like one of those sci-fi survival thrillers like Sphere than traditional horror, but I suppose I should welcome a change of pace after my slightly overblown ranting towards the end of my Halloween Resurrection review.

Similarity To Last Film Rating: 3/10
With all the more recent Jason films, the producers always want you to forget what happened in the last one completely. There's no reference to Jason going to Hell here, and no doubt there will be little mention of space stations in the upcoming Jason Vs Freddy.

Blood And Guts Rating: 8/10
Mostly just bloodstained knives appearing from people's tummies, but there are a few severed heads and limbs that make uncredited appearances.

Get Nekkid And DIE! Rating: 10/10
Self parody, oversexed teens, blah blah blah.

Hateful Heroes Rating: 9/10
Their dialogue was completely shitty, but I don't think it really mattered, as none of them could act worth a damn anyway. I think that means they cancel each other out.

Overall Horror Movie Sequel Rating: 7/10
Jason has big knife. Jason hates pre-marital sex. Oh! Jason killed oversexed teens! Ho ho ho! I laugh!

Quality Rating: 55%

One-Word Summary: "Vacuum"

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