3 out of 5

Directed by: James Isaac

No, it’s not a great movie.  But director James Isaac and scripter Todd Farmer deserve credit for ending the initial solo Jason run of films on an uptick, as well as successfully injecting the entry with the kind of awareness ‘Jason Goes to Hell’ faked in its opening 10 or so minutes, and finally finding the right tone of humor that doesn’t undermine our killer’s presence.  Though forgetting (a la part 9) to explain how we got from there to here, Jason X brings back some of the superficial details from the previous flick (black blood, flesh regeneration… which is maybe a reimagined version of his let’s-not-talk-about-it body-swapping ability) to justify Voorhee’s current standing as a captive of some kind of official-looking operation, with the intention of freezing Jason as any method of killing him hasn’t been discovered.  But then someone important walks in and makes the classic horror mistake of pursuing something questionable for money, declaring that Jason will not be frozen but instead, studied.  In a delightful bit of get-to-the-point scripting, Jason escapes and slaughters the important guy and his followers in the first of several sparse and shadowed sets Isaac will employ in the flick.  Jason, in pursuit of another victim, wanders into the cryogenic chamber that was intended to freeze him, and that victim – played by Lexa Doig – hits the freeze button, then maybe gets locked into the chamber as well.  It happens.  La la la, Jason on board a space ship 400 years past the start of the flick, unfrozen by an opportunistic teacher (Jonathan Potts) and his many attractive, barely clothed students.  Sex and slaughter happens as expected in what’s essentially a retread of Alien/s, but the cast commits to the cheeky tone well and the script doesn’t try to overplay the stereotypes of the genre more than necessary.  Most importantly: Jason looks cool again.  No more water-logged Voorhees from part 8 or the rarely seen mutant from part 9, just the hulking Mr. Hodder… whose eyes we can finally see consistently, and they look damned angry.  The kills aren’t all that inventive, and budget limitations make the stalking sets pretty boring and the CGI pretty lame, but certain design aspects that were given more time look cool, and the ending is a pretty hilarious take on the “he never stops” chase sequence.

It understandably took a while for the right creative team to understand how to effectively move past the rut the last few entries had fallen into.  It’s too bad we couldn’t have had a couple more flicks in this same vein that could’ve taken that balance and shaped it up even more.