Jason X -- 2001 -- R

How to start. You may remember a Kubrick film that has two titles: a short one and a long one. It was called Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb. It was often spoken of with both titles together, and in all likelihood., it's all one long title. I was considering this little debacle I just watched and think it could be double titled as well. Jason X or How To Be Slaughtered By A Psychopathic Undead Killer on a Spaceship.

I understand the point of this whole series, and I want to be clear that I'm not knocking the premise. The point here is to squeeze as many kills into as short a timeframe as possible. It's also the point to make them creative and gruesome at the same time, and in many ways, this one lives up to the Friday the 13th mantra. The part I always complain about in these is the stupidity of the characters and the contrivance of the plot. These things are still going strong in this tenth installment.

This time, they got a bit creative and just admitted that we only want to see the hack-n-slash, so screw continuity. Jason is locked up in a secure facility (ha-ha) pending his cryogenic freezing until they can figure out what to do with him. Well, he escapes his bonds and kills a lot of people before he is frozen solid along with the woman who was in charge (she gets stabbed for being stupid). Four hundred fifty-five years later, a team finds the facility intact and takes the woman and Jason to their spaceship since Earth (now referred to as Earth One) is a dusty hulk of a former planet. If you just asked how the freezer stayed on for 455 years, just keep telling yourself: it's only a movie... it's only a movie...

So the next sequence in the film actually makes perfect narrative sense, and works well within its framework. They take the woman and Jason to the ship. I mean, he's been cryogenically frozen for 450 years, and they have no idea who he is, so logically, unless they take steps to revive him, he's no threat at all...right? Well, wrong, of course. The undead monster comes to life and wipes out the immediate unfortunate in yet another creative way.

It is at this point that we have difficulty suspending our disbelief as nearly everyone on this ship is a "pretty" person. There are a handful of regular looking people, but lots of pretty teens, including most of the grunts. I didn't know model-quality girls went into the military to be grunts. Makes those co-ed barracks that much more interesting, I guess. Everyone wants to be in their platoon all of a sudden.

Anyway, after a couple of people are killed, they decide there is a hostile on board and go after him. Still making sense here. Jason wipes out the grunts and some others who don't know what they're dealing with, leaving a handful of survivors who now know what they're up against. This also leads us into easily the dumbest part of the entire film.

Now we're in F13 territory where instead of the standard movie question of "What's the worst that could happen?", we seem to be asking, "What's the easiest way to get this person killed?" They split up constantly, allowing them one on one time with the man. They get a shuttle ready to go and when Jason attacks someone on the bridge, shuttle girl flips out and shuts everyone out of the shuttle. I'm wondering how far this contrivance can possibly be pushed, and they show us. She tries to launch out on her own, but wait! the fuel line is still attached. Well, it must be clamped hard cause she rammed herself right into the bottom of the ship. I could not take this seriously. I laughed. I'm still shaking my head.

So they get the jump on the big guy eventually getting a big enough gun to blow him to pieces...but wait, he landed on that fix-em-up table in the lab. Good thing the lab is smashed to pieces and nothing wor- oh wait, it turned itself on. Hey, it's performing a self-diagnostic or something. It's running by itself! It's fixing Jason up all by itself. It resolved its own error message. Wow, that is one smart computer. I guess in the future, computers will be able to resolve troubleshooting step number one on their own: Is it on? Now we have...Uber-Jason! Did you laugh? Good.

Uber-Jason manages to get himself into a part of the ship, they're cutting away because it has a leak or something. They want to blow up the walkways and seal up the main portion of the ship. Well, Jason is on a walkway when they go boom, and as can be expected, he can survive and navigate the vacuum of space. Here's where disbelief is blown again.

Jason, of course, punches through the hull of the room everyone is hiding in causing the obligatory vacuum suction into space, by which another pretty teen meets their fate. I'm seeing where this is going and thinking it should be all right for them, since Jason will be fighting a constant uphill battle to get anywhere in the ship since he created a hull breach and everytime he tears open a door, he'll be fighting against the atmospheric pressure rushing out. You see, our heroes did the smart thing in running from the Uber-Dude and sealing every single door behind them. This would seal each compartment creating the scenario I described with the pressure. Well, I guess once you get far enough into the ship, the pressure equalizes enough with the outside air and you can tear open doors as you please...wait a minute. That's right, Jason tore through the doors and there was no atmospheric breach. Oh well.

Anyway, it's a film that gives you the chance to watch a  bunch of people get killed in some creative ways, and does have its element of fun if you don't think about it too hard. It's a nice turn from the former films and gives us an Alienesque story where everyone is trapped in space and has to deal with him without going anywhere. So, definitely not the worst of the series by any stretch. To be honest, in comparison with some of the other ones, it's actually one of the better installments.

To make the matter just a touch funnier...IMDB has it classified as a comedy as well as sci-fi and horror. They finally figured it out.