Jason X

2000
Starring
Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees/Uber-Jason
Lexa Doig as Rowan
Chuck Campbell as Tsunaron
Lisa Ryder as Kay-Em 14
Peter Mensah as Sgt. Brodski

Jason Voorhees returns for the tenth go around, this time, in space! Yes, in the grand tradition of Critters 4, Leprechaun 4, That one Hellraiser movie, Pigs in Space, and Dracula 3000, this horror franchise has to cut it’s teeth on the depths of space as well. And what lovely teeth they are. Teeth, that just look amazingly like Aliens. Heck, the screenwriter even named a character after a character from Alien, Dallas, who he played in this movie. Basically, we got Jason taking the place of facehuggers and tongue-stabbers. We get some neat bloody kills, some future technology jokes, a film that doesn’t take itself too seriously, a body count bigger than all the other films (I’m guessing the space station had a lot of people on it), a hot lead, Uber-Jason, lame puns, naked babes, and hot machete action. Let’s dive in!


I’m not one of those fanboys who argue about Kane Hodder being the definitive Jason and spent hours on the internet arguing that his dismissal from Freddy vs. Jason was blasphemy. In fact, I hadn’t even seen a Hodder Friday movie until after I saw Freddy vs. Jason. But I will say he plays a good giant unstoppable killing machine. In the not to distant future, aka 2010 (the film dates from 2000 so we’re halfway home already), Jason has been captured, and is now in the possession of Crystal Lake Research Facility. Why Crystal Lake has any citizens left at all is simply a failure on Jason’s part. He’s all chained up and ready for cryofreeze, which will stop the unstoppable killing machine ice cold. Psychologist Rowan is overseeing the operation, until the military shows up to claim Jason for their own, as they want to find out how his regenerative powers work. Rowan, played by the hot and spicy Lexa Doig, argues against this idiotic plan like everyone in the universe with a lick of common sense would, but as the plot requires a brief escape of Jason, she fails in her mission. The Army goes in, and pieces of them come out. Jason has busted loose, and the only person left is Rowan. She tries some running and some hiding, eventually entering the room where the cryochamber is kept. Jason follows, and somehow she manages to trap him inside and sets off the freezing process. Unfortunately for her, Jason stabs through the box and into her guts, taking her down as well. This also causes a cryo-leak, which the room solves by sealing the doors. So fortunately for her, she’s frozen as well.

We jump—-into the FUTURE! It’s the year 2455, Earth is a barren wasteland with no life, and the battery hasn’t gone dead in the cryo-room yet. Duracell really did their job well on that one! Some scavenging spacegoers are scrounging around for neat stuff on Dead Earth, and stumble across the chamber and the occupants. Because they need biospecimines, they take them back to the ship, especially since they believe they can revive Rowan. We learn that hockey was outlawed in 2024. Why? Probably because they had too many season-closing lockout strikes. One of the space guys named Azreal manages to get his arm sliced off when Jason’s frozen body falls forward, still clutching his machete. No matter, as reattaching arms is child’s play IN THE FUTURE! Nanobots do their thing, and soon Azreal is able to pat his head and rub his belly at the same time again, or he would if he wasn’t to remedial to learn in the first place. Rowan gets the nanobot procedure as well, and the film blows it’s chance for some gratuitous nudity at this point. Overall, the film will blow the possibility many times. All these actresses wasted by their clothes staying off the floor, makes me weep.

Rowan awakens and discovers it’s the future, everyone she knows is dead, Earth is dead, and Jason is in the next room. Rowan is a lot less shocked than you think people would be. Now, there is an inconsistency here, the year is given as 2455, but the robot girl says Rowan was frozen for 4.55 centuries, and that the cryomachine was made in 2010, which should make it 2465 at the earliest. So either centuries are now more than 100 years, years are longer (both of which are possible thanks to the revelation of Earth 2), or someone screwed up. The important question is, why am I making excuses for a math error in the ninth sequel of a horror franchise?

Before we go any further, I’m going to take a moment to rant about the names of the various characters, because I can. I hate trendy names with “clever” misspellings, such as Ashlee, Ashleigh, Ashl’e, Aishley, Eishly, Aschleighe, Atschlleiaygheie, or whatever Alphabet Soup combination moron parents will come up with to be trendy or unique. I recognize this is the future and some of the names have evolved (We don’t have many Winstons, Bartlebys, Columbines, or Tiberiuses nowadays) but they show a trend afoot. According to sources, some of the characters are named after players from the computer game Everquest, which explains some of the goofiness. However, names such as Janessa, Azrael, Tsunaron, Rowan, and Geko will one day enter the lexicon as established names, which will cause the future Janessas to name their children even more ridiculous names, such as “Bombastasaurus.” Actually, Bombastasaurus Johnson sounds like a cool name to have. I think I’ve been born too early now, there won’t be any Bombastasauruses for fifty years or so.

Back to the movie. So Rowan is awake, and Professor Lowe, leader of the exploratory ship, is itching to sell her or Jason to make millions of spacebucks. Somehow, Jason is still legendary in the future (must have been even more sequels!) so they are willing to pay top dollar for him. Professor Lowe is pretty happy, as well as happy that he’s nailing one of his students. Other characters also have sex, though the nudity is nonexistent. A giant waste. The doctor lady examining Jason is another waste, she’s perfect for a gratuitous sex scene but she just ends up getting killed when Jason awakes from some thawing, the hot teenage sex causing him to stir. Dr. Blonde Woman gets her head shoved in liquid nitrogen and then face shattered. Now we’re back to form! Jason visits the kids having hot teenage sex and carries away the male to be slaughtered immediately. By now, Professor Lowe and Rowan discover the mess in the medical lab and sound the alarm. The space marines are alerted! They are lead by Sgt. Brodski, played by Peter Mensah, who is the awesome tough-guy black Sarge character. His squad is full of doofuses who will soon be bloodstains, including one who’s packing a BFG!

Before the Marines are killed, we switch to the Holodeck where Azrael and some Space Marine guy are playing Doom 34532, and then interrupted by Jason. Jason kills their Holo-avatars, and then kills their real selves. Now it’s time for cat and mouse with Jason vs. the Space Marines. The allusions to Aliens are never more clear than in the next few sequences. The Space Marines get picked off one by one. We have a neck snapped, a guy thrown onto a drill (“He’s screwed!”), a throat is cut, a dude’s cut in half, and a girl is impaled on a giant swinging hook. Soon, Sgt. Brodski is all alone. During the whole fight, Rowan is screaming to have the men pulled back, just like Ripley was doing in Aliens. The movie couldn’t afford to build an armored car to smash through the spaceship in, so Brodski isn’t going to get rescued by Rowan. He’s stabbed, then stabbed again, and now there are no more Space Marines.

The ship is headed toward a space station, which will give them some more Space Marines, until then, Professor Lowe and his students, and Rowan, have to stay alive. It seems easy, until the pilot of the ship is killed by Jason and the ship crashes into part of the space station and keeps going. They can just turn around, right? Nope, the station explodes, killing everyone aboard. Now the teens, Rowan, and Prof are trapped on the ship with Jason, and the ship is missing a huge chunk of it’s hull. Jason heads toward the lab where they are holed up, and starts banging to get inside. It goes quiet, because Jason goes in the back way! Everyone runs, except for Prof. Lowe, who gives Jason his machete back. Then he gets a machete in the back!

The characters head to the shuttle, and Rowan notices Brodsky is still alive, but he wanders off. We get a quote from the old engineer Crutch shortly before he’s killed by electrocution stating “Lucky you weren’t alive during the Microsoft Conflict. Hell, we were beating each other with our own severed limbs.” Bill Gates, what have you brought? Scared teen Kinza (ugh!) freaks out and crashes the shuttle into the ship. So now everyone is trapped. Geek guy Tsunaron rebuilds the robot girl Kay-Em into an unstoppable killing machine as well. She beats the tar out of Jason, the shoots the tar out of him, and concludes by blowing the tar out of him with the BFG, taking out huge chunks of his body, including his head. Jason is down for the count. And much quicker than usual.

Now they only have to worry about the slowly disintegrating ship. They run a plan to blow off half the ship and hide in the rest until another ship comes along, which will be in a few minutes, but not quick enough to get there before the ship breaches without any action. Sgt. Brodsky is healed via nanobots, but a malfunction causes the nanobots to reactivate, and they come across Jason, and one thing leads to another, and Jason gets rebuilt into Uber-Jason. Yes, Uber-Jason. Part man, part machine, all non-stop killing monster! Uber-Jason surfaces just as the gang sets charges to blow off the damaged parts of the ship, and one of the teens blows himself up in doing so to save the rest. Uber-Jason is immune to being blown up, so he’s still coming. He smashes through the hull, causing a hole that sucks student Janessa into space (and thanks to a grill that falls over the hole, she enters space in ground beef mode.) The crew needs to delay a few minutes until the rescue craft docks, but Uber-Jason is slowly heading their way. A plan is hatched.

Holodeck equipment is used to create a fake Camp Crystal Lake. This confuses Uber-Jason at first, until he heads back to where the crew is. Another switch, and suddenly the movie gets interesting. Two hologram camp counselors appear, who quickly whip off their shirts and declare their love for premarital sex. I can’t tell you how often that’s happened to me. And just like Uber-Jason, I kill them by slamming their sleeping bags together. He heads to finish them off when Brodsky delays him. Rowan, Kay-Em’s head, and Tsunaron make it to the escape ship, while Brodsky and Jason fight each other as the ship rips apart and they fall into the atmosphere of Earth 2. They burn up, and Jason’s mask falls into a lake. Some idiotic teenagers notice the “falling star” and go to check it out. Hopefully they get killed as well. Yee-haw!

Well, that’s it. And all of this got pretty much ignored for the Freddy vs. Jason movie, so it’s like this never happened. Shame, because this movie is a festival of cheese. It’s the Packers fans of Friday sequels, not an easy task to obtain, as the competition is fierce. We do get some neat kills:

• Guard killed and hung like in Silence of the Lambs (but no face disguise)
• Guards killed
• General impaled
• Rowan stabbed
• Doctor’s head frozen and shattered
• stabbing
• Back broken
• Face smashed
• Neck snapped
• Flipped onto drill
• Throat cut
• Chopped in half
• Impaled on hook
• Stabbed Twice (not quite killed)
• Sliced to pieced in cockpit
• Everyone on Station Solaris is killed.
• Knifed after giving back knife
• Electrocuted
• Panics and crashes shuttle
• Blows self up
• Sucked into space through grill
• Two Holograms killed via sleeping bags
• Burnt in atmosphere fighting Jason
• Two idiot campers killed (hopefully)

The homages to other science fiction films is a nice touch, and add to the fun factor of the film. The film seemed to know that it wasn’t too be taken too seriously, and played along.

Rated 6/10 (Nanites; Cameo; Scanning, Captain; No Clue; Big Boom; Hamburger in Space!)

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And now an interview with one of the Holographic Camp Counselors!

	Hello, and welcome to TarsTarkas.NET!
	Hey, do you want a beer?
	Uh, no, sorry, I’m underage.
	Do you wanna smoke some pot?
	I have some stuff I gotta do later, so no time. How about we get the questions started?
	Or we can have premarital sex?
	Wait? What?
	I love premarital sex!
	Don’t we all, but we need some content here…
	He-he-he-he-he! He-he-he-he! He-he-he!
	Oh, screw it. Interview over. Pass that sixpack and make room in that sleeping bag…