#16 - Jason X (2001)
(dir. James Isaac)
Ignoring the events of Jason Goes to Hell, this film starts off in the distant future of the year 2010. Jason is being held at the Camp Crystal Lake Research Facility, which I guess exists to study his regenerative powers. Of course, he gets loose and kills a bunch of people. The lone survivor, a scientist named Rowan, manages to trap him in a cryogenic chamber, but in the process freezes herself along with him. 400 years later, a salvage crew exploring the destroyed surface of the earth discovers them both and takes them aboard their spaceship. Rowan is easily revived, but Jason seems to be beyond help, until he spontaneously wakes up when some teenagers on the ship have premarital sex. Yes, really.
I think this is actually a pretty fun movie. Sure it has many many flaws, but it sets out to be a campy slasher set in space, and it succeeds in that. The dialogue is full of Joss Whedon style quips ("This sucks on so many levels."), so your enjoyment of this movie may vary depending on whether or not you can tolerate those. Personally I like it, I think it fits with the general silliness of the whole thing. There are a couple of memorable kills, especially the one where Jason dunks a scientist's head into a vat of liquid nitrogen, then shatters it against a table. Another thing this film has going for it is cameo by David Cronenberg as a jerk doctor who gets impaled in like the first five minutes.
It also gets some extra points from me because of the fact that there are very few slasher films set in space. There's Alien of course, and, uh... I guess Event Horizon sort of? Does John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars count? Last Days on Mars? Even those are sort of stretching the definition of "slasher". I give the writers of this film credit for trying something new, even if they went about it in a ridiculous and silly way.
There are plenty of bad things about this movie too, of course. The acting is not good, the plot is dumb, the sets are bad, and there are some CGI special effects that look atrocious. All that didn't really bother me, though, because this movie knows exactly what it is and embraces it. If you are expecting a serious horror movie, you will be very disappointed, but if you want a goofy movie about Jason killing people on a spaceship, this is for you.
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