n the near future, the government has captured hockey-masked serial killer Jason Voorhees (Hodder) and holds him at the Crystal Lake Research Facility, where he will be cryogenically frozen for eternity. At least that's what project director Rowan (Doig) hopes. But Dr. Wimmer (David Cronenberg) wants to study Jason's unique regenerative abilities for possible military applications.
Their debate becomes moot when Jason frees himself and massacres Wimmer and his military team. Rowan lures Jason into the cryo-chamber. She initiates the freezing process—but not before being mortally wounded and ending up frozen herself.
Flash forward to the year 2455. A team of young archaeology students, led by Prof. Lowe (Jonathan Potts) and the tech android Kay-Em 14 (Ryder), has traveled to old Earth to explore for artifacts. Earth is a dead planet, ravaged by environmental disaster, and only ruins remain. The students are amazed to discover the still-intact cryo-chamber, with Rowan and the hulking mystery man still in the deep freeze.
Returning to their orbiting ship, the Grendel, the team revives Rowan. Jason lies on a slab, where he's examined by the comely blonde student, Adrienne (Kristi Angus), who is unaware that Jason is twitching.
As the ship heads toward the space station Solaris, the randy teens quickly pair up for some extracurricular biology study. As they do, Jason awakes. After murdering Adrienne and other students, he catches the attention of the ship's military contingent, led by Sgt. Brodski (Peter Mensah). Prof. Lowe wants Jason alive, so he can sell him to a museum. But Brodski wants to take him apart.
Easier said than done. As the commandos prowl the Grendel's darkened hallways, Jason picks them off one by one. Only Rowan, with her unique knowledge of Jason's past, and the supercharged Kay-Em will give the remaining crew members a chance to survive Jason's new rampage.
A X file that's a real killer
Jason X, from original Friday the 13th creator and executive producer Sean S. Cunningham, is the 10th installment in the franchise that created the slasher genre. After eight increasingly lackluster sequels, Cunningham and director Isaac literally had nowhere else to go with the story than into the future and into outer space—and the result, surprisingly, doesn't suck.
Saying that Jason X is one of the better Friday the 13th movies is like saying melanoma is one of the better cancers, and the film won't hold much attraction for anyone who isn't a fan of the series or the subgenre. That said, Jason X manages to resurrect the series, much as the students revive the masked serial killer himself, with breezy storytelling, attractive players, a modicum of self-referential snarkiness, creatively staged killings and visual effects that impress, given the film's less-than $15 million budget.
Isaac started his career as a special-effects and creature wrangler on films from Return of the Jedi to David Cronenberg's The Fly, which explains the Canadian horror auteur's cameo in Jason X. Isaac brings the sensibility of a genre geek to Jason X, making the most of the SF setting and visuals, and he doesn't take things too seriously.
The film's story, for what it's worth, is a watered-down rehash of Aliens, replete with military squad and money-grubbing executive. The dialogue is genre-awful: Prof. Lowe: "He's a valuable scientific artifact." Rowan: "He's an unstoppable killing machine." And though the script tries valiantly to undercut expectations in a few places, the story is as preordained as Jason's ultimate fate. Though the film runs less than 90 minutes, it drags whenever Jason isn't hacking someone up.
As for the real business at hand, Jason X necessarily ups the ante for gruesomely unexpected murders—including one involving liquid nitrogen and another involving a giant drill bit. Not that it matters. The film barely has time to set up any of the dozens of characters, who are for the most part interchangeable and indistinguishable, before the blood splatters.
