The Mayans, the wise race of ancients who created hot cocoa, set December 21st, 2012 as the end date of their Calendar, which the intelligent and logical amongst us know signifies the day the world will end, presumably at 12:21:12am, Mountain Time. From now until zero date, we will explore the 50 films you need to watch before the entire world perishes. We don’t have much time, so be content, be prepared, be entertained.
The Film: Jason X (2001)
Set 400-plus years in the future the notorious, seemingly indestructible Jason Vorhees has been in a cryogenic frozen state for around 400-plus years after several unsuccessful attempts to be killed for nearly 20 years of profitable cinema. In this future Earth has been abandoned by humans due to pollution (yes, this did inspire Wall-E) and we’ve moved onto another planet called Earth Two set in another, distant solar system. A small group of students travel back to abandoned Earth on a field trip with their professor and locate the 400-year-old frozen Jason Vorhees (yes, this did inspire Futurama) in the Camp Crystal Lake facility and decide to return back to Earth Two with the infamous killer.
Knowing full-well that Vorhees was a killer they decide to thaw him out along with the other frozen scientist they obtained on-site. Obviously they have no clue what the significance of a giant dressed in rags and wearing a hockey mask means to the livelihood of people under the age of 24 (no, contrary to popular belief this did not inspire Idiocracy), but Vorhees does reawaken on board their ship and proceeds to pick up where he left off 400 years prior in his endless endeavors to murder promiscuous students; only now in galaxies far, far away.
The Review
Jason X is a good movie (I’m talking to me right now). At worst it’s a harmlessly dumb movie. At best it’s really fun. It’s got the self-referential sense of humor of a Bride of Chucky and it takes place in space with 400 years of advanced science to play with. It has no misconceptions about what it is. It’s an indestructible serial killer in the stars. It’s the devil versus technology. It’s a homeless hockey mask wearer with a big knife versus science. Nothing about any of that sounds serious. It sounds absurd. And it sounds pretty damn cool.
As is the case with almost all of the major slasher films in this era of the Saw franchise the big draw is the sadistic question of “how do people die in it?” There’s only so many ways someone can get stabbed with a really big knife before things get redundant. Thankfully, Jason has superhuman strength to go along with his love for sharp objects, so he could probably just punch right through someone if he wanted to. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly do that. But, what he lacks in bare-hand surgery he makes up for in frozen-face smashing and sleeping bag baseball. Whether they be busty women doing science, or busty holograms made by science Jason doesn’t differentiate, exclude or oppress. He kills all breasts between the ages of 16 and 25 with equal fervor and especially all the males that find them attractive.
Really though, Jason X is a good movie. It has what you’d want from a Friday the 13th picture assuming you’re the kind of person that likes these films to exist at all, plus some added bonuses of an android warrior and a mega-Jason showdown. It knows its formula and it knows what it can’t do and that’s just one thing. It can’t be boring. It can be all kinds of ridiculous (and it is) as long as people die in ways we’ve yet to see and you utilize the ability to make up science to work to your advantage, because we expect it to be silly. That’s the luxury of setting your horror franchise in space after it just left Manhattan (I’m skipping Jason Goes to Hell because I want to) is that nobody is taking it seriously. So, don’t be serious and don’t be lazily dumb and you should be fine. Jason X isn’t just fine, though…it’s good….
(Yes, I am still talking to me right now.)
But why spend 91 minutes watching this film when you only have 211,680 minutes left alive?
No matter how bad Earth gets, Jason will live on forever. Earth can cease to be, and yet Jason will find a way to be and kill something. Maybe the Mayans saw 2012 as the coming of Jason Vorhees; which, if that is the case, then you must be ahead of the game. You cannot freeze Jason because he’s apparently just like The Blob. He’ll thaw out eventually and start devouring teenagers. You cannot outsmart Jason because he’s immortal and has seen it all by this point. You can’t even develop an android capable of beating him down, because it’s only 2012 and we can’t do that yet. For the sake of humanity you can only do one thing. You have to shoot Jason into outer space. It’s not going to kill him because nothing can. It will, however, extend our lifespan past 2012 and allow someone to make another movie that let’s us know what to do next after someone finds his body floating around somewhere near Saturn’s rings.