Jason X

Jason X, New Line Cinema's second pass at a Friday the 13th sequel, sees the Camp Crystal Lake killer stalking promiscuous teenagers on a spaceship-cum-battering ram, hundreds of years in the future. So, just as disinterested in languid voyeurism as Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday then. A semi-successful attempt at freezing Kane Hodder's muscle monster in our present is rediscovered centuries later during a class outing for undergrads who, quite apparently, scavenge cobwebbed military installations for extra credit. Jason and his jailor, a government scientist played by TV's Lexa Doig, are defrosted then blasted off into space for sale as carnival attractions. True to form, a catatonic Voorhees stirs back to life - during his own autopsy - when people begin pairing off elsewhere on the ship. His hand tenses when a medical student makes motion towards performing oral sex on his partner; Jason only fully activating when penetration has occurred. 

The murder that immediately follows this resurrection then has an uncomfortable sexual element to it. A struggling Jason very clearly grasps his victim by her chest when manoeuvring this unsuspecting intern, played by Kristi Angus, into a more vulnerable, bent over position. Rather than (conventionally) rape this woman though, Jason forces her head into a vat of liquid nitrogen before pulverising her face. This, clearly, is his release. Although uncomfortably staged, the killing is structured as if intended to pass as a joke as well, with the ludicrous, strawberry brain slush outcome positioned as the punchline. Detached and deliberately ironic throughout, Jason X is most entertaining when, as above, the title character's earthier approach to violence is given centre stage. Later, when trapped in a simulation of his lakeside hunting ground, a newly toyetic Jason salves the noises in his head by sealing holographic floozies in sleeping bags before battering them against a tree. Far less agreeable though are any passage in which we're expected to fret about a cast who appear to have escaped from a terrible, made-for-cable science fiction serial about some loser who has built himself a robot girlfriend.