Films: 2000s
(2001) Jason X
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Jason X
Director: James Isaac
Release: 2001
In the future, James Isaac's "Jason X" will be held up as an example of what happens when the special effects supersede story. If there is justice, it will also be marked as the moment when a director turned the "Friday the 13th" series loose on itself in a gross mess of auto-cannibalism.
The underlying concept of "Jason X' is interesting, if unsound within the context of the "Friday the 13th" franchise.
In "Jason X," writer Todd Farmer finds the title character, masked killer Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder), locked down in a specialized military complex. The guards just won't listen, however, and soon the last woman standing Rowan (Lexa Doig) is hunted through the tunnels by the escaped, machete-wielding Jason.
When she attempts to cryogenically freeze Jason, he takes her with him into sleep.
Hundred of years later, a spaceship lands on Earth. Human survivors of the biological collapse of the planet now plunder its archaeological and material history. They find, this time, two frozen humans.
When they return Rowan and Jason to their salvage ship, the resuscitation of both leads to a continuation of the hunt stopped cold centuries ago. The twist is, Jason becomes augmented by futuristic nanotechnology and the human characters must counter with their own inhuman creation, a cyborg named Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder).
If it worked, which it does not, "Jason X" could have played on the screen like a gory comic book. What it does, instead, is showcase a digital effects team with a mandate to put their over-the-top murder sequences front and center. The actors, the script (and thus, the film) are an apparent afterthought.
Doig is adequate as the only character who knows what Jason means to the space station's longevity. The film also features a cameo from actor/director David Cronenberg. For the most part, though, the performances land with a thud.
Ryder is ridiculous, convincing neither as an artificial person nor a cut-rate Carrie Ann Moss a la "The Matrix." In other cases, there simply is no concept to the character, such as Kristi Angus' doctor, Adrienne. The actors in "Jason X" are mere props for the CGI.
Since that is what "Jason X's" creative team focused on, the result is a film full of fluid and sometimes inventive murders, executed by computers. "Jason X," in fact, was the first Hollywood film entirely photographed by digital cameras and the possibilities for post-lens manipulation was limitless.
This does not save its director from staggering mistakes like Sergeant Brodski's (Peter Mensah) space suit flyby at the end of the film. Not only laughable from the point of view that it is a blusteringly mismanaged moment of deus ex machina, the action of the scene also looks silly on the screen and reminds the audience that even microprocessors cannot remedy a poor choice in storytelling.
On the other hand, Isaac has free reign to bring Jason's brutality to colorful life. When Jason dips Adrienne in liquid nitrogen, and then smashes her to pieces, the computers that made "Jason X" show a level of brave detail that might have impossible previously. It's a startling scene, and visceral, whatever the film's other failings.
Aside from the basic misstep of continuing to break from the basic mythological roots of "Friday the 13th" (and Isaac is only inheriting a trend that started in 1985, with "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning"), "Jason X" generates another more serious (and even less defensible) affront to the underlying value of the series. Isaac and Farmer have given their audiences its myth-story as high camp.
In some cases, at its mildest, this occurs when characters confront Jason on the space station - attempting to hand him his machete, for instance and commenting on the action to other characters. Jason is removed from his most effective place in this sequence, that of the unknowable Other and relegated to a straight man in a comic sketch.
Physically altering Jason Voorhees is also risky territory, and Isaac stumbles when he changes the character's iconic appearance. The plot device is that the station's sick bay features nanotechnology that can rebuild injuries. After Jason and Kay-Em battle for altogether too long, and in tongue-in-cheek fashion, the nano doctors get to Jason. He is reborn as a seething, chrome-plated half-machine exterminator.
At last, Isaac seems to get what he wants, a different character altogether. This is no longer the boy from the lake (not that it was at the start of "Jason X," or really much at all for the past 16 years).This is a robot, a science fiction monster. With the adolescent pomp of a professional wrestling script, the bad guy in "Jason X" gets a new look. It does not further the story, nor does the transformation develop the character. It's just eye candy.
Hodder has always hyperventilated and stormed around the sets of the "Friday the 13th" films in which he has been cast. In "Jason X" his lumbering actually fits the story more perfectly. He's finally given the poor-man's "Terminator" script he's always referenced with his physical acting.
The most significant departure from character and the compromise of the inherent power of Jason Voorhees, happens in a literal camp.
Attempting to escape, the station survivors subject Jason to a virtual reality game in which he is returned to Crystal Lake, the setting of the first four films. There, Jason encounters two computer generated females, topless, who encourage him to drink, smoke marijuana and have sex.
"We love premarital sex," one purrs. Jason kills them.
If the scene is an effort at postmodernism, Isaac and Farmer fail because they deliver it like a big joke, rather than a sly reflection of the psychological subtext of earlier "Friday the 13th" films.
If it is simply meant for comedic effect, the scene is a betrayal of the source material and more than that, it is bargain-basement pandering to an audience perhaps presumed not to care about these characters anymore. Isaac threatens, in fact,to undo the very thread that holds "Friday the 13th" films together as a re-tellable story. By taking "Jason X" back to Crystal Lake for the purpose of cheap guffaws, Isaac tampers with what previous storytellers did well (or at least seriously), and he contributes nothing new or useful.
The only redeeming quality of the film, at last, is an element of its artistic design.
Costume Designer Maxyne Baker crafts a few arresting moments, particularly the the blood red environmental suits the characters wear on old Earth. A cross between welders' smocks and butcher's aprons, capped with bug-lensed goggles, Baker makes a statement about science fiction aesthetics and the possibilities of nontraditional approaches to common story devices.
Baker's hands seem tied for most of the rest of the film, however, as she's required to clad her actresses in what amount to revealing exercise suits. She still manages to get some believable and textured fabrics into every shot. However unreal the characters that wear them, Baker has generated a clothing palette that looks like something real people would wear in the year 2455. Given the content of "Jason X," any positive is a positive worth noting.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Jason X, 2001
By taking "Jason X" back to Crystal Lake for the purpose of cheap guffaws, Isaac tampers with what previous storytellers did well (or at least seriously), and he contributes nothing new or useful.
