Jason X
From Horror Film Wiki
Preceded by: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday; Proceeded by: Freddy vs Jason
Jason X is a 2002 slasher film. The film's setting occurs many many years after the events of Freddy vs Jason, but was made before that film. Chronologically it is the last movie in the Friday the 13th series, taking place in the future, in which Jason is finally killed off (hopefully) for good.
Plot
The time is the near future. A team of government scientists working at the Crystal Lake Research Facility have finally captured the notorious and seemingly indestructible killer Jason Voorhees. In order to at least contain Jason, the plan is to freeze him in cryogenic suspension; but, as usual, things go horribly wrong and he breaks free to resume his murderous ways. The sole survivor of this latest rampage, Rowan, manages to lure Jason into the cryogenic chamber, but before she can complete the process and escape, she is mortally wounded and frozen in time along with Jason.
Flash forward over four hundred years to 2455.
The place is Old Earth, now a contaminated planet abandoned for centuries, a world of violent storms, toxic land masses and poisoned seas. Yet humans have returned to the deadly place they once fled; not to live, but to research the artifacts of the lost civilizations that caused this enormous environmental disaster. Little does the most recent landing party of interplanetary explorers realize the fate that awaits them when they stumble upon an unusual find from a primitive technological age.
The student explorers, led by Archaeology Professor Lowe and their tech-droid KAY-EM 14, enter the ancient underground remains of the Crystal Lake Research Facility. There, they make a major archaeological discovery: two frozen ancestors; a beautiful young woman and a large man wearing a strange mask. There's only one problem: the auto-regeneration procedure has somehow been triggered. The frozen cry-jell is melting like a block of ice and soon the two bodies will thaw and deteriorate! With time running out, the young explorers return to their starship and blast-off for Earth II, where they are surprisingly able to revive Rowan, the young woman. But very soon, these students will come face-to-face with a shocking, totally new form of evil as Jason comes back to life as well and begins to silently stalk them through the corridors of the spacecraft.
Once they see Jason is alive and has killed someone aboard the ship, Sergeant Brodski leads an attack force against Jason, but all his troops are killed and he is injured. Afterwards, Jason kills the pilot of the ship causing it to crash into the space station, Solaris. The ship survives but Solaris is destroyed. Professor Lowe, who is trying to make money off Jason, is killed when Jason takes his old machete back, and goes after the students. One of them, Kinsa, tries to escape in a shuttle but crashes into the hull, damaging it. An android named Kay Em fights Jason and defeats him, destroying his right arm, left leg, and most of his head.
However, the hull begins to bleed out, which will result in core implosion. Help is sent for, and Sergeant Brodski is found and healed at a medical station. They decide to escape to the other side of the ship and wait there until the shuttle arrives, and plan to separate from the damaged side by destroying the bridges. However, a medical station turns Jason into a cyborg with a metal hockey mask. This time he gains the advantage over Kay Em and punches her head off. Everyone escapes to the other side of the bridge except Waylander, who detonates the explosives planted there, destroying the bridge.
Jason punches through the wall of the ship, causing Janessa to be sucked into space (through a grate). When the shuttle arrives, the door it is docked to won't open due to a power failure, so Brodski goes outside to fix it. Rowan and Tsunaron distract Jason with a simulation of Camp Crystal Lake. Finally they enter the shuttle, but Brodski is not able to get in before the shuttle leaves. The ship explodes, sending Jason flying straight toward the shuttle. However, Brodski intercepts him and they both go flying toward Earth 2 and are burned up in its atmosphere.
Rowan, Tsunaron, and Kay Em head for Earth 2 inside the shuttle, and two campers see what's left of Jason and Brodski land in the lake. By the time they land in the lake, all that remains is Jason's mask.
Box Office
It engrossed $16 million.
Trivia
- Jason Voorhees goes up in space, like many other horror icons.
- Also like many horror icons (though usually the more monstrous ones like xenomorphs and graboids) someone tries to make money off Jason, and gets killed by him in the end.
- In Freddy vs. Jason, Jason's hockey mask is completely undamaged (as opposed to its state in Jason Goes to Hell, its restoration possibly being caused by his death or resurrection), and does not have the scar where Chris hit him with an axe. However, in this film, it does have the scar (but is otherwise undamaged), though it does appear a bit longer than in previous films. It is likely that (by coincidence) he got this scar from something else, most likely an execution attempt.
- The character Tsunaron is in love with Kay Em, the android. This also happens in the anime Dragonball Z, where Krillin falls in love and marries Android 18.
- According to the "jump to death" menu on the DVD, Jason dies twice in this movie: Once when his head is blown off by Kay Em (in which the machine rebuilds him as Uber Jason), and once when he burns up in Earth 2's atmosphere.
- This movie combines the slasher genre with the science fiction genre.
- Though it takes place after Freddy vs. Jason, Jason X was released before it, as Freddy vs. Jason (which was clearly being planned, evidenced by the ending of Jason Goes to Hell) was stuck in development hell.
- According to this movie, in the Freddy/Jason universe, hockey was outlawed in 2024, and at one point (decades before 2455, as Crutch was alive at the time) there was a war called the Microsoft Conflict in which people were beating each other with their own severed limbs.
