Here's my theory: the original concept for the franchise was an anthology series. I think they had all the scripts prepared, but the popularity of Jason lead to them include him as the monster in every film. The series has less continuity than The Twilight Zone. One film had a telepathic girl, one has him cursed by the lake, one sees him turned into a zombie by lightning, one had him possessing other people and featured a magic knife...these are all completely different stories. This one starts with the a dead Jason appearing alive-ish and kicking in spite of him irrefutably dead at the end of the previous. He melted in Jason Takes Manhattan and was fine in Jason Goes to Hell, and now he's just fine after literally going to hell. This is madness and I love it.
Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder, Chuck Campbell, Melyssa Ade, Peter Mensah, Melody Johnson, Derwin Jordan
Plot: Jason Voorhees is cryogenically frozen in an attempt to stop his killing spree. Hundreds of years later he is unfrozen on a spaceship.
Review: Maybe we can ignore Jason popping up again at the beginning of Jason Goes to Hell in spite of him being melted in the previous film because we can fill in the blanks. But Jason Goes to Hell was supposed to be the the definitive final episode, he was literally dragged to hell at the end. How did he bounce back from that? He's just kicking about as usual at the beginning of this one, being held at the giant, government funded research facility that has popped up at Crystal Lake. Perhaps the Umbrella Corporation has set up shop there.
Jason gets himself frozen along with an unconvincing scientist and left for hundreds of years. In the meantime the Earth is ruined and humanity moves on. A group of history students are visiting and discover Jason, bringing him on board their spaceship. The scientist tries to warn them, but they've already brought Jason to life and he works his way through the crew of the ship.
This film has a reputation for being one of the dumbest entries in a dumb series. I think that critics have missed the point. It's dumb. Supremely dumb. But everyone involved in making the film seem to know this and are going to run with it. It's got much more comedy than previous instalments, with a scene where a robot woman's nipples drop off being a particular odd moment. There is some dry wit moments between the killings and if you want to have a laugh it's not that bad.
The murdering has gotten more creative as well. I thought the 'Jason's Best Kill' part of these reviews would be an easy way to cap off each review, but there's little that stands out in the latter films. Jason X, conversely, sets out to make every death sequence a ridiculous, over-the-top moment. The scene where they trap Jason in a VR simulation and he starts beating a girl in a sleeping bag to death with another girl in a sleeping bag is hilariously stupid.
This is a movie where they took a gritty, gruesome horror franchise and sent it into space. It's the movie where Jason became a cyborg. It is gloriously moronic, and such a relief after the tired attempts of the previous couple of films. Bless this stupid thing.
Jason's Best Kill: There's a couple of contenders, but we're sticking with the sleeping bag VR sequence. It actually made us laugh.
