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'Jason X' lets down horror fans
 Harold John Behling
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The year is 2455. The unstoppable Jason Voorhees (the hockey-masked terror of the nine previous "Friday the 13th" movies) is frozen solid in a government lab deep beneath the surface of the earth. A band of students/scavengers uncovers the frozen spectacle and take him aboard their spaceship to thaw. Plenty of machete wielding madness ensues.
"Jason X" is not a bad movie. "Jason X" is a terrible movie. Let me explain. In the genre of horror, "bad movie" is a term that I hold sacred.
It's a term that I use to describe the volumes of splatter gore classics that only hardcore fans and the mentally deranged find entertaining. These movies are cheaply made, unintentionally hilarious and sometimes legitimately scary.
"Jason X" isn't any of these things, except for cheaply made. The exterior shots of the spaceship and shuttle are absolutely terrible.
Even worse than the ship are the props used for the futuristic "space guns." I consider the crude wooden rifles painted black used for the original "Planet of the Apes" to be a step up from these ridiculously oversized chrome toys.
Whatever scrap of realism remains in "Jason X" is bled away by awkward direction and off key music.
Director James Isaac succeeds in stumbling through kill after gruesome kill without an iota of suspense or even one startling jump or jolt. This horrible execution is the main fault of "Jason X." Even the sparsely staged bits of comedy are just as disappointing.
What can you say about acting in a horror movie? It's usually terrible and "Jason X" is no exception. But I hardly can hold the actors responsible for a film that is wounded.
I can, however, hold Isaac, writer Todd Farmer, executive producer Sean S. Cunningham and composer Harry Manfredini responsible for crafting not the bad movie I was expecting, but a terrible one that was utterly depressing for its faults.
Harold John Behling can be reached at: [email protected]
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