FILM REVIEW: Jason X (15)

Director: James Isaac

Starring: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder

WITH the teen horror film having returned to prominence it was only a matter of time before the much-reviled Friday the 13th series mounted a comeback. Jason Vorhees (Kane Hodder), the indestructible killing machine who pioneered hockey-mask chic years before Hannibal Lecter developed a taste for flesh, has returned to eviscerate a new batch of idiotic teenagers. While the thought of Vorhees’s resurrection is enough to have most discerning viewers yearning for the sweet embrace of the grave, horror fans have genuine cause for celebration. With its tongue-in-cheek humour, gleefully trashy dialogue and surprisingly inventive mayhem, Jason X is the movie Resident Evil should have been. Finally captured by the authorities, Jason (reprising his role as the unstoppable super-psycho) is cryogenically frozen so that the long-suffering teens of Camp Crystal Lake can finally indulge in beer drinking, dope smoking and pre-martial sex without fear of dismemberment.

Four hundred years later a team of archaeological students on a field-trip to a post-apocalyptic Earth uncover Jason’s icy sarcophagus and, proving that even colonising the galaxy hasn’t made teenagers any less stupid, they decide to bring their find aboard their moodily lit Alien-style space cruiser. Neck snappings, grisly murders, and a demented battle royale between Jason and an equally robust female droid (Lisa Ryder) ensue.

Providing welcome relief from the tired post-modern shtick of the Scream series and the serious tone of The Blair Witch Project, Jason X is a refreshingly unpretentious splatter-romp that’s far more entertaining than we had any right to expect. Far from being a last act of desperation, the plundering of Planet Sci-Fi for inspiration works as Jason takes his gleaming machete to the pretensions of Star Trek and 2001. For schlock fans everywhere, X marks the spot.

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