Jason X (2001) (USA/Canada)

aka Friday the 13th Part 10

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My favorite entry of the whole damn series (in the right mood) has no shame in not only sending our hockey-masked slasher into space but into the fucking future as well. Things get started in the year 2008 where the finally captured Jason is being held in a Crystal Lake research facility and studied for his impressive inability to die. The head scientist prepares the unstoppable killing machine for cryogenic suspension but her greedy peer (David fuckin’ Cronenberg!) goes over her head and comes to remove Jason for more research. It goes wrong (obviously) and Jason wipes out most of the facility before he and Dr. Rowan (smoke-show Lexa Doig) are frozen and willfully forgotten by the U.S. government. Now, a few centuries later, Earth is uninhabitable but is still a field trip destination for the human race that now occupies a distant planet in another system named Earth II. Along with some marine grunts, a small group of students and their professor stumble across the frozen doctor and her subject and decide the best course of action is to bring them aboard their ship. Idiots are gonna idiot and it doesn’t take long for the thawed monster to get into his old habits and for the spaceship full of youngsters and soldiers to start dropping. Dr. Rowan warns them that they’re not safe but the scheming professor sees a gold mine in the undead slasher and by the time they realize the shit they’re in, it’s already way too late. Kane Hodder throws it all into his final outing as Voorhees and gets plenty to do as he roams around and brutally dispatches any dope that is unfortunate to be breathing in his presence. There’s a female cyborg (Kay-Em 14, naturally in love with her creator) for him to tussle with, a couple creative deaths to gasp at (that liquid nitrogen bit is brutal), a hilarious holographic representation of Jason’s usual prey, Peter Mensah being his usual wonderful self as the marine sergeant and an upgraded look for our future Jason (nanotechnology repair reassembles his blown-apart ass with his favorite machete) that kicks so much ass I’ve been smiling about it since walking out of the theater more than two decades ago. There’s not a serious bone in its body and it works so damn well because the filmmakers knew just how ridiculous it was. If they hadn’t leaned into it, it would have been a failure. They’re also smart enough not to resort to that “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” crap that makes Troma films so unbearable but weave the stupidity around a plot that treats the threat seriously while seamlessly building a slasher film around a 1950’s B-Movie template. It’s fucking ingenious. It also features one of the silliest/greatest endings to a slasher film in the history of the subgenre.