The Friday the 13th folks sure do know how to keep a twenty-year-old franchise fresh. While the losers over at the Halloween camp are whoring out Michael Myers in some web-cam based, Blair-Witch wannabe, derivative bullshit this summer, Jason's people have launched him 450 years into the future for a big budget, sci-fi extravaganza.

The Friday people take their time and do it right. They waited until the TENTH chapter to take their isolated, rural killer and plant him in outer space. Both Critters and Leprechaun only waited until part four before they played that card. When Friday the 13th was on part four, they were still trying to convince us that it was "The Final Chapter." Slow and steady wins the race.

Of course, it's not called Friday the 13th anymore. Now it's Jason X. Apparently all the kids in my elementary school who referred to their favorite horror flicks as "Jason" and "Freddy" movies were just way ahead of their time... or future marketing executives. "Whoa! I just saw Jason 6 last night, and it had way more hooters in it than Freddy 2!"

It was a nice coincidence for the studio that they hit part ten at the same time Apple reached version ten of their Mac OS. I wonder if the next Jason movie will be called Friday the 13th: Part XI, or Jason XP.

Jason X begins in the near future, at Crystal Lake Research Facility. Brilliant. Assuming that the target audience is 16-17 year old boys that were only seven years old when the last movie came out, the writers immediately take the liberty of saying "Ah, nobody remembers what this place was supposed to be. Nobody wants to see a crappy old camp anyway. This is the future, it's a scary laboratory now. Rock on."

Crystal Lake Research Facility apparently has one employee, who gains her full time employment in recognizing that Jason Voorhees is an unstoppable killing machine, and futilely explaining this fact to assheads who won't listen. Kinda like Dr. Loomis in Halloween, except young, hot, and Asian.

Jason himself isn't the same old camp slasher that we remember either. Sure, in every movie, as fans get more and more desensitized, he keeps getting larger and scarier, but in Jason X, the guy is like a boxcar. Seven feet high, built like a retaining wall, and bound up with enough chains to comfortably furnish four S&M parties. There is no doubt that this is one bad mother that you don't want to mess with. Yet even though they've been probing and prodding him, trying to figure out what makes him tick, the scientists at the lab have had the courtesy to let him keep his hockey mask. It's the little details that really show you care.

Still, when you're Jason, not height nor girth, nor bounty of chains can keep you from stealthily dispatching ten heavily armed military guys, only to be subdued by ninety-eight pound Dr. Asia and a cryogenics lab. He does get style points (if not credibility points), for managing to freeze the Doctor with him as he is entombed in an icy time capsule.

Four hundred and fifty years later, a science class from New Earth discovers the cryogenics lab in the smoking remains of Earth Classic. Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into this, but doesn't it seem like somebody... anybody might have discovered this laboratory at any other point during those four and a half centuries? I mean, it's fair to assume that the "old" Earth didn't get destroyed the next day, right? This is just further evidence for my theory that Dr. Asia was the only employee at Crystal Lake.

Anyway, this might just be a matter of personal preference, but I think that if you're going to do a massive jump forward in time in your movie, you should just type "450 years later" at the bottom of the screen in a futuristic font with a blinking cursor and a "bleeedleeeedleeleeeee" sound effect, rather than try to make the audience "discover" what year it is through dialogue. Especially when all of your characters are teenagers who talk like it's 1993. Just get it over with already.

"Wow, look at this totally PRIMITIVE science lab!"

"Whoa! Who's that totally heinous scary dude in that freezer?"

"I don't know, man! We'd better thaw him out and see!"

"Dude, what's that totally freaky thing on his face?"

"Is it a totally bitchin' ANCIENT TWENTIETH CENTURY Cyber-techno-face filter?"

"If I may interject an observation, I postulate that it is a hockey mask."

"Shyeah! What is this 'hockey mask' that you speak of?"

"Hockey was an ancient sport that was outlawed in 2278. You have no memory of this game, because it has not been played for many centuries, as this is a very distant year of the future that we are currently living in."

"Dude, I'll bet you five bucks I can tell which one of us is the robot."

And then the beautiful, frozen Dr. Asia and the certainly dead and no longer living Jason are brought aboard the mothership to be thawed out.

At this point, the audience is treated to all the wonders that the world of the future holds for mankind. Space travel, incredible nano-probe based medical equipment, immersive holographic environments, and boobies. Glorious boobies.

I think the costume designers on this film were all the quintessential thirty-five-year-old-virgins-who-play-Warhammer-and-live-in-their-mom's-basement guys. There were three basic costume variations in this movie:

Girls: All clothes are to be skin tight, as short as possible, and cut in bizarre "futuristic" ways for the maximum allowable flesh showage in an R rated movie.

Army Guys: Lots of cool cyber-future body armor, and guns. Big guns. Big freaking guns.

Anybody else: Yeah, just let 'em wear, you know, whatever. I don't care.

Not that I'm complaining, of course. All current fashion trends show hemlines getting shorter and shorter as the decades wear on. I think to be completely accurate, all of the girls of 2455 probably would have just had suction cups over their nipples and eye patches over their hoo-hoos. But I digress...

Perhaps because of all the flashing skin driving them wild, all of the kids of the future are whores. Every last one of them. Well, every last one of them except Hot Blond Virgin, of course. Not to sound all CAP Alert or anything, but two of these little sluts are so driven by the heat of their nether regions that they practically pork right on top of Jason's frozen corpse as Hot Blond Virgin is dissecting him. I mean, come on! I like to see sex in a movie as much as the next guy, but how can you not find that hilariously inappropriate? Haha! I love you, writer Todd Farmer!

And as everyone from our slot on the time space continuum knows, nothing pisses Jason off like boinking teenagers. Soon he's kicking space asses and taking space names in exciting futuristic ways, using an inexplicable abundance of agricultural heavy machinery.

If you're a fan of the classic Friday the 13th movies, or of women's navels, you won't be disappointed with Jason X. It's got all of the sex, violence, bad wordplay, and gory mayhem that you've come to expect, but with a refreshing lemony science fiction twist. It's nice to see a complete "reimagining" of a franchise that stays so true to the tenets of its canon.

I hope the next Nightmare on Elm Street takes place in Shakespearean Verona.

Wha? But you... Jason, don't you know the rules?

As soon as Hot Blond Virgin banished the horny humpers from her lab, the whole audience knew that she was the "good girl." She was going to be the only one that survived this whole ordeal. And we were happy, because she was the smokin' hottiest of the whole bunch.

Five minutes later, her face is frozen and smashed on a countertop T2 style. Damn you, Jason! I understand that this was probably done just because we weren't expecting it, but still... damn you!

Jason, you have a week of detention with Randy Meeks to go over the constraints of your contract.

Not only does Jason X break new boundaries for the slasher from Crystal Lake, but it also stays true to the olde skool, yo.

The climax of the movie features a brilliant self-referential and self-parodying holographic simulation that uses humor to completely destroy the tension of the sequence and to turn the menacing Jason Voorhees into a black-comedy clown. But you don't care. It's funny as hell, and what were you expecting when you came into this movie anyway, Mr. Maltin?