VITAL STATS Opens: 6 September Director: James Isaac Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Lisa Ryder Classification: 16V Running Time: 95 min The year is 2455. The Place is Old Earth. Once the shimmering blue jewel of the galaxy, Old Earth is now a contaminated planet abandoned for centuries -- a brown world of violent storms, toxic landmasses, and poisonous seas. Yet, humans have returned to the deadly place that they once fled. Not to live, but to research the ancient rusting artefacts of the bygone civilisations that caused this enormous environmental disaster. And little does the most recent landing party of intrepid young explorers realise the fate that awaits them. Jason X is the tenth film in the classic Friday the 13th series, one of the most prolific, enduring and successful horror series in the history of motion pictures.

This explosion of slasher movies with their unique characters gave rise to a procession of sequels. In most cases these sequels were awful in the way they tried to benefit from the success (or failures) of the originals and had little to no storyline. The acting, in almost all cases, was terrible. Add the predictable endings (the killer always survives to kill one more person) and you have a recipe for disaster.

However, the aforementioned points should be taken in context. People who went to see these movies knew perfectly well what they wanted and that was mainly to be scared out of their wits and see the most gruesome murders that censor boards would allow. Seeing scantily clad women were a nice bonus, but the focus was on what the “heroes” of the movies, the Jasons and the Freddys, would do to their unsuspecting victims. Cinemagoers knew not to expect great cinema, they cared only for great slasher horror.

Clearly, these movies did not and still do not cater to everyone's tastes. If you don't like watching people being decapitated, maimed and generally being torn apart, an almost endless amount of blood and gore, and a very predictable story, then Jason X is not for you. However, if you are a horror aficionado, then read on.

The movie is set 400 years in the future when a bunch of students with their professor (Jonathan Potts) and technology android Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder) are on an archaeological field trip to Old Earth (yes global warming finally got to the planet). They find several 21^st century trinkets and two cryogenically frozen people, a beautiful young woman (of course), Rowan (Lexa Doig) and a large man wearing a hockey mask (any guesses who?).

Unfortunately, an auto-regeneration sequence has begun that has started to thaw the two bodies. To avoid Rowan and Jason (Kane Hodder) deteriorating (400 years will probably add a wrinkle or two), the students take the bodies on board. They manage to revive Rowan and quickly find out that Jason probably would have been better left on the planet. It goes without saying that he comes back to life and starts making up for lost time.

Visually, the movie is well done. Toybox, the visual-effects company, made the slasher scenes as gruesome as possible. Unfortunately, the spacecraft does not convey the feeling of confinement as well as the Alien-movies do. You don't experience the same thrill when watching the students run away from Jason knowing that they cannot get away. Kay-Em 14 also seems like a copycat of the android in the Alien-series, although Kay-Em 14 is actually cuter and the Alien android didn't have nipples that fell off.

Having said all that, the movie disappoints even on the slasher level, perhaps because it tries to be too different, Jason X merely rehashes familiar themes that were better done in other movies. The murder scenes are gruesome enough but the movie lacks suspense.

To all those horror connoisseurs out there, rather wait for the video.

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