How someone could make a genuinely boring slasher flick about "Friday the 13th's" Jason Voorhees in outer space is beyond me. Stupid, sure. Badly acted? I'd expect nothing less. Not scary? Well, let's face it: none of the "Friday the 13th" movies have ever been scary. But boring?

Even though I've never been entertained by a single film in this franchise about an indestructible maniac in a hockey mask who guts horny teenagers, I was actually looking forward to this installment. I figured the producers were going for camp value this time -- and in fact, I think that might have been what they were doing. I mean, Jason thaws out of a cryogenic freeze in 2455 and starts cutting up casting couch bimbos on a space ship. If that isn't meant to be the series' most intentionally ridiculous extreme, I don't know what is.

And what about that cast of cardboard-pretty 20-somethings, who are probably already back to serving coffee at Starbucks since this movie was made two years ago? They're so uniformly and painfully untalented that you have to wonder if the people with the worst auditions were given parts in the movie on purpose.

But if newbie director James Issac was aiming for laughs, he's even less talented than his actors. Until the last 10 minutes when Jason gets a robotic upgrade and is tricked into slashing his way through a holographic homage to the original "Friday the 13th" (complete with topless campers in pigtails begging for sex), the comic relief in "Jason X" is pathetic. Example: The space ship's resident nerd starts making out with a robot girl he built, then soups her up to battle Jason in a scene that looks like a "Matrix" rip-off with a budget of about $6.

Whether "Jason X" is this bad on purpose is never clear. But one thing's for sure: It never comes close to being either funny or scary.

The only part of the film that's interesting in the least is a cameo by macabre art flick director David Cronenberg -- and that's just because if you recognize him, you can't help but wonder what on earth he's doing in this lame, dead-end slasher sequel. The answer is, he appears as a favor to the director, who was a special effects technician on Cronenberg's "The Fly" and "eXistenZ."

But if this movie is any indication, Isaac didn't learn a thing from his proximity to one of the masters of creepy cinema.