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Writer's pictureMatt McNeal

My Bloody Valentine (2009)



 

Remember when 3-D was all the rage in movies? I don't mean general 3-D in movies, I mean movies that were made specifically to be in 3-D with those super annoying shots of stuff going directly at the camera so it would look like it was jumping out at you in the theater. Yeah, this is one of those. Buckle up, boys and girls. It's gonna get gratuitous.


My Bloody Valentine is the 2009 reboot of the 1981 slasher film of the same name. Directed by Patrick Lussier whom you may recognize as the not-so-brilliant director behind stinkers such as Drive Angry and Dracula 2000, My Bloody Valentine is a story about a miner who kills people on Valentine's Day because why not? Every other holiday gets a horror movie so this one should too. Starring Jamie King (Sin City), Jensen Ackles (this), and Kerr Smith (Final Destination), the thing that caught my attention first was a surprising fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes with 60% approval, while at the same time sitting rotten with audiences with only 47% approval. That almost never happens with slasher films! I had to sit down and give this one another go and you can too! As of the time of this writing My Bloody Valentine is available on Netflix. Please take note that I'm saying you can, not that you should. Let's dig into it and find out why.


First thing's first, the acting ain't great. It's a slasher flick so I wasn't expecting phenomenal levels of acting, but this is kind of sub-par even by slasher standards. Although, 2009 is the same year the terrible Friday the 13th reboot and Rob Zombie's Halloween II came out so maybe it was just a bad year for slasher flicks. Every singer actor in this movie looked and felt bored out of their mind, and that could very well be due to the script. There isn't really much plot here. Just a lot of killing and people running away from the killing. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself mind you, but the kills aren't really all that entertaining and the entire time the movie is trying to make you doubt who the killer is when it's VERY OBVIOUS who the killer is. There is a scene early on in a movie when a lady runs out of a motel room stark naked to threaten a guy though, and that was pretty funny so there's that.


Lighting and camera work aren't much to sneeze at either. The movie takes place mostly at night so everything is dark, and the cinematography is your typical "shot for efficiency" horror movie stuff. What really bugs me the most about the movie is the 3-D stuff. There's just so much of it and it's super distracting, especially if you're not watching the movie in 3-D because then you just have stuff sitting up close and in the middle of the frame and it just looks stupid. I'm really glad that 3-D seems to have run its course because this was some of the most annoying stuff I've ever had to sit through.


Overall, My Bloody Valentine is mostly just missed opportunity. I don't think the best actors in the world would have been able to do much with this script, but with the material available the director should have just turned the dial up to 11 with the gore and violence. We get a little bit here and there, but not enough. It mostly is just a pickax to the face and then a quick cut so we don't have to see too much of it which is unfortunate. If you're going to present a super generic, boring slasher movie you need to do something to set yourself apart, and I think My Bloody Valentine bet on the wrong horse with the 3-D angle.

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