After the overwhelming success of John Carpenter's Halloween, movie studios went into a slashing frenzy, most notably three years later with the release of Friday the 13th. Proving to be very profitable as well, Paramount Pictures took part in another movie that pulled elements from Carpenter's classic and their own recent hit, the result being My Bloody Valentine. Shot in Canada on about a $2 million budget, the picture, while visually interesting, lacks the subtext of the movies it borrows from. I could try to get past that if there was anything else to hold onto, but after the MPAA got their claws on the movie and chopped nine minutes worth of footage, all that's left are a bunch of stale characters, a corny story, and not a single gory moment (maybe they should have found a new title). The most baffling piece of the puzzle is that Paramount apparently still has the cut footage; they just have yet to release it to the fans. The picture takes place in the small town of Valentine Bluffs, which, given its name, celebrates every Valentine's Day with a dance. A back story teaches that a bunch of murders occurred years ago during the festivities, with the threat being to never have the dance again or more people would die. Twenty years later, the mayor decides enough time has passed and a reunion is planned. However, the original killer, who was thought to be in a mental institution, has come back to protest. This is all well and good, I guess, but my first problem was when the movie announced that the date is "Thursday, February 12th," meaning of course that Valentine's Day will fall on Saturday the 14th. This is about as clever as the movie gets.
The young people in town might as well be the same ones who populate Crystal Lake every summer, although the movie makes the mistake of trying to give them actual hopes and fears (at least Friday the 13th only went so far as to label its sole survivor by giving her a simple talent). The biggest snoozer is a love triangle that develops between a girl and two men, one of whom left town, only to resurface years later. As expected, she's seeing someone else now and he wants her back. The feuding begins, but it's soap opera stuff, complete with some laughable music as the girl reminisces with her long lost lover by the sea. Almost every scene involving any of these three has to be about the sexual tension between them, and sadly, they're the characters with the most screentime!
The killings are ripped right out of Halloween and Friday the 13th. The killer wears a mask, has a signature weapon, and likes to sneak up on his victims. Despite the last part, there's nothing scary about what he's doing. Don't get me wrong, the Friday the 13th pictures aren't scary either, but at least you can find a method to the killer's pattern. If anything, the killer here is like Mrs. Voorhees from Part 1; he just wants the victim to die as quickly as possible(the fact he's punishing them for having a party feels like it belongs in today's current PG-13 horror offerings). Even though most everything is kept off screen, the movie does manage one memorable death scene. A girl tries to get away as mining uniforms hung from the ceiling drop onto her head. Even better though is the glimpse we get when her boyfriend comes back. Her head has been pushed through a shower nozzle, so all we see is her mouth and a stream of water at the side of the frame. The fact we get just enough to know what happened makes it all the creepier. Too bad the movie doesn't take better advantage of the other edited murder scenes in the same way.
The idea of a killer dressed in a miner outfit and a gas mask is pretty cool, and the opening scene promises something much better than it delivers. A woman and the masked man are in the mine, making out while she strokes the tube on the mask. I liked the implications about what the movie might explore, but soon learned it was all a facade to get the audience to stay past the opening credits. The most bearable portion of the movie is the last third, which takes place completely in the mine shaft. It's an ideal horror movie location with a lot of great possibilities, although director George Mihalka doesn't seem to have the slightest idea how to set up a good scare or even give a scene thematic weight. Sure, you could attempt to create some metaphors for the mine, but it'd be a waste of time in a movie that clearly is aiming for nothing more than cheap thrills.
Unlike the original Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine makes it fairly clear early in the movie who the killer is. There are plenty of supposed red herrings, but anyone who has seen a horror movie before will not likely be fooled. This wouldn't necessarily hurt the movie if the explanation for the killings were subtle and disturbing. However, the reasons we get are so routine and the killer's behavior is so stupid it seems unfair for the movie to let him live. My guess is the studio was hoping to develop a franchise out of the movie because like Friday the 13th, it's all set up with no real payoff. The payoff ultimately is that you get to turn the movie off when (or before) it's over.
I know My Bloody Valentine has a great deal of admirers, one of which is Quentin Tarantino (he chose it as his favourite slasher movie!). Aside from the originality of the setting, I can't really see what would draw someone to revisit this movie more than once. It's bad enough the central romance is stale but even worse, there's very little of the subtle humor found throughout the Friday the 13th pictures (I will confess there was one moment that made me laugh involving a pot of boiling hot dogs). And worse than that, the killer's way of communicating with the police is by writing morbid Valentine's Day poems and literally sending them a human heart. It's clear given how hard this movie tries to please the audience that a heart, for that matter any sign of life, would have made a difference. Do yourself a favor and watch Friday the 13th instead. It may be empty, but at least it's not dumb.
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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
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