My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

Valentine's Day is over and done. Did you have a good one? Did your special someone surprise you at work with a bouquet of flowers? Well, whatever you did, now that it's over, you can at least be satisfied that you didn't have a bloody valentine. That's the worst kind. I mean, if you had one of those, you'd probably be praying for a Valentine's day spent alone sulking in your room.

Director: Patrick Lussier

Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jamie King, Kerr Smith

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

This movie is so cool that it comes with four pairs of 3D glasses so you can experience it in the glory that it was meant to be seen in.

And nothing says "cheap piece of crap" like glasses that you have to actually rip apart yourself by the seams.

Yeah, now that I have that, I'm definitely inviting three of my best friends over to watch My Bloody Valentine 3D! I probably won't have any friends after, but fuck it, it's worth it.

(As a side note, yes, the entire movie is 3D and ends up looking ridiculous if you don't have the glasses, hence the pictures in this review looking like a drunk person filmed the movie. In addition, they don't seem to work too well when watching on a computer screen, so it's doubly stupid.)

This is a movie with the distinction of having an entire slasher movie crammed into the first 10 minutes, as we see a killer breaking out of the hospital after a mining accident. But at least he stopped to let us know he really cared by drawing little hearts in the blood of his victims on the walls!

He also sent "sorry for your loss" Hallmark cards to all the victims' families! What a nice guy.

Then we get a bunch of dumb high schoolers hanging out in a mine, including this guy, who looks like they fished him out of a cubicle in Nebraska and stuck him in the clothes of a Texan kid who gets in fights after football games.

Unfortunately for them, a killer shows up to ruin the handjobs they weren't going to get anyway because they brought their dates to a fucking mine. He slaughters a bunch of them, but a few of them survive by virtue of being main characters. They manage to stay out of the killer's way for an absurdly long time considering he's walking around right around a corner.

That is, until this one dude comes out from nowhere and starts randomly calling out “Jason? JASON?!” at the killer for no apparent reason. He steps over several dead bodies and yet somehow doesn't seem to realize the guy he's calling at killed all of his friends. You could argue he was trying to call out to a friend of his, but I think he just got confused as to what movie he was in and thought he was in Friday the 13th.

His kills are similarly implausible though. Maybe that's why the kid got him confused with Jason.

Then the main characters leave the one guy, Tom, to die in the cave because they really have to high-tail it out of there and go fuck on a beach somewhere where the Creature from the Black Lagoon is all they have to worry about. The cops kill the killer, and Tom is saved.

Ten years later, the media just comes around, completely unwanted and uninvited, every year and obnoxiously films segments reminding everyone of the killer's massacre set against empty streets.

"Please give us a story so we don't have to keep reporting on the Kardashians and how cold it is this week! Please!"

The sheriff is played by Kerr Smith, who was in the original Final Destination film, so I guess his career really came full circle. The character's name is Axel, who has a ridiculously hot, loving wife who seems perfect, so of course he's screwing some 17-year-old on the side in sleazebag motels and laughing about it.

It's only jailbait if you get caught, right?

It's particularly asinine because this is the only time we ever see these two characters together – this subplot about them screwing on the side never comes up again. So really it's just to establish how much of an asshole Axel is. Peachy! She even says she's pregnant, which also never comes up again in the movie even though she still has scenes left in the movie and dies later on! Continuity and character development? Don't use those newfangled edumacational words down here, boy!

...aw, hell, just write whatever you want. Nobody is watching this anyway.

Later we get a scene of this one chick, having sex with some guy in a hotel, and then the guy reveals he was taping it all on camera. Wonderful...I love how indignant and offended the woman gets after she finds out it was filmed and he throws money at her like she's a whore. “Yeah, I'm not a whore! I just have sex with random dudes at truck stops! My morality is intact!” Then she runs outside, naked, to confront the guy as he's leaving. Because logic is for fuckin' morons.

"I'm really hoping this scene will land me a part in the next Quentin Tarantino movie! Boobs and a gun at the same time has to count for something, right?"

To lighten the mood a bit, the killer shows up and chases her around a bit. I don't know how exactly we end up with her hiding behind a bedframe against a wall and thinks that will somehow save her. But it happens, and you're probably a bit dumber just for sitting through it.

"You know, maybe I would have been better off making a run for it rather than trapping myself back here....eh, nah, it's fine."

After this, the movie basically gives up like a dumb sixth grader on a long division question. So I guess Tom has come to town because his father used to own the mine that all those kids died in, and Tom is selling it because he wants to move on with his life after a traumatic event. This makes people so angry they try to punch him when he so much as enters a bar. Because you know, that will really fix the problem.

Oh yeah, getting punched by an old man is how I want all my horror movie heroes to act. You got it right, movie!

Then it's Cliche Scenes 101 as Sarah and Tom have a conversation about why he's really back and how he's a coward for wanting to sell the mine and move on with his life. It's very hollow and I think both actors cared very little while writing this. We then see exactly what Sarah's advice was worth as Tom goes back to the mine like she said and some guy ends up dying while he's in there. Great advice, lady! Maybe this is why you never got that job at the psychiatric institute.

This woman in 10 years as a therapist: "You have PTSD after getting your leg blown off in Iraq? GET BACK OVER THERE AND FIGHT, PUSSY!" 

This wasn't even the fault of the killer. That guy was just really clumsy.

We get a really boring chase scene set in a supermarket, which is the prime location for slasher chase scenes. The scene ends with the one chick Axel was cheating on Sarah with getting killed, and of course it happened off screen and the killer had time to do this whole elaborate setup in the five seconds before anyone found the body.

Required: suspension of disbelief even greater than understanding a Holocaust-denier.

Then after that we get a sequence of scenes that pretty much put me to sleep. Some of them are about Axel and Tom fighting over Sarah in the same way they fight over who's killing all these people, because priorities schmiorities. I really fucking hate the “drama” in this movie – watching any of these characters pine after old high school sweethearts like some awful 1990s sitcom is about as endearing as day-old cat puke on your rug.

Other scenes are about Sarah conflicted as to who the killer is – either Tom, who has no alibi and showed up right when the murders started, or Axel, who has some weird stuff in their house that makes her suspicious. It's kind of like a dating show, except written by Ted Bundy. I'd really be drawn into all of this if I didn't already want to kill both of these characters by slow bludgeoning death with a foam baseball bat. But needless to say... Hitchcock, these writers certainly were not.

It turns out it was Tom who was the killer, as he starts screaming about the killer being in the room when really there's nobody there. It's actually kind of a good scene and, handled by better people, could have made this a better film. But this is just his evil switch flipping on, and he goes nuts after and they have to shoot him.

LOOK AT HOW COOL OUR 3D EFFECTS ARE! LOOOOOOOOKKKKKK! As a side note, I've done you all a favor by leaving out the several other really dumb, gratuitous shots like this all throughout this movie. You can leave your thank-you cards, gifts and free booze at the door on the way out.

Because, you know, that's how mental illness and PTSD works – you just turn into a serial killer automatically when your delusions are confronted. Thanks for being a complete worthless hack-work piece of shit with zero redeeming value to society, movie!

Eh, that's what I see every time I look in the mirror too.

Oh, and really? We're ending on a cliché “killer gets out by pretending to be a worker and covering his face with a mask” thing? I get the idea you could probably find babies with better imaginations than the writers of this movie. Seriously – fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you, My Bloody Valentine 2009.

Writers in this scene: "Oh yeah, nobody has EVER seen that trick before! We're geniuses!"

No talented writing, no good acting, no good scares – this was just awful; the complete collective void of thought of a thousand brain farts sent to die in the area where no neurons light up anymore. You could literally just make a list of slasher cliches while watching Friday the 13th Part 3 while high on pot and make a home movie in your basement and it'd be better than this.

...and wait a minute; now that I think of it...what the ever-loving fuck did this have to do with Valentine's Day?! There was no connection made, at all! Maybe the original 1980s version made more of a connection, I dunno; but in this, there was absolutely no reason for the film to be Valentine's Day themed.

I've never been so insulted in all three dimensions at once. Frankly, this is the worst thing associated with valentines since the St. Valentine's massacre. I think I'll keep the glasses, though.

Nailed it.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them except for the ones I took of the glasses. I do own those.