Quick Review - My Bloody Valentine (2009)
Rating: Meh
Themes/Genres:
Horror/Slasher, Revenge Kills
Main Characters:
Tom Hanniger, Sarah Palmer, Axel Palmer
Director/Writer/Publisher: Patrick Lussier, Todd Farmer/Zane Smith, Lionsgate
Summary:
Ten years after a horrifying event with a vengeful miner,
Tom Hanniger returns home to sell his family’s mine and finally be done with
the town. Unfortunately for him, the
events from ten years ago are starting back up again and he’s wrapped right up
in the middle of it. With a town angry
at him for his decision to sell, a sheriff jealous of his previous fling with
his now wife, and a pickaxe murderer on the loose, Monday’s a long ways away.
Review:
Honestly? This movie’s
just kind of dumb. It’s not the dumbest, by far, there are some bad movies out there, but this one isn’t
particularly great, either. It raises a
ton of questions without ever really answering any of them and the Valentine
theme has so little to do with anything it just confuses you instead of adds to
it. I mean, sure, it all falls on Valentine’s Day, but that’s so irrelevant
to what happens that the only way it’d make sense is if you looked up the
original movie, a Canadian film from 1981 about a killer based on a folklore
surrounding the holiday. But then the
bad-reboot roots start showing.
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| Gore-fest... really, how else do you start a horror movie? |
But really, an accidental cave-in on Valentine’s Day? That’s how you pick your theme? The date is so utterly pointless it feels shoe-horned in for the sake of the title. I have a world of problems with the title and theme, but I’ll just leave it at that.
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| I mean... really. |
Right from the get-go you’ve got the obvious self-indulgent excessive blood and gore, which, frankly, I can’t fault that too much. I’m a horror movie fan, blood and gore is part of why I’m here, but it is a little excessive in this movie. On top of that, you’ve got a potential setup for a mysterious killer that just falls flat on its face when it’s revealed who it is within the first three minutes.
Then throughout the movie you have the annoyingly obvious 3D parts, a huge mistake for movies around the big 3D-boom. The moments are so blatantly thrown in for the sake of the effect that it honestly ruins the movie if you watch it in anything but, which, let’s be real, is how most people probably saw it. It looks cool in the theater with the big screen and the fancy glasses and the surround sound, but the second you pick that up on DVD and watch it at home all those “super terrifying” 3D moments just look ridiculous. Luckily, it’s died down a lot since 2009 but let this movie and its silly “BY THE WAY, I WAS MADE FOR 3D” moments be a constant reminder of how NOT to do 3D movies. Ever. Unless you want it to be silly and immersion-ruining.
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| This is where you realize... you're watching a 3D movie... even when you're not |
Finally, you get some sort of twist-ending half pay-off at
the end that… I’ll be real, is one of my favorite twist endings for horror
movies. But it doesn’t feel worth it at
all in this movie. It’s a good twist,
there’s actually semi-decent buildup around it, making you fully expect it to
be the other guy… but because of the bullshit you have to slog through to get
to it, it just doesn’t have the effect it probably should have. It didn’t feel worth it. It’s a good twist… in a sub-par movie.
It’s not a movie that makes me vehemently angry with how bad
it is, as most do since I have no mercy for ‘so bad, it’s good’ movies, but it
got a bit irritating at times. It never
even bothered explaining why any of
it happened in the first place. Why did the original killer start
killing in the first place? Why was he
so hell-bent on coming back and continuing?
Who knows! It’s never
explained! That’s probably what bothers
me the most. There’s so little that’s
actually explained that needs to be that I’m just left confused and irritated.
Overall, not a great movie.
The obvious 3D moments are dumb, the questions pile up with no answer,
and the twist doesn’t feel earned. It
could certainly have been worse, but it also could have been better.
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| The real reason to watch this movie, though: Jensen Ackles |
