My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)
Directed Patrick Lussier
Written by Todd Farmer
Starring Jensen Ackles, Jamie King, Kerr Smith, Edi Gathegi, Tom Atkins
Release Date January 16th, 2009
Published January 15th, 2009
I love when a movie surprises me. It is one of my favorite experiences. As much as I try to keep an open mind and not prejudge a movie, it happens sometimes that I dread seeing something. It most often happens with horror movies (Thanks Eli Roth). Rarely are my expectations exceeded. So, when they are, it's invigorating and exciting. My Bloody Valentine 3D surprised me. I did not expect to have such a good time with this remake of an obscure 1981 horror footnote.
My Bloody Valentine 3D sets up a Jason/Freddy style murderer named Harry Warden. 10 years ago he killed a bunch of his coal miner coal workers before being nearly killed himself when the mine exploded. A year after the accident, Warden awoke from a coma and set about on 14 murders before being hunted down by cops at the mine and killed.
10 years later, teenagers who survived the attack are now in positions of power in the city. Axel (Kerr Smith) who managed to rescue two friends from Harry Warden, is now the town sheriff. Tom Hanninger (Jensen Ackles) has now taken over ownership of the mines from his late father and has just returned to town to sell the mines.
The woman both Axel and Tom love, Sarah (Jaime King) is now married to Axel but she still thinks often of Tom who she was in love with the night Harry Warden went nuts and Tom disappeared. Now, ten years later, new murders have sparked fear that Harry Warden may have returned.
My Bloody Valentine 3D. has many of the typical cliches of the average horror movie. Most egregious is an awful, manipulative score that spikes when it's supposed to and is completely over the top with the expected orchestral shrieks and dives.
The characters make many of the typical horror movie character mistakes from running the wrong direction to not taking care when checking out strange noises to continuing to underestimate the villain even after he has demonstrated unending malice. The killer too does everything expected, not the least of which is over-complicating his plot to the most unnecessary degrees.
All of those gripes aside, I did have fun watching this movie. Director Patrick Lussier offers an oddly shaped narrative early on that shows the killer to be less than supernatural. He faints and weaves his way through the second half of the movie and despite the cliches, does manage to build some solid suspense and mystery.
Most importantly, for me, Lussier doesn't go weak in the knees when it comes to the R-rated stuff. Lussier smartly goes all in on the classic horror movie gore, overstated to the point where the audience can have distance from the human elements but understated enough to make you watch through your fingers as you squirm in your seat.
That's a balance that has eluded most horror movie makers. The Eli Roth's of the world certainly aren't squeamish but the way he and Rob Zombie seem to enjoy their violence makes it off putting. Then there are the Asian invasion PG-13 horror movies who trade gore for atmosphere and more often than not bore audiences to death instead of scaring them to death.
Lussier finds the balance between reveling in the violence and drawing clear moral lines between victims and killer.
I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the gimmick of 3D. It is just a gimmick and nothing more. There isn't much that an audience will get out of the 3D My Bloody Valentine that they would not have gotten out of the 2D presentation. I like the digital picture clarity and Lussier's crisp shooting style lends itself well to the presentation, he smartly avoids the typical overly dark settings for more modestly lit scenes that allow audiences a better chance to keep track of the action.
In the end, My Bloody Valentine 3D cheats a little for drama and suspense but it works because Patrick Lussier makes good use of the horror movie formula. He isn't reinventing the wheel, he's just putting it to better use than most other genre directors. We can hardly ask him for much more than that.
My Bloody Valentine is a real surprise, a pretty good formula horror movie.
