"My Bloody Valentine 3D"
The new trend of 3D usage, which is really a throwback to the movie's yesteryear, is exciting. Especially for generations who's only exposure to the technology was A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child which only filmed a portion of the film in 3D. Horror movies are designed to make audiences scream in delight, squirm and create a palpable suspense that viewers should relate to. What better way to cheat that from audiences then to make a low-rent schlock-fest and install a novelty to distract you from it. Welcome to My Bloody Valentine 3D, which uses RealD technology to bring you into the blood-stained mayhem. Though even through 3D glasses, which makes everybody instantly look like Drew Carrey, audiences can still see through the impossibly silly script, the mocking of viewers and an avalanche of cliched plot devices. But with that said, there's something special about a movie that is self-aware enough to know this, not care, and give the audience what they want. Blood, gore, a masked vigilante and a fully nude blonde running around in high-heels.
Sure, it's crap, but it's Grade A crap.
In a coma resulting from a cave-in at the Hanniger Mine in a small New England town, Harry Warden (Rich Walters) is the lone survivor. But his miraculous survival turns out to be deadly butchering as Harry murdered the rest of the trapped miners to stop them from using up all the oxygen. Wasting no time, Harry wakes from his coma and quickly dispatches the entire medical staff at the hospital and carves out their hearts. What does he do with them? He puts the heart into a heart shaped box of candy and writes in blood "Be Mine Forever." It's Valentine's Day. What more reason do you need? As psychopathic serial killers tend to do, he heads back to the scene of the original crime (the collapsed mine) and quickly kills a group of beer-guzzling teens, (sigh) leaving only a few survivors.
Fast forward ten years later (sigh) and the surviving teens are now adults, including Sheriff Axel Palmer (Kerr Smith), wife Sarah (Jaime King) and Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), who is now owner of the fabled mine. Tom, who vanished shortly after the massacre, is back to sell off the mine after the death of his father. Along with his return is seemingly the gas-mask-wearing, pick-axe wielding psycho from ten years ago. But how can that be when the town's fathers got together and killed the original murderer ten years ago? (sigh)
The movie goes into "Who's the masked killer" territory with more slayings, more random objects pointed at the audience to show off its 3D and buckets of blood. The movie borrows quite literally, just as the original 1981 version did, from every single slasher film preceding it: Friday the 13th, Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and the list goes on. Not that director Patrick Lussier (Dracula 2000) cares. Obviously he doesn't, which brings a sort of freedom to the film. Never does My Bloody Valentine 3D try to dazzle audiences with pretentious "I'm so clever" moments or a subtext of some sort of underlying theme (see The Strangers for details). It is, instead, just a thrill ride, designed to spook, to startle, to engage and this is where My Bloody Valentine 3D succeeds.
A fun time for a resurgent slasher genre, this retread isn't going to stand the test of time, but it will surely last a few months.
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