There is a reason that horror movies usually get the worst reviews of any genre.
Unlike most other films, the success or failure of a horror movie is only based slightly on its story. A horror success is defined by a few moments: the ones that make you scream, the ones that make you say “eww,” and the ones that make your spine tingle. This focus on individual moments generally excuses the genre from the confines of reasonable plots and believable acting. It allows the films to focus on the only real aim: audience engagement.
Given this fact, it’s amazing to think that no one has paired horror with 3-D until now. With the same basic goals and objectives, the two are a match made in heaven.
“My Bloody Valentine,” the first high-profile, wide-release marriage of the two, follows the events of a small mining town in West Virginia called Harmony. The film’s opening details the story of a mine collapse with only one survivor, Harry Warden, who is deep in a coma. Further investigation, however, reveals that the buried miners might have been murdered. By the time all these pieces are put together, Harry has woken up and killed everyone in sight, then turns his focus to slaying some young people who have decided to hang out on the mine’s entrance. Only a few survive, Harry appears to narrowly escape police gunfire, and the screen goes black.
Flash forward 10 years and the traumatized teens are now grown up. Axel Palmer (Kerr Smith) is the town’s police chief and is married to Sarah (Jaime King). Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), Sarah’s former flame who disappeared for 10 years, has returned home in the wake of his father’s death in order to sell his share of the mine. Before Tom can do this, however, a series of gruesome killings eerily similar to the ones that took place a decade ago starts up, giving all three a need to discover the identity of the killer.
The first thing that must be acknowledged in any review of “My Bloody Valentine” is just how graphic the movie is. With absurdly brutal, gory killings from start to finish, and a nude scene that seems to last for 10 minutes, this is about as close to NC-17 as it gets. That being said, the entire film has a remarkably juvenile feel to it, from the goofy hard-rock soundtrack to sex jokes that no one past middle-school age could be proud of making. These juxtaposed aspects make watching the movie feel like a childhood sleepover.
It’s this sense of endless, sadistic mischief that makes “My Bloody Valentine” worth watching. Sure, the acting is terrible