Valentine review.
Much maligned upon its release in 2001…let’s spend this Valentine’s Day giving Valentine a reevaluation.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Valentine
Directed by Jamie Blanks
Screenplay by Donna Powers, Wayne Powers, Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts
Starring Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel, Heddy Burress and Katherine Heigl
Valentine Review
Paperback. Paper thin.
Those are the two things that went through my mind while revisiting 2001’s Valentine. A critical failure upon its release…the holiday slasher has gained a cult status in recent years. Valentine’s Day felt like as good a time as any to investigate why. I quickly arrived at a theory…but let’s get those two things out of the way first.
Paperback. That’s how I was first introduced to Valentine. It’s the title of a novel by Tom Savage that the movie is based on. When I say that…I literally mean it’s based on the title. The near 25 years that have passed since reading the book leave a lot of details in the ether…but I know it wasn’t a teenage slasher story. As I recall, Tom Savage’s novel was a mystery novel about a stalker. I do remember it used a fun tactic to tell the story…chapters from the perspective of someone watching the main character. And…spoiler alert…that person isn’t the stalker. It’s someone trying to protect her. It was a clever twist utilizing an interesting writing technique.
The movie Valentine isn’t telling that story. Four writers are credited on the movie…which begins to explain how it went from a taut thriller to something else entirely. Something best described as…paper thin. It’s no secret that the post-Scream era of horror had its struggles. Nothing could live up to the tidal wave that was Wes Craven’s meta-masterwork. Most of the movies that found themselves greenlit to cash in on Scream’s success learned all the wrong lessons. Stories stripped away the cleverness but made sure to cast a who’s who of young faces.
Valentine was no different. David Boreanaz is here in the middle of his run on Angel. Denise Richards was hot on the heels of Starship Troopers, Wild Things, and her turn as Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough. Future Scream series star Marley Shelton took the lead as Kate. Katherine Heigl even pops in as the customary opening kill.
As this was 2001…the movie has that slick, glossy look that defined studio horror of the time. You can’t hold that against these movies…but it really places them in a specific time and place. The plot is simple…a bullied kid from their youth reappears to exact revenge on those who wronged him. A bit of a whodunnit…or, I suppose, a who is it. 13 years have passed since our group of friends ruined young Jeremy Milton’s life…he could be any one of the men who has infiltrated their lives. Actually…that sounds way more interesting than Valentine makes it. Which is the biggest problem.
The characters in Valentine are so one-note…so paper thin…that it’s kind of amazing. All the women talk about is the men around them. Scene after scene of lusting after or courting every man they can find. There is no second character trait. The men aren’t any better. Each one is given precisely one attribute…and that’s all they ever are. A win for equality? Now that I think about it…Katherine Heigl’s disposable opening kill has the most character development. Sure, she’s out looking for love in all the wrong places…but she is shown to have standards, intelligence, and a plan for her future. No wonder she doesn’t make it to the opening titles.
What follows that opening is a slow-moving quasi-mystery slasher with a lot of attempts at comedy. Eventually, Valentine attempts to pull off the Billy Loomis switch in a far sloppier manner. Loomis, you’ll recall, was pretty much the only logical suspect at the time of his apparent death in Scream. It throws you for a complete loop because…well…it had to be him. And, of course, it was. Valentine reaches a point where it has to be David Boreanaz’s Adam. You pretty much suspect him from the start…but by the end he’s the only person left. Then…somehow…Adam pushes the masked killer down the stairs and shoots him before he can kill Kate.
I want to give the movie some credit for the idea…on paper. The mask is pulled off to reveal Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw) underneath. Dorothy set all this in motion 13 years earlier when she accused Jeremy/Adam of assault. It’s fitting for Jeremy/Adam to frame her for his murders all these years later. The problem is that, in execution, it’s stupid. It asks you to accept that Adam dressed Dorothy up in his masked costume…walked her to the top of the steps…watched her sit up like Michael Myers without saying one word…and then shot her. That’s stupid.
The kills here are fine. At least…there is some decent variation. They look good in that shiny, glossy way. Adam/Jeremy’s targets don’t always make sense. Getting revenge on the women who ruined his life…great. But he also targets the terrible men around them? Huh? A scam artist boyfriend…a sleezy blind date…a weirdo neighbor… Why is he doing the women these favors? The movie never explains because it can’t. Just a way to add more kill scenes.
Why has Valentine gained in esteem since its initial release? I think I understand. While it isn’t good…it is simple. Set aside the people who have a nostalgia for it based on it being the first horror they were exposed to…and that’s the only explanation that really makes sense. It sits in a post-modern horror pocket and dumbs it down. Years of remakes would follow…many years of, forgive the term, “elevated” horror would come after that. Valentine is a basic slasher movie with basic ideas and basic characters. A true “turn your brain off” movie. Who doesn’t need that in their lives at some point? Especially on Valentine’s Day.
Scare Value
Valentine may have garnered an unlikely cult following over the last two decades…but it really shouldn’t have. A series of one note characters meet their untimely demises leading to an ending as sloppy today as it was in 2001. It suffers from the same glossy look that defined this era of horror. The revenge plot is decent…but takes too many detours to work as well as it could. Watching Valentine today…it explains why the remake era would take over the genre soon after. They were out of ideas anyway.
2/5
Valentine Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from VUDU and Amazon
Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon
