My Bloody Valentine 3D is quite possibly the worst film ever to be shown on the silver screen. Everything about it is horrible. The acting makes a piece of wood look like Marlon Brando and the writing is equivalent to something out of a Steven Seagal straight-to-DVD actioners.
But then that is the whole point of the movie. To be horrible…3-dimensionally. The plot revolves around a small mining town in which a crazed miner named Harry Warden slaughters a slew of people with a pick-axe, finally taken down and killed by a couple of veteran cops.
Ten years later, the killer is back! And that’s pretty much it. Plus the whole 3-D thing. When the killer throws his axe at someone, he’s throwing it at you. The weapon goes through a character’s eye and into your face. And when people are not being slaughtered, select objects are 3-dimensional in the frame and characters who enter midway through a shot seem to walk from off the set into the camera’s view.
My Bloody Valentine is really less of a movie and more an experience, and in that way reminiscent of last January’s big hit Cloverfield. However, Cloverfield was an expertly made film about people the audience cared about with genuine thrills and style. This is the opposite of all of that – a B-movie in every sense of the word. Patrick Lussier, the film’s director, is a frequent collaborator (usually the editor) with Wes Craven, who is a master of finding true scares in the cheese that is the horror genre (see Cursed). This “horror-savvy” is apparent (on some small level) throughout Valentine, and hopefully we will go on to see Lussier make an effective horror film that is not completely dependent on one gimmick. Or just make another one like this, which I would have no problem with.
Gimmicks or not, see the movie with friends and laugh your ass off at the serious parts and get scared when jaw bones and fire flies off the screen and into your personal space. And, for God’s sake, if you’re even thinking about seeing it NOT in 3D, don’t. Go see Last Chance Harvey instead. Or Hotel For Dogs. Anything else really.
8 out of 10 (rating based on theater experience)