Happy (slightly late) Valentine's Day. A couple of years ago I reviewed the 1981 Canucksploitation horror My Bloody Valentine, and with it being that time of year again and a new 50 Shades movie out (I think this one is called 50 Shades of Restraining Orders, from what I saw of the trailer), I figured that it would be a good time to review the 2009 remake, My Bloody Valentine 3D. And, as you might have guessed from the little addition to the title there, this version of the film is in 3D, so get ready for weapons, body parts and anything else the filmmakers can think of to be thrown at the screen.
The mining town of Harmony is struck by a mining accident that leaves six miners trapped underground - a tragedy made even worse when it's discovered that the incident's sole survivor, Harry Warden, killed the other five miners to ensure his survival. One year later, on Valentine's Day, Warden wakes up from his coma and, feeling remarkably spry, goes on a rampage, killing 22 people before he is apparently killed by the town sheriff. Ten years after that, Tom Hanniger, the mine owner's son who caused the original accident that started everything off and who narrowly avoided becoming Warden's last victim, returns to town. At the same time, gruesome murders committed by a person in full mining gear and wielding a pickaxe start happening again, with the victims' hearts cut out and placed in chocolate boxes in time for Valentine's Day. Tom and the new town sheriff Axel (who is now married to Tom's old sweetheart Sarah) both start their own investigations into the murders, but is it a returned Harry Warden or a copycat killer?
There's not a very large suspect pool in this My Bloody Valentine remake. On the one hand we have Axel, the town sheriff who's cheating on his wife and is shown throughout the film to be a pretty big asshole. And on the other hand, we've got Dean Winchester. By the laws of narrative casting, one of these two will have to be the hero, and the other the killer, and if you were to ask me I'd say the film shows its hand there way too early in the film with a throwaway scene. But let's be honest here, the plot was never going to be the key selling point of this film - it was always going to be the 3D.
So, the 3D. This film has a lot of it, which in turn means that it has a lot of CGI. And it's not very good CGI at that. I know that I've shown myself to be rather biased against CGI and 3D in the past, what with not being able to actually watch films in 3D and all, but near the beginning there's a 3D effect that makes the eye-popping scene in Friday the 13th Part 3 look good. For the rest of the film the 3D effects are mainly pickaxes flying at or lodging in the screen, or CGI flesh and blood globules splattering their way towards the audience, the vast majority of which mainly serve to highlight how good the occasional practical effects are in comparison (mainly they're bodies with empty chest cavities and a callback to the launderette/washing machine scene from the original movie).
This version of My Bloody Valentine also has several connections with the Friday the 13th franchise as well; some coincidental and some not. Valentine's Day in the move falls on Saturday 14, and there's a 'joke' at the beginning of the film where a teen stumbles into a mine full of dead bodies and calls out, "Jason, is that you?" On the more coincidental side, writer Todd Farmer also wrote Jason X (and has cameos in both films as well; here we get to see his bare ass as he has sex with an incidental character/future victim who has a truly impressive full-frontal nude scene). There's also the fact that the 2009 Friday the 13th remake both came out in the same year as My Bloody Valentine (obviously) but also starred Jensen Ackles' Supernatural co-star Jared Padalecki as well (and if you squint at it and add a "Is it the ghost of Harry Warden?" subplot to it, you could almost see those two movies as episodes of Supernatural where the Winchesters have to go undercover...). It's an interesting little comparison that's certainly more interesting than some parts of the film.
And finally, we come to the direction. The My Bloody Valentine remake was directed (and also edited, and to be fair he seems like a pretty good editor) by Patrick Lussier, who was also the man responsible for Dracula 2000/1 (depending on what year it was released in your country, it seems). And in the end, many of the problems with that movie also apply to this one, which can really be summed up as "All style and no substance." (See also: any Zack Snyder movie.) It's all about the gore and the 3D money shots and the set dressing, so much so that things like plot, characterization and continuity are left by the wayside. Whenever a remake is made the question has to be asked, "Does this remake bring anything new to the table?" and in the case of My Bloody Valentine the answer is no, because 3D is hardly a new or rare effect. The original film was a low-budget classic that made a name for itself in the burgeoning slasher genre. This new version tries to draw an audience in with gimmicks because it can't improve on anything else (and in fact makes some things worse). A shame.
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