Review of My Bloody Valentine (2009) by Natasha W — 07 May 2012

There is something seemingly profound about a movie that accomplishes exactly what it aims for, nothing more and nothing less. Patrick Lussier's technologically enhanced update of the 1981 Canadian slasher My Bloody Valentine fits this category -- it knows precisely what it is and eludes any brand of posturing. Of course, once the pick-axes and severed jawbones stop flying through the screen, one may properly decipher the aforementioned feeling of profundity as something much simpler: appreciation...for disallowing another sleaze-horror to erode the genre and its enthusiasts by attempting insightfulness or provocation. But Lussier couldn't care less about whether viewers appreciate his movie; he wants them to experience it. Fortunately, all the audience has to do is put on an uncomfortable pair of glasses -- he does the rest.

One year following a coalmine collapse in a small Pennsylvania town, the one surviving miner (of six), a brute named Harry Warden -- who is suspected of killing the other five men with his pick-axe to reserve oxygen for himself -- awakens his coma and starts a slaughter, beginning in the hospital where he had been kept and ending back at the mine shaft, where a group of teens are partying (he is shot by two local officers). The four kids that escape death are Tom (Jensen Ackles, whose constant look of astonishment becomes fairly humorous in time), his girlfriend, Sarah (Jaime King, the most decorated of the film's cast -- despite unremarkably fitting right in here), Axel (Kerr Smith), and his girlfriend, Irene (Betsy Rue, whose contribution to the movie surely had Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon smiling).

Nine years later, Tom, whose father built the mine, returns to the town that he abandoned that night, and does so in hopes of selling the mine that he acquired when his father died, much to the dislike of the whole of the citizens. But things are slightly different now -- Irene is a hopeless loner who engages in random hotel rendezvous (providing the much talked about top-to-bottom nakedness..."in 3-D!"), while Axel, the town's new sheriff, has married Sarah, with whom he's had a child. And in glorious -- and gory -- fashion, all of these rather simple observations come into play on the ten-year anniversary of the mine murders; someone is killing again and the "who" isn't as conspicuous as one might initially think. (Then again, it probably is -- but that's forgiven on account of the fun one is intended to have in the process of solving the adventure's puzzle.).

Amidst the shockingly expected visual haughtiness (i.e. graphic nudity and redundant violence), and the correctly anticipated below-average acting, there were some satisfying revelations, none more surprising than the direction. Lussier (whose now-six-film directography included only one theatrical release -- Dracula 2000 -- prior to MBV) and his creative team make all the right moves. Genre fanatics will find a surplus of nods to throwback classics, most prominently Part II of the Friday the 13th series and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (in a scene toward the end of the film, Sarah scurries through a maze of hanging mine worker outfits, mirroring the meat locker chase in TCM). Moreover, those who have seen the original will be pleased to know that this reinterpretation avoids following the same twists, and that there is one more possible suspect than there was in the '80s version.