‘Bloody’ awful in all three dimensions

My Bloody Valentine 3-D
Review by Nathan Weinbender

I stopped to look at the posters for “My Bloody Valentine 3-D” before I went into the theater. It shows a cinema filled with clean-cut teenagers, all wearing goofy 3-D glasses and orgiastic expressions of terror and glee. A giant pickaxe has broken through the screen and is swiping at the teens in the front row, no doubt an accurate representation of the film’s effects. “A 3-D ride to Hell!” the tagline screams. It looked like it could be fun.

Turns out that the posters are more exciting than the movie itself. “My Bloody Valentine” is a routine hack-and-slash gorefest that plays like a shopping spree at Cliché Mart, and the fact that it’s in middling 3-D merely underscores the fact that the filmmakers obviously had no faith in the quality of their production from the get-go.

See, 3-D is a blessing for movie producers. It’s a cheap gimmick that secures big box office intake—not only are ticket prices for 3-D features higher, but people can’t replicate the 3-D experience at home and will be sure to check it out in theaters (the movie has already grossed more than $40 million in two weeks of release).

But it also takes a lot of pressure off those poor, poor movie financiers, who normally have to worry about delivering a quality product. They can sit back and relax, because with a 3-D picture all they have to think about is what objects they can throw at the audience to make them jump in their seats.

In “My Bloody Valentine” we get gouged eyeballs, splattered blood, tree branches and a severed jaw tossed at us. Oh, and pickaxes—lots and lots of pickaxes. I grew wearier with each new plunging pickaxe shot, and I told myself that there’s certainly no way this movie could possibly muster another one. And then, whaddaya know, the bloody end of a pickaxe came tearing through the screen, and I checked my watch again.

The plot, recycled from a 1981 Canadian film, is a real yawner, involving a killer miner on the loose in a small town on Valentine’s Day, and it doesn’t have a single original thought in its beaten, bloodied head. Its only concerns are gore, nudity and the 3-D effects, which I’m sure is all its target audience cares about anyway.

But I was bored. Really, really bored. I appreciate that 3-D technology has made leaps and bounds in the last few years, but they are still far from perfecting it. 3-D movies rely heavily on their effects, but I have yet to see a 3-D feature that really benefits from the 3-D, or one that uses the technique as a way to bolster its story.

And although we’ve advanced beyond the days of cheesy cardboard glasses with red and blue lenses, we’re still being treated to the same silly effects. Will there ever be a 3-D picture where the characters don’t point gun barrels directly at the camera? It has all grown so tiresome.

Grade: D-

Directed by Patrick Lussier. Written by Todd Farmer and Zane Smith; based on a screenplay by John Beaird. Starring Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Betsy Rue, Edi Gathegi and Tom Atkins. R; 101m.