VALENTINE (2001) The worst one yet ...and the parade of new Hollywood slasher flicks marches on. The much-resented-by-metal-fans crop of today's American hard rock is often referred to as nu-metal (though I think of them as Kornspawn) - supposedly because it's metal for today's (teenaged) audience. But these bands are far removed from the spirit of anything I'd call metal, because the only things they have in common with it is essentially, the lowest-common-denominator surface aspect (loud guitars, just-barely-offensive-enough-to-piss-off-parents lyrics). I propose that these movies be called nu-slashers. What good fortune I had to watch this movie right after watching Psycho Beach Party. PBP incorporated some mild slasher elements in its spoofery of beach-party flicks and early "psychological thrillers", but it had for most of its running length a kind of gentle spirit, up until the last minute where it completely switched gears and that, of course, was the biggest gag of all. Valentine is a perfect example of the kind of mean-spirited, empty-headed, unpleasant yet boring horror movie which is made for teenagers these days, the kind of movie PSB turned into for about one minute at the end. You'd pretty much have to be a maker of nu-slashers to be crass enough to want to make a straight-faced movie about bullied teenagers exacting bloody revenge, even if they did wait til some years after graduation. Anyway, somebody wearing a cupid mask (least frightening slasher-movie mask, ever) is killing the grown-up meanies from the past, some of which we're supposed to like now, some of which we're not. People die, nobody finds out about anything until they die, Katherine Heigl plays a sexy coroner (or something) who gets killed in the first 20 minutes, there's a climax where the identity of the killer is supposed to be one person, but then there's a surprise, and yaaaaaawn, haven't I seen this movie ten million times already? None of the cast is interesting in the slightest, Denise Richards managing to squeeze in maybe one good line among the numerous times she's hit on. The movie's mean-spiritedness comes through many times, like one character, a former drunk who's reformed himself. The movie makes pains to get us to like this guy and root for him, 'cuz he's getting his life together...and then he gets all liquored up at the end, for no real reason. Now that's just mean. There are all sorts of lame touches, like how the killer sends a Valentine's card to each of his victims before he murders them, and the cards all have really bad "scary" poetry in them. One time he even sends chocolates, with maggots inside the chocolates. So, we know the killer is a chocolatier. This movie features an obnoxious and arrogant sort-of performance artist, who puts on this big show which is of course pretentious as all hell...but why couldn't it have been pretentious and interesting? I'm always complaining about the Dropped Body, the body that's been strung up and only falls when somebody's standing directly underneath it. I guess a variant of the Dropped Body is the Submerged Head, where the severed head only rises to the surface when somebody's looking in the water. Don Davis's score is derivative enough to probably warrant a lawsuit. Hell, everything here is derivative enough to probably warrant a lawsuit. There have been a lot of nu-slashers in the last five years, but Valentine is, so far, the most laughably bad of the bunch. Based on a novel by Tom Savage and adapted by no fewer than four screenwriters, the lump sum of all this creative effort is a lump indeed. If there's one good thing I can say about Valentine, it's that the murder scenes themselves have a kind of brutality which is cold, primal, and mostly bloodless (reportedly, a fair bit o' grue was cut), somehow all at the same time. Maybe with a good script (and some intense study of the works of Cronenberg), this could've evolved into a style. And great job on the casting for the younger version of Denise Richards. Directed by Jamie Blanks, who gave us Urban Legend, which previously held the title of worst nu-slasher. We have a new champion. Keep an eye on this guy. He might be the next Michael Bay. BACK TO THE R's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE