Death By Beauty Horror Love: Movie Review

VALENTINE (2001)

Adam Carr: All I can think is when someone is that lonely or that angry they can learn to hide it. But inside, it never dies. It just stays there. Eats away at you. Until one day, you have to do something about it.

This has got to be one of the FIRST slash n' stalk movies i ever watched !! i remember it so well because i saw in at the cinema with a bunch of girlfriends when it first came out, no previous to seeing this movie one of the FIRST horror/slasher/scary movies i saw was Final Destination that had been released the previous year, Now i dont really class Final Destination as a slasher flick, but i will explain that more at a later date.

The reason i remember this movie so much is that when i saw it in the cinemas it was just me and 4 other girls we were all of about 16 and it was just us in the cinema, it was a great ol time climbing over chairs running up and down isle, i even think malteaser where throwen around at one point, but what i pointedly really remember was the way it scared us, at 16 of course we where a little freaked out and everytime there was a jump scare in the movie one of my girlfriends screamed literally at the top of her lungs, i think by this point we had one of the usher guys poking his head in every so often cause i think he thought WE were getting murdered and not the chicks on the screen.

So this little movie holds a bit of a soft spot for me, which sort of makes it hard for me to be critical of the movie, i do remember it being some what scary when i was 16, and having watched it again this afternoon, i see why to my 16 year old self that it was, the tension is well built in this movie, but i am getting ahead of myself, first let me give you a short low down of the movie.

we begin this movie in 1988 at a junior high valentine day dance, we are taken along with young Jeremy Melton as he proceedes to ask the cute popular girls to dance with him, they all refuse him in their own ways (which later sets them up for how they will die) until he finally ask Dorothy the token 'Fat" girl in junior high she accepts and then we come to a camera panning under the bleachers of the high school gym to find Dorothy and Jeremy making out, the cool guys of the school discover them and starting making fun of both Jeremy and Dorothy promting dorothy to falsey accuse Jeremy of attacking her, so the boys dump a bowl of punch (reminiscent of the pivotal scene in Carrie) on his head.

We then skip to 13 years later, and we re met Shelly (played by Katherine Heigl) on a date with a real loser, cutting the date short she heads back to the universtity where she studying to become a doctor and is in the midst of studying for her mid terms, so the scene is specifically set up just so she can die (opps sorry if thats a bit of a plot line give away) we get all of about 15 minutes into the movie before she is killed off (supposedly she had to shot her scene in 3 days cause she had prior commitments to the tv show Roswell).

Of course this is all the set up to reintroduce us to Kate, Paige, Dorothy and Lily who are of course all grown up now, and we proceede into them all recieving Valentines that aren't so sweet and then being stalked and slashed all esculating at a Valentines bash in the home of Dorothy's rich father.

(Denise Richards As Paige and Marley Shelton as Kate)

The reason this movie works for me is its just really kind of simple, after a few re watches there aren't all those massive twist plots that go on and on through out most slasher movies these days, its pretty much the simple stalk n' slash stuff you'd have watched back in the 80s, the story line is simple and easy to follow (for me it was) though there are a few random kills in the movie, why the killer went after Dorothy's toy boy i'm not quite sure, i guess to get him out of the way who knows, theres no real gore to this movie, we do see one of the bodies lying in a pool of blood after the killer has impailed them on broken glass after having thrown them through a wall of glass.

but if you sort of just shrug off the random kills, it is a good movie, Marley Shelton as the final girl in kate is believable, she is the typical all round sweet nice girl you expect to be a final girl, Denise Richards does a remarkbly good job as sexpot Paige who dies in the typical phallic way that is death by drill (sorry for another give away lol) and David Boreanaz as nice girl Kates On/Off boyfriend Adam is right in all the right ways.

(Kate Davies: He's no angel, but he's not a killer.)

there really isn't anything bad that i can say about this movie, it is by no means the best slasher flick you'll find going round, and honestly i had forgotten about this movie for ages in was still packed away in boxes of dvds i hadn't unpacked since i'd moved over a year ago !!! so after taking hours to hunt it down in my spare room i was happily surprised how much i still admire this movie after 11 years, i'm sure i've seen it a few times since 2001 but then again the amount of movies i've watched.

So it may not be one of the most memoriable movies in the slasher genre going round, but this movie gets props for being the first slasher flick to get me into said genre !!! the ending i think left alot of people scratching their heads and going "Huh" but rewatching it again now i've done the whole "Ohhhhh dur of course i get it now" i wont say much else other wise i will give away the ending, thats the only twist through out the movie is the twist at the end, so thank god for that movie these days try to be TOO smart with all their plot twisty and turns and it just gives me a headache trying to figure it out lol.

The killers disguse of all black with the creepy cherub mask works well, it seems so innocent and yet creepy at the same time, the way they've worked it into the movie right from the beginning is really good too, theres not much more i can think to say about the movie, i really just loved it to bits because it holds that special place in my heart lol though it doesn't rate on my top 10 because it really is the kinda movie that you forget about after awhile (is that a bad thing i dunno??) but i think in essences i will forever APPRECHIATE this movie for introducing me to the world that is stalk n' slash !!!

so i do recommend giving thismovie a go, a relaxing arvo off work if you may, come home pop it in the DVD player put your feet up, grab a couple choccies from the cupboard and a nice ice cold can of Fanta from the fridge (doesn't have to be fanta i just say fanta because its what i was drinking at the time i watched the movie lol) and sit back and be happily apprechiate a movie that is by no means the best ever but does well in making you smile !!!