My Bloody Valentine (2009)
AKA
My Bloody Valentine 3D
My starting point was a fortunate one: I've previously watched neither this nor the 1981 Canadian film it remakes. Nor did I know anything about the plot, other than it was something to do with miners. This meant I could immerse myself in whatever plot there may be without knowing the outcome. My preference would probably have been to watch the original, but this one was free and beggars can't be choosers (besides, Noughties slashers invariably feel slicker and glossier than their low budget Eighties counterparts, which doesn't hurt).
All the slasher tropes are present and correct here: the small town; the original sin from many years earlier; the significant holiday (silly me not to realise more consciously that it's set around Valentine's Day); plus the usual array of promiscuous teens and twenty-somethings played by actors who are twice their characters' ages.
I think it helped that much of the cast was not known to me for anything specific, whilst being familiar enough to feel almost comforting. Tom Atkins and Kevin Tighe are actors I've seen in other things here and there. Jensen Ackles is a familiar name and face but I have no idea why (I suppose it's one of those names that's not easily forgotten, with a forename that sounds like a surname, and a surname that sounds like a medical condition). Kerr Smith I know from another teen horror of the same decade,
Final Destination. His character there was an annoying drama queen. While there are shades of this here, his character here is a mercifully a little more interesting. Plus he's a suspect, of course.
This leads me to the next point: like other slashers from the early Eighties (
Prom Night, Terror Train, the original
Friday The 13th), this has the added element of mystery around the perpetrator. Cleverly,
MBV has its cake and eats it by also incorporating the legendary, almost supernatural serial killer in the style of
Halloween, with part of the mystery being the question of whether or not the perpetrator of the original massacre in the mineshaft - long believed dead - has returned for vengeance towards the town.
The thing with the mystery is that most of the characters aren't that well fleshed-out, and most are quite forgettable. There really weren't that many people on whom to pin a guess. The reveal didn't exactly bowl me over, but was probably as brave a move as this film could make. It did feel like a bit of a cheat, so I suppose the success of the reveal would live or die on whether or not it stands up to a rewatch with the knowledge of whodunnit.
The film admittedly got me with some cheap jump scares. Mostly because of the loud stings that accompany the visuals, which is a cheat but effective in a ghost train kind of way.
The town itself feels very lived-in and rough round the edges. From what I've seen and read, there are some things about American small towns that charm me, and some things I find a little scary, and this captures both (as an example of the latter, there's a reveal of an extrajudicial killing which a number of townfolk have covered up).
There's the added complication of soap opera elements, with love triangles and cheating and a surprise pregnancy. Mileage will vary on how much of this is actually needed, but I appreciated that there was at least a story with different things going on.
Regarding both versions of
MBV, I have read over the years about them containing a lot of violence and gore and I did wonder going in if it might be a bit much for my tastes. As it turns out, showing too much is this film's undoing. It's very clearly shot with the 3D gimmick in mind but watching it fifteen years later in 2D, it doesn't hold up at all well in this department. The more it tries to horrify with graphic imagery, the more cartoony and daft it looks. Eyeballs fly out of heads and at the screen, along with any number of other organs and objects. The pickaxe keeps swinging in the direction of the camera. It's more retro cutesy than terrifying, but also a little sad that nothing seems to have been learnt from the early Eighties 3D revival which employed similar gimmicks equally indiscriminately. Less is always more in horror, and this obvious gimmickry cheapens an otherwise perfectly watchable slasher.
There is some three dimensional fan-service, predictably aimed at the core audience of heterosexual teenage boys who no doubt felt the blood rush from their 3D goggles during the prolonged nude murder. Naturally it comes with the usual gender inequality where the male actor in the scene (also one of the writers) got away with a quick flash of the bum, while the woman ran round giving us full frontal for what felt like ten long minutes. Frankly, I'd rather have seen Jensen's Ackles in 3D, but to each their own.
Long story short (too late), this could have been much better, and is never going to be art, but I've seen worse slashers. I might even watch it again years down the line. I'm also hoping my notoriously poor memory for film does its thing so I can enjoy the original in due course without remembering any key information from this one.
