The pre-Joker poster.
My Bloody Valentine
Directed by Patrick Lussier
Lionsgate, 2009
By Mark Meeks
“Wait… I thought that the third dimension was smell?” — Some girl in the seat in front of me. I’m not kidding.
All my life, things flying at my face have elicited strong emotional responses from me. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time getting hit in the head by various objects. I would hazard to guess more than is typical. This led to me feeling the emotion known as “fear.” Fear of objects heading towards my face. Later on in my life, when the objects of my youth (baseballs, baseball bats, wooden swings, pencil erasers) began to be replaced by the objects of my young adulthood (breasts, womanly parts in general, delicious pizza), different emotions began to surface when viewing rapidly approaching whatever-it-may-be.
As such, I approached the new 3D remake of My Bloody Valentine with excitement and trepidation. Would the visual effects cause me to have horrible flashbacks to events that I have long suppressed? Worse still, would it cause me to have horrible flashbacks to the recent Hollywood remake of Prom Night? Or would it simply be a ridiculous and hilarious thrill ride that goes extremely well with popcorn and/or candy? I am happy to report that it turned out to be the latter. I was eating Sour Patch Kids, FYI.
MBV3D lifts its basic premise from the original film. I’m going to come clean — I haven’t seen the original film. Whatever. For a long time I thought it was just the name of a really boring band. (Whatever!) The plot is simple. Mining town. Crazy miner. Pickaxe. Splat. Town thinks he’s dead. He mysteriously returns ten years later on Valentine’s Day (hence the title) and people once again start turning up spelunk’d. I don’t think that’s a word.
"No lozenges for me. I prefer Sour Patch Kids."
The plot is unimportant. The film handles the execution of this rote tale with a gleefully by-the-numbers approach. You’ve seen it before, yes, but have you seen it in 3D? Possibly, yes. But nevertheless, MBV3D’s complete lack of pretension and very thorough understanding of what it is serves as the film’s strongest suit. The actors play it as it should be played, sometimes skating deadly close to self-awareness, but never quite reaching that level of ham. Jensen Ackles and Kerr Smith compete in each frame for the “Get This Guy A Lozenge Award,” and a number of the film’s players handily lend themselves as further evidence to support my “Old Men = Amazing” thesis.
The real “stars” of the film, however, are the 3D effects. And what hammy, attention-craving stars they turn out to be. Just when you think “Eyeball on a pickaxe” had won the day, “Old man taking a good long look around with his shotgun” comes in and steals the show. It goes on like that for the duration of the film, which ends just short of overstaying its welcome. (100 minutes is long for this type of movie. When there’s only one booby scene, anyway.)
If you’re looking for an entertaining night at the movies, MBV3D is a great bet for some good, light fun. This is heads and tails above the recent spate of Hollywood horror, friends. Will it spark a 3D horror renaissance, bringing back the bawdy and bloody days of old? One can only hope. Until they reinvent smell-o-vision, anyway.
