A Review of My Bloody Valentine 3D

Hahahaha, yesssss. That's right, the "3-D event of a lifetime" and I saw it, just for you guys. So recently I've been busy as hell up at college and haven't seen a single movie since I've been up here. Well, on Sunday I managed to find a bit of free time and I got invited by a group of friends to go with them to see My Bloody Valentine. A terrible horror movie...in 3-D? Oh heck yes I was going to go. So away I went on my 3-D journey.

Now, if you've watched even a single commercial on TV in the past few months, then you've seen the trailer for this movie. Its trailer literally played as every other commercial on TV over all of Christmas break. Now, if you've seen the commercial, then you should have noticed something. It isn't advertised as a movie in any aspects. It is purely advertised as a 3-D experience. The 3-D aspect is the only reason it appeared in theatres and didn't directly appear on the Sci-Fi Channel (oh, how I love thee, Sci-Fi Channel).

Now, let me get one thing across to you guys. This movie is by no means a good movie on its own. It isn't meant to be any sort of masterpiece. This movie is a standard slasher and meant only to entertain. So keep that in mind as I review it. You're not meant to compare this to any "real" movies. That would be like trying to compare Friday the 13th and Goodfellas. And that just doesn't work.

Now put on those 3-D glasses and lets start this review.

Not let me give you a quick overview of the story: A miner survives a cave-in, goes crazy, wakes up from a coma, and kills everyone until he is "stopped". And credits roll. Yay! Now you can take off the 3-D glasses and recover from the splitting headache they cause.

John McCain is in this movie?

Okay, well maybe I'm downplaying the movie just a tad. There is surprisingly a bit more to the movie than just that. Just a bit though.

So, the story starts off in a collage of audio, newspaper clipets, and video telling how a cave-in occurred in mine trapping a few miners. It then informs you about the whole miner going crazy and killing the other to conserve air until he is rescued. Finally, it ends with the news about the crazed miner, Harry Warden, being in a coma in the hospital. It all comes off as a very nice way to inform the audience and I think it worked well. Then the movie jumps ahead a year. Seriously? Already time leaping? It has only been like 2 minutes of summary before they lept. Oh well, lets continue.

Basically a year has passed in the movie since the "Valentine Massacre" and guess who's waking up for the anniversary? That's right, our miner buddy Harry. How do slashers always manage to have such amazing timing? Anyways our good ol' pal Harry has taken a liking to killing people, so it seems he's got a lot more killin' to do.

Luckily, there just so happens to be a party going on in the old abandoned mine. Christ. And there just so happens to be the stereotypical jerk, slut, goody-two-shoes, and timid hero-esque guy. Now if that is not the perfect freaking set-up for a killing spree, then I have no idea what is.

I was surprised when the killings started so fast in the movie. It had only been about ten minutes and Warden had already killed off a whole hospital and all the teen party's population. Usually a movie spends some time building up and maybe developing its characters so that you like them. But this movie didn't. I think the number of killed in the first ten minutes was about equal to all the rest in the movie. I guess they had to convince people not to leave. Screw character development.

So anyways, lots of kids get killed, but Warden gets hurt and seems to get away. And now you're thinking: "Oh, well he's probably going to start hunting down the four kids that managed to get away. Now things are gonna start getting really cool as he starts stalking them down." Wrong. Next thing you know the movie jumps ahead ten years. Ten years?...Wtf? What the hell just happened to the movie we were watching? You can't just jump ahead ten damn years in a movie like that, especially if its a slasher...frick, oh well.

So finally the real movie starts. I guess the rest was all build up. So in this movie the four survivor kids have grown up. The jerk became the sheriff...oops. Goody-two-shoes married the jerk and runs a grocery store. The "hero" disappeared for ten years and has returned to sell his father's mining company. And the slut... well... she's become a whore (upgrade?). And our bud Warden seems to be back in town as well, at least the one character we care about is back and ready to kill some mo-fos.

Our only friend in this movie...

Sadly for you guys, that's about all I'm gonna spoil. I felt fine giving away all of that opening, but that's it. I don't think it would be much of a review to give away the real portion of the movie.

So basically this movie is made for viewer entertainment, and it is indeed a great group movie. The whole theater was chatting the whole time, joking, and laughing. Usually, that would drive me crazy but, for this movie, it was fine and made it even better. It seems like the movie was made with built in pauses so you could lean over and make fun of the movie or tell a joke to the person next to you.

It also used all of its gory kills as the main attraction in the movie. And, of course, all of those used 3-D as much as they could. You have no idea how many bloody 3-D pickaxes I saw in that movie. But the kills were indeed many and all very entertaining. And very relentless.

The characters in this movie rather sucked. They were barely developed and I didn't give a crap about a single one of them. They just kinda forced the characters upon you and hoped that the fact that they were human would be enough for you to relate to them. Then again the acting didn't help either. You were more likely happy to see a character in danger than you were rooting for them to survive.

It seems like 95% of the people introduced in this movie were killed. Just about every single person you met died, except the one black guy. The black deputy must have been the only black guy in the whole town that the movie took place in. The whole time everyone around me were all just waiting for his moment. Surprisingly, he never once encountered Warden, or was even anywhere near where Warden was. Bravo movie, you surprised me. Good job not being racially stereotypical.

The overall CGI and video quality in the movie were very good. They definitely dumped a lot of money into making it. The filming wasn't all too bad either. It was nothing extraordinary, but it wasn't low-budget slasher quality either.

The acting and dialogue in this movie were...well...completely horrible at times. It would seem fine for a bit of time; then some terribly acted scene mixed with horrible dialogue would appear and remind you how bad it truly was. My favorite point of pure shite was a scene between the old sheriff and his deputy right after Warden awoke from his coma. They were surrounded by blood and corpses in the hospital and the sheriff goes "I thought Warden was in a coma." The deputy responds "Well, I guess he woke up." Now, that may not seem terrible while written down, but they both spoke their lines in a completely dry and monotone way. It almost hurt to listen to, but it was too funny not to constantly repeat after the movie was over.

I don't remember that happening...

The ending of the movie surprisingly contained a nice little twist. By the end of the movie, you are expecting something to be revealed. You may not have been sure what was going to be revealed, but you knew that something had to be. The reveal was rather tasteful though, and it was something that most people probably didn't see coming. It even threw me off a bit. I thought it was a great change from the norm and a nice touch.

I checked the movie's rating on Rotten Tomatoes the other day I noticed something. Basically every single review mentioned the word "throwback". They all claim the movie is a throwback to the older classic "slashers" that we haven't seen in awhile. It truly has been awhile since something like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th has been made. Nowadays, you see much more "horror" movies, the classic "slasher" movie was more of an 80's product. So I thought I'd throw my two cents in on the whole "throwback" issue. Yes, it had some aspects of the old slashers, but not completely. So screw all you critics and your universal ideas; I disagree. (If you haven't noticed, I hate agreeing with universal ideas.) Yes, it had high body counts, many unique deaths, and a killer on the loose, but it was just not the same all the ol' slashers in the day. First off, classic slashers have many violent deaths that were entertaining but this movie was stuck way too more on the gore aspect. It went so far as to making things unrealistically gory and I felt that took some of the fun out of the deaths. I want to see entertaining slasher deaths, not over the top massive amounts of gore just piling up everywhere. Yes, I see that you have a good budget and lots of good CGI, now stop showing off the fact you can show every single blood stained organ of a person and just give us a good death. Slashers knew to have entertaining deaths and not deaths that try as hard as it can to gross you out at the expense of entertainment. As for the killer, slashers have an almost indestructible killer that seems to never die. He is a monster of darkness that will kill all in his path. In comparison, the hero seems so much more heroic going against the odds and defeating them. As for this movie though, Warden didn't really fill that ominous killer role. He seemed just as human and fallible as everyone else. You even see him running away like a little girl in one scene (seriously? Wtf? Killers don't run, they disappear from sight mysteriously to reappear just as bad-a latter). I just felt like he was nothing special; he just happened to be good a sticking a pickaxe in some people's heads. That and the overall feel just wasn't the same. This part is hard to explain though. A classic slasher just has a feel about it and this movie just didn't have that. It was more like they were trying to create a purely drama movie and mix it with a slasher. That's all just my opinion though. I feel like it is its own being and maybe was an attempt at copying a slasher, but it was by no means a 100% full fledged "throwback" (Suck it critics).

Now it's time for the rating: I give it a half thumb for its good 3-D graphics and for letting the one black guy live, and I give it a full thumb for just being a really fun movie experience. I give it a pile for the horrible dialogue and acting, a pile for unlikable and unrelatable characters, and a half pile for a weak character.

Or a 4 out of 10 for you normal people...

Truthfully, I would recommend seeing it with a group of friend if you guys are bored and want a good time making fun of stuff. I would never recommend ever actually buy the movie though.