WARNING! This post contains extensive spoilers for this movie. Watch the movie before reading! Or don't. You have been warned.
My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)
Rated R
IMDB Says: “Tom returns to his hometown on the tenth anniversary of the Valentine's night massacre that claimed the lives of 22 people. Instead of a homecoming, Tom finds himself suspected of committing the murders, and it seems like his old flame is the only one that believes he's innocent.”
IMDB Rating: 5.5/10
Metacritic Rating: 51/100
Rotten Tomatoes: 57% critics, 44% audience
Solee: 2/5
Mikey: 2/5
We watched on Hulu.
Mikey: I always have to ask: what made you settle on this one?
Solee: It was 10% interest in the murder mystery aspect and 90% excitement at recognizing Dean Winchester as a main character!
Mikey: What I was surprised by was that 2009 is right in the middle of
Supernatural. I feel like he could’ve done better.
Solee: I feel like you are right. Jensen Ackles is a better TV actor than movie actor. Or maybe it was the script/director. I dunno. Either way, this movie wasn’t what I was hoping for.
Mikey: No, but it does certainly start right off with a bang - I think there are 22 kills in the first ten minutes of the movie before it settles down and starts telling the actual story.
Solee: I even said aloud, “Oh, they’re just making out in a corner. It’s much too early in the story for them to be dead!” Technically, I was right. Those particular kids weren’t dead, but IMMEDIATELY after I said that, we saw about 10 people get pickaxed through the brain. It was shocking.
Mikey: It’s all the more shocking when the pickaxe can plow right through bone and brain, but do no damage to your eyeball as it simply pops it out of your head, speared like a cocktail weenie. That was one of the moments that helped us realize we were watching a 3D movie (in 2D).
Solee: I was actually very relieved when you figured that out. Some very weird scenes made a lot more sense in that context. I’m kinda sad I didn’t get to see it in 3D.
Mikey: It would’ve been a fun gimmick. Without it, it was just terrible CGI. Which I guess it would’ve been in 3D as well, but the extra dimension would distract us. All of the big gore moments featured some ridiculous CGI that made this movie look, to me, like a TV movie rather than a big budget Hollywood thing (considering it was 2009, not 1999).
Solee: Yeah. It was ridiculous. That being said, this was probably the most grossed out I’ve been so far this month. I think that’s partly because pickax isn’t a weapon I’m used to seeing. And that scene with the shovel!! Blegh.
Mikey: It is certainly well suited to going right through people. A lot of eyes were averted during this movie, but I watched the shovel scene. It was probably the worst CGI of the whole movie, I couldn’t look away. This whole thing was just incredibly brutal… just a lot of non-stop killin’.
Solee: I also wanted to look away from the terrible plotting of this movie. There were a whole lot of things being asserted without ANY supporting evidence. I have never written a murder mystery because I fear ending up with something as convoluted and clumsy as this.
Mikey: I don’t think that would happen. I got very tired of them being sure it was Harry Warden, a man they knew was dead. I mean, maybe if there were some crazy ghosty things happening, you might have one character who’s insisting that, but everybody was so sure. It was not believable. I found myself caught by the whole ‘mystery’ angle though, I kept considering each suspect and having ideas about them. So it did entertain me in that way. Though - no surprise - the end result ruined that. The fact that scenes we had previously seen (and not in a “so, Sheriff, here’s what happened…” flashback) actually didn’t happen the way we saw them just undermines any hope of the movie working. The movie itself was an unreliable narrator, in what felt like a very unfair way, where something like
The Usual Suspects is brilliant (because it IS a “so, Sheriff, here’s what happened…” flashback!).
Solee: Yes. It left me feeling like I’d been lied to. I HATE that. Many of my notes are about that. And I’m still not entirely sure how the movie ended. Or how the director/screenwriters THINK it ended. Was this a split personality movie? A haunting? A possession? Sadly, I’m wondering that in a cranky way, not a ooooh-that-was-interesting way.
Mikey: I’m calling it yet another split personality. A very unexplained one. At one point I had a great theory going that I wrote down, that Sheriff Axel and Deputy Martin were working together, and I thought the end would involve somebody running from the miner and ending up right in front of another miner, for that “whoa, how’d he move so fast?” moment. Remember the meaningful glance they shared outside the store? Totally should’ve happened. And it would’ve fit the actual scenes we had seen before that point.
Solee: Once again, we come up with a better plot than the movie makers. We should move to Hollywoodland. I don’t have anything meaningful to add to this conversation. Just a few random, disjointed observations.
Mikey: Well, here is my last comment on the above issue: I am pretty sure that two-killer thing is the twist in
Scream, which is what this movie was trying to be (Sheriff Axel even looked like Dewey!). So probably best for them not to do it. And maybe I didn’t invent it as much as remember it. What observations do you have? I have a couple.
Solee: Well … for one thing, I’ve never seen a character who was more comfortable being naked than Irene.
Mikey: YES! The longest full-frontal nude scene in cinematic history!
Solee: I was honestly jealous at how she was able to just handle things in the moment, completely disregarding the fact that she had no clothes. I was NOT, however, jealous of her total inability to aim a gun.
Mikey: That was so weird. I’ve never seen anybody act like that, it was like the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Solee: Indeed. There are a couple of positive notes in my fancy notebook, though. First of all, I think it’s a positive things (in terms of a horror movie) that I made an unintentional, audible gasp each time someone was killed. Secondly, there was a scene in a grocery/convenience store. The characters ran around smashing things and generally creating chaos and I found it very satisfying. I would love to have the opportunity to just smash the hell out of a space at some point. It left me wondering whether it was a very expensive set or a real store that had been willing to let the movie makers wreck havoc.
Mikey: So you like breaking stuff. Me too! I think in general the kills didn’t get to me (one of my notes early on was “the kills have no drama or tension”, which is true, he just ran up to each person and chopped them down and moved on), but one specific scenario, which came up a lot, really gets to me: the pickaxe is stuck in the wall or floor, and somebody’s head is being slowly pushed toward it as they struggle not to get impaled. Now that’s got tension to it!
Solee: You just don’t like seeing impending eye injury! That’s one of your sensitivities!
Mikey: Especially eyes, but any body part is scary for that. Hey, here’s something I will note: that dryer was amazingly hot. The housekeeper who got stuffed in it was COOKED. Also, surprising she fit. And that it could turn with a person’s weight in it.
Solee: Clearly an industrial strength dryer.
Mikey: Well, let’s get down to it. What kind of rating do you give this 3D experience? Without the 3D.
Solee: I think this is a pretty solid 2. It’s not great in many ways, but it’s not sooo bad that it deserves a 1. I’m not sure that I’d recommend it to anyone, but I’m not going to actively tell people to avoid it. What are you going to give it?
Mikey: That sounds pretty good. I remained interested with the mystery (until it betrayed me at the end), and it certainly kept moving. But it was also stupid. Especially after it betrayed me. I will share your 2 rating. Not your finest work, Dean.
Solee: I’m tempted to watch some of my favorite episodes of
Supernatural to clear my palate.
Mikey: Well, after your marathon, we will be tuning in to
Jeepers Creepers tomorrow to dirty it up again!
