Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Sam Panico Valentine is a post-Scream slasher that feels closer to a giallo than an American slasher at times, with elaborate death sequences and a masked killer who wears the face of Cupid. It's packed with the hottest actors of the early 2000's and directed by Australian Jamie Blanks, who also made Urban Legend and remade Long Weekend in 2008.The movie starts at a St. Valentine's Day dance in 1988. Jeremy Melton, the school geek, asks four different girls to dance. Three of them -- Shelley, Lily and Paige -- instantly reject him while Kate at least gives him a break and says, "Maybe later."He finally hooks up with Dorothy, an overweight girl, and they make out in the bleachers. A bully finds them and everyone starts to laugh at the two of them until she claims that he is raping her. This removes Jeremy from school and their lives.One by one, these girls are stalked and killed. Shelley is now Katherine Heigl and a UCLA med student. After getting a Valentine in her locker, a killer in a trench coat and Cupid mask stalks her and slices her throat. As she dies, his nose begins to bleed. I'm assuming that the people who made this hoped that none of us had ever seen Alone in the Dark.At her funeral, Kate (Marley Shelton, Grindhouse), Lily (Jessica Cauffiel, Legally Blonde), Paige (Denise Richards), and Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw, daughter of Kate) are questioned by the police. They all get the same Valentines, like the one Dorothy gets that goes so far as to say, "Roses are red, Violets are blue, They'll need dental records to identify you." She's no longer heavy and is part of the in crowd, with a boyfriend named Campbell -- who may or may not be a con artist but is definitely a giallo-style red herring.Lily gets chocolates, but they're filled with maggots. And at the exhibit of Lily's boyfriend Max (Johnny Whitworth, AJ from Empire Records), Lily is chased by the killer through the exhibits until she is shot multiple times with arrows -- ala the real Saint Valentine -- and falls to her death inside a dumpster.They all realize that the initials on the cars are JM, which means that the killer could be Jeremy Melton. Dorothy admits her lie that sent Jeremy to reform school. It's at this point that the lead cop, Detective Leon Vaughn (Fulvio Cecere, whose movie 350 Days is all about the life of a pro wrestler) hits on Paige and she strongly rebuffs him.Kate's neighbor breaks into her apartment as he has been stealing her panties and is killed with an iron. And as Dorothy plans a huge party, Campbell is killed with an ax. Her friends all assume that he has simply dumped her as she's still the fat girl in their eyes. Of course, if she listened to Ruthie, Campbell's crazy ex, she'd know the truth. But she gets brutally killed at the party in a kill that's reminiscent of Deep Red.At the party itself, Paige is electrocuted in a hot tub and the power cuts out. Dorothy and Kate begin to argue over who the killer's identity, with Kate saying that its the mysterious Campbell, while Dorothy accuses Adam (David Boreanaz of TV's Angel), Kate's alcoholic ne'er do well boyfriend. They then learn that Lily never made it to California and that she may be dead. After a call from Detective Vaughn, they start to investigate further. As they worry about their safety, they try to call him back but get no answer. Suddenly, they hear a ringtone and follow the sound of it until they find his severed head outside the house.Kate is absolutely convinced that Adam is Jeremy and runs back inside the house to find him waiting for her. He asks her to dance, but she gets freaked out and runs from him -- right into the corpses of Paige and Ruthie. That's when the Cupid killer runs right into her but is shot by Adam. The mask falls off to reveal Dorothy.Adam finds it in his heart to forgive Kate, explaining how if you have enough childhood trauma, like how Dorothy dealt with the abuse of being overweight, that anger can stay with you and cause violence. They wait for the police to arrive as he embraces her, telling her that he always loved her. She closes her eyes and we notice that his nose has begun to bleed.There are plenty of red herrings along the way, like Dorothy's cherub necklace that could point to her as the killer. And then there's the fact that that necklace really belonged to Ruthie. But after that gets dealt with, it's pretty obvious who our killer is.I liked how each of the murders ends up corresponding to the horrible things that the girls said to Jeremy at the dance, like Paige's claim that she'd "rather be boiled alive" actually ends up happening.It's also refreshing that the women in this, by and large, are aware of how men try to use them and respond in modern ways, such as Paige shutting down the main detective.Valentine isn't the best movie you'll watch, but you can get it for $3 at most streaming sites and for around $2 or less at most used DVD stores. That's a decent enough price to spend -- it goes down as easily as a Valentine's chocolate but won't stay with you much longer than a summer fling.

bowmanblue It's fair to say that 1997's 'Scream' reinvented the 'slasher' genre, breathing new life into something that was pretty formulaic and predictable. Then, four years later we have 'Valentine,' – a slasher movie that feels as if it belongs somewhere in the eighties at best. Either that or no one on the entire production staff ever watched Scream or knew about its existence.The beauty of Scream was that it listed all the clichés associated with the horror genre and did its best to subvert them. Valentine, on the other hand, seems to want to adhere to every cliché and be totally predictable.At the start of the movie we see a flashback from yesteryear where a geeky looking boy was (slightly!) bullied at a school prom by a gang of girls and then beaten up by some boys. Skip forward twenty or so years and he's out for revenge on the girls he perceived as his tormentors. Here's the first thing I noticed... I know we're hardly meant to feel empathy towards the (as yet unknown) killer, but these girls didn't really do enough to warrant their grisly executions. Perhaps that's meant to make us hate him more, I don't know. I'd have thought he'd need more of a reason towards his hated. I know there are some brief explanations regarding how he was sent away to an institution after the 'attack' but it's all pretty glossed over.So, the film is basically the adult girls being stalked and eliminated one by one. Naturally, they all hang out with a multitude of unsavoury men, designed to make us wonder which one is really the killer in 'disguise.' Another thing you may notice is the heavy marketing towards Denise Richards. I know nowadays it's a bit fashionable to hate her, but, back at the end of the nineties, she was pretty hot (commercial) property. Unfortunately, she's not really the star. This is a shame because she's actually quite fun and is by far the most memorable character on screen.The death scenes (bar one regarding the hot tub) are nothing special and certainly not imaginative and you'll probably guess who the killer is simply because you will. It's just obvious somehow, despite attempts at misdirection.You're really going to have to enjoy slasher films to really like this. Either that or just want to see Denise Richards in her prime! Otherwise, stick to Scream, its sequels and any vaguely better slasher flick.

Python Hyena Valentine (2001): Dir: Jamie Blanks / Cast: Marley Shelton, Denise Richards, Katherine Heigl, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel: Mindless farce bent on scaring viewers with stupidity. This Valentine slashes people to pieces because he believes that romance is too old fashion. With an opening stolen from Carrie that eventually branches into I Know What You Did Last Summer with girls receiving threatening Valentines. This all leads to an ending where the killer is not caught but numerous teenagers are hacked to pieces. Directed Jamie Blanks with decent production. He previously made the equally horrible Urban Legend, so now he has two really bad horror films to his credit. Marley Shelton plays the airhead heroine who will figure it all out in the conclusion but not before viewers figure out that this is not a promising career move. Denise Richards is constantly having sex. How she got talked into starring in this is a mystery, but someone obviously owes her big time for this career blunder. Katherine Heigl, Jessica Cauffiel and Jessica Capshaw also star amongst the many airhead students who have nothing better to do than die in preventable ways. Like Urban Legend this film is devoid of any real terror and basically exists just to demonstrate various methods of killing people of low intelligence. Do your Valentine a favour and avoid this candy coated crap and watch Carrie instead. Score: 2 / 10

Dom Nickson Spoiler Alert! OK I get it, slasher movies died down around this time and to be honest this film sort of sucks! I liked most of the creative kills and the mask the killer wears, this film just flat out sucks. The acting from the girls are just plain horrible and I didn't really care if a single one of them died! The deaths are really just over the top and yet creative. I think the thing that really makes this film stick out from the rest is the mask and the creative kills. The story is sort of stupid because if a psycho really wanted to kill somebody that hurt them I don't think they would wait a whole 10 years until they come after you. Overall I give it a 4 out of 10.