Horror review: Valentine

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 8, 2001

By Steve Newton

Not since Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan has a shot-in-Vancouver Hollywood slasher flick been as exploitative and suspenseless as this airheaded entry from director Jamie Blanks, who also helmed 1998’s better (but still bad) Urban Legend.

The movie does, however, include scenes of a skanky blond biting into a maggot-filled chocolate, a horny jerk involuntarily getting his dick hot-waxed, and a panty-thieving weirdo having his face used as an ironing board. More importantly, there are countless opportunies to gawk at Denise Richards’ impressive bustline before she gets trapped in a hot tub and poked at with a big drill.

The movie starts off with a flashback scene at an ’80s junior-high Valentine’s dance, where a geeky student in desperate need of a dance partner gets cruelly turned down by a gaggle of stuck-up teenage bimbos. Shortly thereafter, the poor loser is discovered by bullies while making out under the bleachers with one of the clique’s “big-boned” and insecure girlfriends.

In order to escape enbarrassment, she claims that the nerd attacker her, and before you can holler “Carrie rip-off”, he gets doused from above with red punch, stripped to his undies, then brutally kicked around while his heartless peers gather to enjoy the fun.

Fast-forward 10 years or so–fast-forward being the operative term when Valentine gets rightfully exiled to the video wasteland–and the stuck-up teen bimbos have matured into stuck-up 20ish bimbos. Thanks to a vacuous script by Donna and Wayne Powers, the writing beam behind that silly monster-shark flick Deep Blue Sea, these women are pretty much characterized as walking chunks of curvy flesh, so when a killer in a cherub’s mask starts taking them out with butcher knives, arrows, and power tools, who’s to care?

Top-billed David Boreanaz, star of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel, shows up here and there to sleepwalk through his role as an alcoholic sportswriter and get kneed in the nuts. Apart from that, the scariest thing about Valentine is its departing shot, which hints at the terrifying prospect of a sequel.

To read more than 350 of my reviews of horror movies released theatrically in North America between 1988 and 2018, go here.