 WE COULDN’T FIND A PICTURE OF THE 3-D NAKED LADY: So we gave you Jensen Ackles. |
Life can get messy. Some entitled daddy’s boy causes a cave-in at the local coal mine, and a decade later there’s a headlamp-wearing maniac bent on revenge slowly pressing a pickax into your ocular cavity. These things happen.
That’s the basic story arc of My Bloody Valentine 3-D, a movie that proudly touts its gimmick in its title. As well it should. The slasher flick isn’t really good—though it does score high marks for sound effects (who knew that human flesh squelched like that underfoot?). But as an example of what’s possible when your only goal is to showcase a technology, it kicks major ass. Bloody, dripping hunks of ass. Plus a few pulverized rib cages and a mangled jawbone that comes hurtling straight toward moviegoers’ faces like some grisly piñata detritus.
The charm of My Bloody Valentine—which I can happily report does include a big red box of holiday chocolates containing a drippy human heart—lies in the way director Patrick Lussier (Dracula 2000) latches on to the inherently goofy possibilities in making a 3-D horror movie and lets the visuals wander where they may. Shot more like a first-person-shooter video game than a feature film, much of the action takes place in an abandoned mine, where dust-choked light beams from miners’ helmets sear your corneas. It’s a narcissist’s dream—tree branches fly at your nose, sharp objects menace, pickaxes poke. Screw the actors. You’re the one it’s after.
The supporting cast also provides more laughs than one would imagine. Blond gut-bait Betsy Rue garners props for getting naked. Not only during the movie’s requisite full frontal sex scene but in the subsequent eight-minute odyssey involving long-haul truckers, video cameras, split skulls, midgets, creaky bedsprings and eventual evisceration. All shot with Rue running stark naked in a pair of platform heels. In 3-D.
At the heart of this gooey business is the man behind the pickax himself. Valentine boasts a killer who appreciates the simpler pleasures in life. He’s not teaching anybody a moral lesson à la the Saw franchise; there’s no torture-porn mind games or sex with dead bodies afoot. He doesn’t even eat anybody. He just wants to send as many people to hell with hand tools as he can in the shortest amount of screen time possible. It’s almost refreshing to see such an efficient, agenda-free psychopath.
Especially when all he really wants is you. R.
SEE IT: My Bloody Valentine 3-D screens at Cinetopia, Sandy, Cedar Hills and Eastport. Warning: Many theaters only support measly 2-D vision. Call before you go.
