Valentine – Film Review

Love is in the air. On the most romantic day of the year, would-be lovers woo hearts with flowers, candy, cards and gifts. Best friends Kate (Marley Shelton), Paige (Denise Richards), Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw), Lily (Jessica Cauffiel) and Shelly (Katherine Heigl) are young women looking for a relationship — a valentine to die for. And this year they might just get their wish.

Despite the prevalence of horror and slasher movies, we rarely see any that are completely focused on Valentine’s Day, which is surprising given that there are some based on Halloween (Trick ‘r Treat) and even some based on Christmas (Krampus).

Because of this, I was ecstatic to learn that Jamie Blanks‘ Valentine existed. As I hit play, I was expecting to see an extremely entertaining, campy slasher, but what I got was a dreadfully dull, soap opera-style slasher that thought it was much craftier than it actually was.

It’s primarily a huge miss, however I’ll concede that the twist towards the end is fairly nice and there are some fun bloody moments to be enjoyed. Oddly enough, the early 2000s style this film possesses is my favourite aspect of it. In all the finest ways, this movie nearly screams 2001. I adore watching movies where you can tell right away that they are from a particular era.

Yet aside from being utterly uninteresting, this movie also takes too many cues from other slashers from the 1980s and 1990s. This atrocity practically screams the Scream franchise. I’m delighted the producers were inspired and obviously like horror films, however despite their best efforts, their movie sadly came off as a blatant imitation of a few other movies.

Some of the overall performances are just horrendous, especially Katherine Heigl’s, who I have never liked in anything I have ever seen her in. She consistently exudes a sense of misery no matter what character she’s playing, and Shelley Fisher is no exception.

I normally enjoy Jessica Capshaw as an actress, but in this role as Dorothy Wheeler? Not really. I would add that Denise Richards does a fantastic job as Paige Prescott in this movie (yes, they really did name the lead character after Sidney Prescott from Scream). Unfortunately, Paige isn’t given a lot of depth, but Richards makes the best of what she has.

Valentine is generally best avoided unless you’re on a major quest to watch as many holiday-themed horror movies as you can. We can only hope that one day soon, a Valentine’s Day-themed horror movie will be released; that would be something unique.

Valentine, despite having an undoubtedly nice twist, is an incredibly dull and heavily trope-filled slasher that majorly copies previous, superior works in the genre.