Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/20/09
As
longtime readers know, I'm all about the 3D: digital technologies
like RealD are the latest and best attempt to lick a generations-old challenge
to create movies that don't recognize the boundary of the movie screen.
At the least, it's a cute diversion. At the best, we're watching
the baby steps of the next leap forward in the medium's evolution.
As such, I welcome each new breakthrough, and the latest is My Bloody
Valentine, an entertaining remake of the popular 1981 slasher movie
that tests RealD for the first time in telling a fictional story that's
not reliant on special effects. Obviously, there's not much point
in doing The Queen in 3D, and horror has always
been a popular choice for 3D experimenters because the goals of both the
genre and the technology are the same. Valentine delivers
the bloody goods (although you'll hopefully forgive me for being such a
3D geek that I was more fascinated by the textures of the windows than
the swinging pick axes) wrapped in a reasonably engaging mystery story.
It's a bit longer than it needs to be, but there are a lot of characters
waiting their turn to take one for the team. Slasher fans should
be thrilled with the combination of solid storytelling and gruesome mayhem,
technologically enhanced to allow jawbones to go flying out of heads like
never before.
Ten
years ago, a small Pennsylvania town was battered by back-to-back tragedies:
the incompetence of mine worker Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), the son of
the owner, led to a cave-in that trapped six men. When they were
dug out, only one had survived and he, Harry Warden (Rich Walters), is
in a coma. But forensics show that it wasn't the cave-in that killed
the other five, it was Warden himself, swinging a mad pick ax to preserve
precious oxygen. Soon enough, Warden awakens from his coma and immediately
goes on an even madder rampage, killing pretty much everyone who crosses
his path en route back to the mine. There (this is a slasher movie,
remember), local youngsters including a reluctant Ton, his girlfriend Sarah
(Jaime King), jealous Axel (Kerr Smith) and his girlfriend Irene (Betsy
Rue) are having a party. The celebration is cut short when Warden
kills pretty much everybody but those four, three of whom flee the scene
leaving Tom behind to come ever so close to death before the killer is
gunned down by local police. Flash forward ten years: Tom steps
foot in town for the first time since that night to sell his late father's
mine. Axel is now the police chief, and Sarah is his wife.
Irene? Well, she's among the first victims of a miner-suited maniac
who happens to look, act and kill just like the late Harry Warden.
Is he back from the grave? Or has someone taken Tom's return as their
cue to for a very bloody homage, complete with severed hearts packed in
festival candy boxes?
The
Killer (curiously, the movie never does give him a nickname, and a national
press seen descending upon the town for the anniversary of the original
murders in an early scene is MIA for the rest of the running time) is an
imaginative one when it comes to swinging that pick ax, and it's hard to
think of a human body part that doesn't take a beating during My Bloody
Valentine's 101 minute running time. But, as the Wicked Witch
of the West might say, all the better to 3D you with! The ax points
at us, swings at us, shoves an eyeball at us, throws that jaw at us and
allows more than one body to show off its' own dimensions by having a really
big hole ripped in the chest. There is a little variety involving
a shovel and one unfortunate soul ends up in a dryer, but it's mostly the
ax's show. The target audience will also get a thrill out of a lengthy
sequence in which Rue does battle with The Killer completely in the nude:
can't say 3D does a lot to improve on nudity, although you can argue that's
not really necessary. Kuddos to Rue both for being in great shape
and also for being really game in a role that must have been quite demanding:
doing your own stunts in the nude is really working without a net, and
she never has the self-conscious look of an actress “doing a nude scene”.
Overall,
the 3D effects are impressive and well realized, continuing the trend of
the kids' movies that have made up the bulk of digital 3D offerings until
now by not going overboard with the “throwing crap at the audience” gambit.
As I've mentioned, I really like the movie's use of translucent surfaces,
RealD's neatest trick, especially when those surfaces stand between us
and the action, allowing a pick ax or a man's fist to lodge in broken glass
at the edge of the screen. As with Journey
to the Center of the Earth, the live action is a tad muddy at times,
and it's interesting how RealD makes even moving humans look like tiny
models in a Japanese monster movie in long shots. As always, for
best results, sit in the middle of your theater.
Oh,
and there's a plot too, actually a pretty good one for the genre.
Most slasher movies are mysteries at heart, and the question of The Killer's
identity is tackled by writers Zane Smith and Todd Farmer (who makes a
memorably naked appearance himself as “Frank the Trucker”) by assaulting
us with Red Herrings, one of whom actually turns out to be the guy in the
mining suit. I'll say this much: if you find yourself thinking
“Wait a minute, post-Shayamalan movies are always trying to pull that trick
on me!”, you're probably on the right track. But the good news is
that when all the movie's cards are on the table, the solution doesn't
feel random or unsupported by the evidence. Even though I noticed
that clue I alluded to earlier, I still let the movie trick me into one
of the more prominent other suspects.
Of
course, this being a slasher movie, the characters are deliberately nasty:
Tom was incompetent before he was kinda crazy, and Sarah and Axel abandoned
their friend to die and then have the gall to hold a grudge against him
when he returns. And for that matter, as much as Axel hates Tom for
still having feelings for his wife, he's still got something going on the
side with a stock girl (Megan Boone) at the grocery store where she works
(the movie was shot in Kittanning, PA, and I got a kick out of seeing local
brands like Utz Potato Chips and Shur-Fine Vegetables in the aisles).
And you KNOW that town elders played by Kevin Tighe and Tom Atkins have
some dark secrets to hide. Of course, one of them's the killer and
we're not supposed to feel TOO bad if the rest of them die, so this kind
of movie can play better with a cast of cads. And cads not terribly
good at self-defense, either.
The
acting is also better than the slasher average. As fans of his TV
work on Supernatural know, Ackles is really good at being dark and
disturbed, and of course Tom's got a lot to be dark and disturbed about.
King makes a quite effective small-town girl, and does a nice job of playing
the action sequences like an average person rather than an action hero.
Smith makes a great small-town jackass, Tighe and Atkins are effectively
duplicitous and Boone does a great job of being a sympathetic adulterer.
Director
Patrick Lussier does a good job making a slasher movie almost look like
a drama while mastering his new 3D toys, but the pace does lag a bit around
the one hour mark, although slasher fans relishing those exotic kills will
probably have no such issue. Horror junkies and 3D fans alike should
have fun at My Bloody Valentine, and now that we've seen that the
combination can be pulled off effectively, the sky's the limit for 3D flicks
made for grown-ups. Next time, I'd prefer a monster movie, but that's
just an issue of personal preference. |
