ilovelucy77 Review of Valentine

Valentine (2001)

Too much left to the imagination -- SPOILER ALERT!!!!

[31 July 2001]

I was so looking forward to knowing for sure during this movie whether or not the psycho killer was indeed Jeremy, the geek who the five girlfriends picked on and rejected at a sixth grade dance, however (spoilers ahead) the unmasking of the killer in the end led to a whole lot of confusion. I kept saying after the conclusion of the movie, "Well, maybe it was Jeremy. No, maybe the killer wasn't the same person as the one at the dance." So many elements in the movie contradicted each other. For example, (SPOILER) one girl Dorothy tells her boyfriend to go somewhere and he gets killed. Dorothy's archrival, an ex of her boyfriend, yells at her and gets killed shortly thereafter. So, I suspected her the rest of the movie. But, she received a weird Valentine, too, so how could she have sent it to herself? That would be pointless to show. Then, there's this useless scene where the cop hits on Paige (Denise Richards' character). What's up with that? Was he meant to be thought of as a suspect by viewers? They say that Jeremy might have gotten plastic surgery, so we're inclined to believe that the killer is one of the girl's boyfriends or dates. Then, we see Dorothy complaining that she was the least popular of all the friends and that she resents them all (all the more I think she's the killer). Then, it comes to the unmasking and we see someone we don't want to believe is the killer, but the person they unmask in the end of the movie wasn't the actual killer but someone wearing the same mask as the killer (That's what I'm guessing. I'm not sure). The real killer (I assume this person was) is shown in the end having a nose bleed, like the masked character always had each time he killed someone. But, then there is not enough evidence that the real killer is Jeremy. You know the person with the nosebleed did the killings, but they don't successfully connect them to the kid. They say his parents died in a fire after he went to the mental institution, but then they don't ever say whether or not Jeremy started the fire. The dialogue and plot were so vague, it's easy to assume that it could have been some other person who was in the girls' lives and just happened to be a psycho killer. You don't hear much about the killer's past life, only that the person is someone in the girls' personal lives in the present. The killer does make statements that indicate insecurity but doesn't say enough to indicate that he/she is Jeremy. It was just a mess. They could have edited the script better before releasing the movie.