| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Denise Richards | ... | Paige Prescott | |
| David Boreanaz | ... | Adam Carr | |
| Marley Shelton | ... | Kate Davies | |
| Jessica Capshaw | ... | Dorothy Wheeler | |
| Jessica Cauffiel | ... | Lily Voight | |
| Katherine Heigl | ... | Shelley Fisher | |
| Hedy Burress | ... | Ruthie Walker | |
| Fulvio Cecere | ... | Detective Leon Vaughn | |
| Daniel Cosgrove | ... | Campbell Morris | |
| Johnny Whitworth | ... | Max Raimi | |
| Woody Jeffreys | ... | Brian | |
| Adam J. Harrington | ... | Jason Marquette (as Adam Harrington) | |
| Claude Duhamel | ... | Gary Taylor | |
|
|
Wyatt Page | ... | Evan Wheeler |
| Benita Ha | ... | Kim Wheeler | |
Valentine's Day 1988: At the school dance, geeky Jeremy Melton bravely faces one rejection after the other when asking four popular girls to dance with him. A fifth girl, plump and insecure, agrees, but they end up making out under the bleachers. When a group of school bullies catches them, the girl claims that Jeremy attacked her. This causes them to strip off his clothes and beat him up in front of the entire school. Flash forward to 2001. We meet the five girls who were in that school gym: Kate, Paige, Shelly, Lily and the formerly plump Dorothy. They are all in their 20's now and trying to sort out their love lives, which is appropriate, since Valentine's Day is coming up. After a disastrous date with a loser, one of the girls, a pre-med student, is murdered by a Cherub-mask wearing killer who sent her a death threat in the form of a Valentine card prior to the attack. After the four remaining girls are reunited at her funeral, they all start receiving threatening cards and ... Written by Tertius Saayman <tsaayman@hotmail.com>
This film did not click with me. The holiday theme, the characters - God, especially the characters - all piled on top of typical slasher gimmicks. The movie also gives a quick lesson on the importance of lighting and how that one single shot of the Cherubim in good lighting can wipe out any intimidation factor that mask might have had. It looks like the mascot to some high school football team, and ever after that's all it is.
The music was perhaps the best aspect, though a significant step down from Davis' other works including Matrix (which I did not like), JPIII, Anti-Trust, and his best score, House on Haunted Hill (99). How does it fair against slasher classic scores such as Herrmann's Psycho and Carpenter's Halloween? Simple. It doesn't. Likewise, how does the film stand up to classics? It doesn't.
Enter your typical slasher jumps in logic - retarded actions people do that get themselves killed like the opening scene in the morgue. What viewer does not see what's coming before it hits? Jumps in logic that only happen - only would be considered - in a movie because the writers thought it would be cool. Exaggerate reality for the sake of effect? Yeah, sure, go for it. But when a character's life is stake, make them do utterly retarded acts of virtual suicide (even by slasher standards)? No.
Let all the characters die - none of them arose above F13 standards. Their relationships to one another were as artificial as they come. But hey, it goes along with the plot that feels itself necessary to spell out all major plots and relationships. Why not freeze frame and superimpose text saying, `She's mad at her friends'? There's no need to ask questions about Valentine, because the film assumes, you the viewer, are mentally defiant and feels the need to ask all the questions for you. Absolutely no subtlety, which is what kills what could've been an effective, controversial, and thought provoking ending. Instead we get an over-explained misfire that's so jumbled and clumsy it defeats itself.
The premise . . . eh, might have had potential. Some sequences did have lots of potential and a few came through. The characters should have been scrapped in the first draft. Average slasher at best. If not obsessed with the genre, I'd pass this one up for a better slasher on the shelf.