Valentine (2001)

Five women are stalked by an unknown assailant while preparing for Valentine's Day.

Director:

Jamie Blanks

Writers:

Tom Savage (novel), Donna Powers (screenplay)

Stars:

Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, Marley Shelton

1 win.

Cast

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

Storyline

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 ...

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Plot Keywords:

valentine's day | revenge | nosebleed | serial killer | valentine | 

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Taglines:

Revenge is sweet.

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong horror violence, some sexuality and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

2 February 2001 (USA)

Also Known As:

Love Hurts

Filming Locations:

Riverview Hospital, Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

Box Office

Budget:

$29,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$10,024,648, 4 February 2001

Gross USA:

$20,384,136

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$36,684,136

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, NPV Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

During the original casting process, Tara Reid, who previously appeared in Jamie Blanks' other film Urban Legend (1998), played "Dorothy Wheeler' (now played by Jessica Capshaw) and Jennifer Love Hewitt played "Paige Prescott" (now played by Denise Richards).

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Goofs

Kate's Beretta goes from unloaded to cocked and ready to fire, yet all she did was reinsert the clip.

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Quotes

[to Lily Voight]
Max Raimi: What's the problem?
Lily Voight: The problem is that you turned out to be a cheap, hypocritical sleazeball!
Max Raimi: Yeah, but you knew that. So... does this mean you're not gonna be my Valentine?

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Crazy Credits

The opening Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures logos are red.

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Alternate Versions

Deleted scene: After Kate finds the mask in the elevator, and talks to Gary, she goes back inside her apartment. Then, she looks inside her closet and realizes that most of her outfits are missing.

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Connections

Referenced in Gilmore Girls: Richard in Stars Hollow (2002)

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Soundtracks

Valentine's Day
Written by Marilyn Manson and Jeordie White (as Twiggy Ramirez)
Performed by Marilyn Manson
Courtesy of Nothing/Interscope Records
Used by arrangement with Universal Music Group and under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User Reviews

almost good.... naaa, still quite bad

Valentine has a great premise. It takes all that Halloween stood for and tries to update it. It fails of course, but you have to give it full marks for trying. Where as a lot of films try to be original and fail at that as well, at least you can say that there is a masked killer in this film, he is incredibly strong, he walks and still catches his victims as they run and he finds original and quite disgusting ways of disposing of his victims. So I give the film credit for trying. But like most other films that have tried to follow in Screams footsteps, it does fail quite miserably.

Valentine is a story about a geeky kid that just wants to be accepted in the sixth grade. He is at a dance and asks all the pretty girls to dance and they all say no. Some of them are disgustingly mean to him and tell him that they would rather be boiled alive than to dance with him ( guess how that character dies? ). Then one heavy set girl decides she will make out with him and then when all the popular guys catch her doing it, she says that he forced himself on her and they beat the tar out of him and he is sent to reform school. That is the beginning and it is well done. It sets up the killer on the loose with a revenge plot quite nicely. We of course skip ahead about 15 years and we have beautiful women in college lined up to be slaughtered. The opening death is extremely laughable but has its moments of nice touches and subtle homages to films like Halloween. It is worth mentioning how the first woman is killed because it is a lesson in horror mythology of all the wrong things to do to attract a killer on the loose on a college campus.

A young woman just comes back from a disasterous date and decides that she is going to go do an autopsy at 11 o clock at night. Then to top it off, she is wearing a flimsy tank top, has large breasts and she decides to keep the lights off in the autopsy room, because, well you know, you don't need light to disect a human being. I started to ask myself why she was allowed to disect a corpse with no supervision this late and with no lights on seeing as she was only a med student. Horror movies are always filled with silly situations ( Friday the 13th's, no one wipes after they are finished in the bathroom, people always go to investigate noises and so on ) but this is one of the sillier ones. Then when she is grabbed by the corpse, instead of leaving, she stays in the room to see who it is. And then when the things chases her, she doesn't go for the door, she tries to hide in the other rooms. DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!

Figuring out who the killer is is fun, I must admit and they do a good job of concealing his identity until the end so you have to give it credit for that as well. But this is not really a scary film and it is not even a well done film. It had it's moments but when it leaves the theater, no one will really remember anything about it. Nothing really jumps out at you. I think Jamie Blanks has an idea of what it takes to scare an audience, he has probably tried to emulate many of the greats like Raimi, Hitchcock and Carpenter, but he can't quite seem to hit the perfect note. Maybe if he keeps trying he will get it because there are scenes in here that are close to perfection but then they end too abruptly or without the proper pay off. That is what made Halloween so elusive in it's brilliance. The pay off was so horrific and so perfect that to try to duplicate it is almost unfathomable. Valentine comes close but ultimately fails.

This is not as bad as some horror out there but it is not in the same league as some of the new horror films that have made audiences embrace horror again. Sixth Sense, Blair Witch, Stir Of Echoes, The Gift are all pretty good films. Valentine is on the brink.

6 out of 10