My Bloody Valentine (2009)

How can you kill someone with a pickaxe? Let me count the ways: there’s the ‘ol pickaxe to the top of the skull; pickaxe to the abdomen; pickaxe through the eye; pickaxe through the lower jaw; and, of course, the classic pickaxe through the little person (known as a “midget” in less politically correct times). Other than providing us with a veritable Pickaxe 101, the remake of My Bloody Valentine doesn’t break new ground and advance the horror genre in any meaningful direction. In fact, most of the time it feels like a direct-to-DVD release instead of a $15 million Hollywood production.

The movie begins with a montage of newspaper clippings. We’re told about a cave-in which was responsible for trapping five miners underground for over a month. When rescue crews finally reached them, only one man remained alive, Harry Warden (Richard John Walters), and he was in a coma. An investigation later revealed that Harry had killed the other four men with a pickaxe in order to save more oxygen for himself. Newspaper headlines blamed the accident on Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles), the son of the mine’s owner. Seems Tom forgot to vent the methane lines, and this led to an explosion.

Skip ahead a year, and Harry Warden comes out of his coma and goes on a killing spree. He dispatches a number of patients and staff at the hospital, and then makes his way back to the scene of the cave-in. Coincidentally, local kids are having a party at the mine, and Tom Hanniger is among them. Harry shows up dressed in full miner’s garb and starts killing partygoers, eventually coming face-to-face with Tom. But before he can get his revenge, Harry is shot several times by the cops. He staggers away into the mines, never to be seen again (well, at least for a decade).

My Bloody Valentine then picks up 10 years later, with Tom returning home to sell the mines (which he inherited upon his estranged father’s death). It’s not a happy homecoming; the local miners are angry about Tom’s decision, and his old flame, Sarah (Jaime King), is now married to the local jerkwad sheriff. To make things even worse, Harry Warden decides to make his return and start picking off local residents with his trusty pickaxe.

I’ve been a Jensen Ackles fan ever since seeing him as Dean Winchester on television’s Supernatural, so I was really pulling for My Bloody Valentine to be a success. Unfortunately, there’s really nothing special to recommend about this film. It has a decent number of kills, not to mention a twist near the end, but the entire work feels generic in its execution. It was a success, though, raking in a gross of over $80 million, so I may have to sit through another one of these in the future.

Fans of gratuitous horror film nudity will appreciate an extended scene featuring a hotel tryst between Irene (Betsy Rue) and a truck driver. Irene stays naked throughout the scene, even while wielding a gun or being pursued by Harry Warden. I personally miss the rampant nudity of old ‘80s horror flicks, so some extra boobage is always a welcome sight.

The Zane Smith/Todd Farmer screenplay does try its best to flesh out some of the characters, especially those of Axel (Kerr Smith) and Sarah. Axel is the town’s sheriff, and he’s married to Sarah. He’s also having an affair with Megan, the hot little number who works at the local grocery store. Sarah used to be Tom’s girl, but she settled for Axel after Tom left town. The romantic triangle between Tom, Sarah and Axel provides a large part of the tension in the film’s final act, although it does seem too much like a soap opera at times.

There’s also a black deputy employed by Axel. Wanna take bets on whether or not he lives to the final frame?

If you watch My Bloody Valentine on DVD or Blu-Ray, you may notice that a number of on-screen items tend to end up jutting into the foreground or flying towards the audience: that’s because the movie was shown in 3D during its theatrical run. While these extra bells and whistles may have resulted in a little something extra for entertainment-starved moviegoers, anyone watching My Bloody Valentine in two dimensions will find it to be a thoroughly average piece of horror cinema.