My Bloody Valentine 3D
Patrick Lussier's gore-laden remake of the 1981 Canadian slasher flick about a pickaxe wielding serial killer with a penchant for extracting human hearts, spares no expense with the fake blood.
Patrick Lussier's gore-laden remake of the 1981 Canadian slasher flick about a pickaxe wielding serial killer with a penchant for extracting human hearts, spares no expense with the fake blood.
In the prologue alone, the body count reaches double figures as the psychopath rampages through a hospital, disembowelling entire wards of patients and staff, arterial spray arched on every previously pristine surface.
The slaughter doesn't abate as drunken revellers feel the sharp end of the murderer's hefty instrument of torture, including one unfortunate soul whose eyeball rather hilariously pops out of his head.
All this gratuitous, wanton bloodshed might be scary if we cared about the characters but screenwriters Todd Farmer and Zane Smith are much more interested in how many ways you can tear someone apart with the one weapon.
Thus another character takes the pickaxe in his chin and out through his mouth, allowing the killer to rip the jaw clean off to a deafening crunch from the sound effects department.
A montage of newspaper clippings and sound bites distils the facts of the Valentine's Day massacre in the Hanniger Mines.
The boss' inexperienced son, Tom (Jensen Ackles), causes an accident, which leads to five men being trapped below ground.
Miraculously, Harry Warden (Rich Walters) survives the hellish ordeal, but only after he takes a pickaxe to the other trapped men to conserve oxygen.
Emerging from a coma exactly one year later, Harry attacks the local teenagers, almost killing Tom, his girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King), her best friend Irene (Betsy Rue) and bad-tempered boyfriend Axel (Kerr Smith).
Tom flees town and 10 years pass until he is forced to return to his childhood home of Harmony to sign the papers that finally relinquish him of ownership of the mine.
Soon after, a series of copycat killings grips the local community and Sheriff Axel, now married to Sarah, immediately points the finger of suspicion at Tom, determined to get rid of the one rival for his wife's fickle affections.
My Bloody Valentine 3D keeps the killer's identity concealed until the final showdown but the most obvious suspect turns out to be guilty, thanks to some cheating on the part of the scriptwriters.
Buff leading man Ackles and his co-stars are all easy on the eye but fail to register above the din of Michael Wandmacher's original music and the lashings of entrails.
Limbs and appendages fly through the air in glorious 3D, causing the audience to duck for cover or take a whirling pickaxe square in the face.
Sick and twisted fun for a Friday night, but hardly edifying.
Cinemas around the country will also screen a 2D version of the film, but where's the fun in that?
Release Date: Friday 16 January 2009
Certificate: 18
Runtime: 101mins
