Ah, Valentine’s Day. Even if you’re happily loved up, it can be a teeth-gritting exercise, causing tension and pressure in order to try to fulfil some clichéd expectation, even though generally romance is something that a couple sharing a certain spark, and chemistry should experience for more than one day of the year. On the flip side, if you’re single on the days or weeks leading up to the 14th, to see signs and promotions celebrating the day (and the possible revenue for that day) and even on the way home, men and women both holding flowers in arms, or hidden within a newspaper roll all set for the next day. One can’t help but be envious. Or cranky at the lack of clichéd presents awaiting me at my doorstep.

When one is single, and perhaps doomed to be the Simpsons cat lady, minus the crazy rambling I had to organise a day with the girls to avoid the occasion of the day, and turn it into an eye candy, and mouth candy feast (involving waffles, and strawberries and chocolate at Max Brenner). The eye candy was a part of My Bloody Valentine in 3D. An R18+ rated film, blood, guts, brains, gore, and gratuitous nudity sure; but it had Jensen Ackles (Supernatural) and Kerr Smith (most notably Dawson’s Creek and The Forsaken) in it.

The film brings us smack bang into a mining town that has just suffered a cave, however most of the miners’ bodies were discovered to have been hacked with a pick axe, and did not die due to an unfortunate natural disaster. The lone survivor at first is in a coma, but as soon as he wakes up, manages to single handedly murder and dismember most of the patients, and staff on his entire floor. Seeing this in 3D, and exposed bowels and intestines and guts everywhere elicited gasps, and cries of ‘Ewwwwww’ as the camera focused in. Or that might have been just me.

Jensen’s character Tom, the son of the mine’s owner narrowly escapes the killer upon returning to the fateful Tunnel 5 for a party (yes, sounds like such a great party venue!) whilst his friends, including Kerr’s character Axel, and their two girlfriends escape, leaving Tom behind.

Then Tom leaves them behind for 10 years. 10 years later and its Valentine’s Day again. The murderer is back. Or is he?

Some things that I picked up from movies? Don’t go camping. Never have a basement. Or an attic. Oh, and don’t chase people naked. One girl decides to chase her abusive lover and chasing him with a pistol butt nekkid, she declares can do better. Then, SMACK. Pick axe in the noggin. Chasing ensues, crawl under the bed, trip over at one point, all the clichés. Oh, and a midget that is trying to find her dog, only to find the killer.

Whilst the movie is paced well, and definitely earns its horror stripes and wings by showing a closer level of detail in 3D; the most surprising part would be that the identity of the killer is never obvious throughout the whole film. You waver from Tom, to Axel 10 years later as the town sheriff, back to Tom, and back to the original killer 10 years earlier. This is a great Halloween, or Friday the 13th movie but not an entirely memorable film, mostly because it is structured quite conventionally, and the actual murder scenes aren’t original, or anything that’s not been seen before. In fact, I would say that the Dying Breed murder scenes were much more visceral and shocking than this, despite it holding a lower rating!

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