by Jennifer Devereaux
assistant news editor
The movie “Valentine” opened in theatres on Friday Feb. 2. Directed by David Blanks (Urban Legend), the film was seemingly intended to terrify its audience. However, with little plot development and a lack of edge-of-your-seat suspense, “Valentine” leaves something to be desired.
The premise presented at the beginning of the film had promise. The film starts out by showing scenes of a junior high Valentine’s day dance. Here an awkward sixth grader, Jeremy Martell, asks five different girls to dance. After being rejected by four of the girls, he approaches a girl sitting by herself on the bleachers. She agrees to dance and within minutes the two are kissing. Some male students see what they are doing and begin to harass Jeremy. The instance is similar to the prom scene in the 1970’s horror flick “Carrie.” The girl, who does not want to be degraded as well, lies to the teasing boys, explaining that Jeremy had forced her to kiss him when in fact she had consented.
The time frame of the film suddenly changes and it is thirteen years later. One of the girls Jeremy had been rejected by at the sixth grade Valentine’s day dance is reintroduced into the film. The girl, Shelley (Katherine Heigl), has just had a less than wonderful blind date. She is a medical student and has to study for a final the next day. She is alone in a medical lab at her school and begins to autopsy a corpse. Suddenly she hears a noise in the next room. She goes to check it out and finds another male student. She feels at ease not having suspected him of any ill intention. But then she finds a strange and threatening Valentine. A chain of events occurs and eventually someone wearing a cupid mask kills her.
At Shelley’s funeral, the four other objects of Jeremy’s affection assemble. The cast includes Kate (Marley Shelton), Paige (Denise Richards), Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw) and Lily (Jessica Cauffiel). The four girls all begin to receive strange and threatening Valentine’s which indicate that the murderer has similar intentions for them as he had for Shelley.
As the film continues, suspicion grows. The detective (Fulvio Cecere) investigating Shelley’s murder asks each of the four girls to really question the honesty of the men in their lives. The police can find no records or photographs of Jeremy so he could be disguising himself with another name and past. The movie does offer a surprise twist ending, however, what you have to sit through to get to it is less than quality.
