Common Sense Note
Kids who are affected by this kind of glossy gruesomeness will be upset by the atrocious violence, the mean-spiritedness of just about every character, the lack of parental figures, and the ineffectiveness of the police. Women are stalked and receive threatening letters. A young boy is unjustifiably teased and beaten. Not one single character of color appears. The women on display are sexually aggressive, and some of them die for it. Mature Themes: Murder, cruelty toward grade-school peers, alcoholism, unkindness among friends, mocking "fat" girls. Lack of mourning at a girlfriend's funeral; stalking and murder of former elementary school classmates. One girl ties up a naked guy, and then punishes him for demanding oral sex by pouring hot wax on his privates. Later, she is murdered in a hot tub while wearing a very skimpy bikini. Another girl is seen in bed with a young man she barely knows, although he seems to have been unable to perform. Plenty of kissing and sexually frank discussions. Lots of women and a couple of men are offed in grisly ways, most involving knives, but there is also an electrocution, death by iron, an axe to the back, a decapitation (off-screen), an arrow to the guts, and shooting. The lead girl whacks her boyfriend/suspect in the head with a bottle and knees him in the groin.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Ellen MacKay
VALENTINE pulls no punches; this is a movie that never pretends to be interested in anything other than sex and violence. But horror fans who can discriminate between this dull, sexist material and finer examples of the genre (Jaws, The Shining, Alien, The Blair Witch Project, even the Scream franchise) will feel ripped off.
So poorly made is this movie that it can't even follow its own conventions. When the first girl dies in a way described by her Valentine card, one would think the rest of the victims would follow suit. But the killer soon forgets what he wrote to his victims, and even loses track of who it is he (or she?) is out to kill. Anyone in the vicinity is a possible target. Moreover, the women under attack are a shallow bunch, more into showing off their sexual conquests and horning in on each other's boyfriends than demonstrating any real empathy for one another. When one girl dies, another flirts shamelessly at her funeral. When one is killed before a trip out of town, no one bothers to see if she made it to her destination.
The central character, Kate (Marley Shelton), is unique in her apparently genuine love for her long-time boyfriend, but her compassion for his alcoholism turns out to be a plot device--and one that doesn't add much to this already muddled movie. In the end, there's no one to like, so there's not much lost when virtually everyone bites the dust.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentOne girl ties up a naked guy, and then punishes him for demanding oral sex by pouring hot wax on his privates. Later, she is murdered in a hot tub while wearing a very skimpy bikini. Another girl is seen in bed with a young man she barely knows, although he seems to have been unable to perform. Plenty of kissing and sexually frank discussions. |
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ViolenceLots of women and a couple of men are offed in grisly ways, most involving knives, but there is also an electrocution, death by iron, an axe to the back, a decapitation (off-screen), an arrow to the guts, and shooting. The lead girl whacks her boyfriend/s |
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LanguageOccasional extreme profanity, frequent moderate profanity. |
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Social BehaviorNot one single character of color appears. The women on display are sexually aggressive, and some of them die for it. Cruelty toward grade-school peers, mocking "fat girls". |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking. One character is an alcoholic. |
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