Zeta Minor DVD Review

VALENTINE

Director: Jamie Blanks

Starring: Denise Richards, David Boreanaz, Marley Shelton

A psychopathic killer sends death threats in the form of Valentines cards.

Valentine features a standard revenge plot along the lines of Prom Night and a thousand other mediocre slasher flicks, populated by a host of hypnotically attractive Pretty Young Things, including Roswell’s Katherine Heigl and Angel’s Boreanaz. Blanks, who directed the similarly vacuous Urban Legend here shows occasional flashes of genuine Argento-like innovation, but is generally unable to resist the cheap, well-telegraphed scare. The film is almost completely anaemic – there’s no nudity, hardly any gore, and the violence is entirely perfunctory. Who wants their horror films sterilised in this way?

The film looks quite stunning on Warner Home Video’s Region 2 disc, with a richly detailed, densely coloured 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer, and an engaging 5.1 sound mix (at 384kbps), but there’s no disguising that these provide a very thin layer of gloss indeed. The disc features a by-the-numbers director’s commentary track, a music video (“club reel”) and a behind-the scenes feature (8 minutes) which annoyingly hints of deleted scenes that haven’t been included.

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