It’s based on a popular, well-reviewed novel.  It’s got a hip cast of WB stars and Fan Boy wet dream material.  It’s supposed to be the first in a possible franchise for its studio.  So why does it suck so bad?

It is Valentine, a murder-by-number slasher flick with the intelligence of a crack baby who grew up near power lines.  It is truly one of the worst films ever made, and the only screaming it will cause will come from people demanding their money back.

From its red tinted Warner Bros. logo right through to its perfectly telegraphed ending, Valentine does nothing to expand on the formula that John Carpenter perfected with Halloween.  You know, some woman hears a noise, and searches around for its origin, only to be pursued by a mask-wearing, knife-wielding maniac who walks really slowly but still is able to catch up to her.  Guess what?  Halloween is 22 years old.  This stuff is as original as a Henny Youngman joke.

Valentine opens in 1988, where a young, nerdy boy asks several girls to dance with him at a middle school Valentine’s Day party.  They all refuse, and a psychopath is created.  Flash to 13 years later, where all of the girls who snubbed the boy have grown up to be serious spanking material and, for some strange reason, are all still living in San Francisco.  One, a medical student (Roswell’s Katherine Heigl), becomes the jilted lover’s first victim in truly predictable fashion (the only thing unpredictable is that she’s studying for finals in February).  We quickly learn that the killer intends to eliminate the other girls in a similar fashion.  Oh, and he wears a cherubic Cupid mask, just like one of his classmates had that tragic night in the sixth grade.

The girls – three blondes and Denise Richards (The World Is Not Enough) – are murdered one at a time, and the film’s goofy script offers several weak red herrings to throw you off the trail.  The identity of the killer, which isn’t revealed until the last frame of the film, is so painfully obvious, I’m surprised they don’t just show it in the film’s trailer.

It’s one thing to make a slasher flick and do something original with it (like Scream), but Valentine doesn’t even attempt to distinguish itself in any way.  It barely makes sense (one of the girls is killed in public…at a crowded party…and is never discovered), and I actually saw several people checking their watches during what were supposed to be the exciting scenes.

Angel’s David Boreanaz plays one of the girls’ boyfriends, and he can’t act for shit.  The whole hunched over, monotone thing he does on television is, apparently, the extent of his range (there are two Angel jokes that may have actually been unintentional).  The girls are all unlikable, and none of them get naked.  Since nudity is sometimes the only redeeming quality of a horror film, this is a pretty big thing to omit.

Valentine was directed by Jamie Blanks (Urban Legend) and written by Donna and Wayne Powers (Deep Blue Sea), and Roswell writer/producers Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts.  The story is based on a novel written by Tom Savage, which, from what I understand, is a pretty good read.  The book spends a great deal of time developing the killer’s character, and has him off his victims one at a time annually on Valentine’s Day.

1:38 –

for strong horror violence, some sexuality and language