My Bloody Valentine 3D

Release Date: Jan. 16

Director: Patrick Lussier

Writers: Todd Farmer, Zane Smith

Cinematographer: Brian Pearson

Starring: Jensen Ackles, Megan Boone, Kerr Smith, Jaime King, Betsy Rue

Studio/Running Time: Lionsgate, 101 mins.

Far be it for me to begrudge My Blood Valentine 3D its participatory sense of fun. Even though the movie feels like one long in-joke for genre enthusiasts, a sleepy ’80s slasher movie by way of William Castle, it gleefully calls out to an audience willing to burn $15 for a premium ticket to revel in the flying eyeballs, extravagant nudity and pickaxed brains that supposedly elevate this routine small-town splatter machine into a unique experience.

So be it. The movie makes what it can of its occasionally effective 3D gimmick, and a group of beer-logged friends on a bored weekend night could do worse. But for anyone who happens to see it sober—much less in a theater not equipped for 3D—this one-trick, entirely derivative exercise in old-school slasher tropes doesn’t stretch very far.

Nominally based on the cult 1981 Canadian feature, My Bloody Valentine’s lone surprise is that it tells a halfway lucid story, a serviceable yarn about a psycho miner who cuts up a blue-collar town and apparently returns 10 years later. The lack of a single decent scare is another matter. Director Patrick Lussier (noted as the editor of the Scream franchise) mostly just lines up the usual pretty girls and even prettier boys on an assembly line of slaughter, which ensures that his movie won’t live beyond a few weekends of audiences out for a cheap, lazy thrill.

Watch the trailer for My Bloody Valentine 3D: