Valentine: The Bullies Get Bullied

In 1988, at a 6^th grade Valentine’s Day Dance, a young socially awkward and unattractive kid named Jeremy Melton (Joel Palmer) attempts to find a dancing partner.  He is cruelly rebuffed by the popular girls, Shelley, Lily and Paige and tormented by the school jocks.  Two girls were kind to him, Kate (young: Brittany Mayers / adult: Marley Shelton) and Dorothy (young: Kate Logie / adult: Jessica Capshaw).  Kate lets Jeremy down easy by kindly denying a dance by simply stating, “maybe later”, but Dorothy, who is also lonley due to her being overweight, accepts his invitation. The two are caught underneath the bleachers making out and Dorothy, to escape ridicule accuses Jeremy of sexually assaulting her. He is then beaten by the boys and sent away to a reform school and eventually a mental institution due to the allegations of Dorothy and the collaborating testimony given by Shelley, Lily and Paige.  Thirteen years later the girls have remained friends.  Kate is in an on again, off again relationship with Adam (David Boreanaz) whose alcoholism has become an issue in their relationship, and Dorothy is involved with Campbell (Daniel Cosgrove), a conman after Dorothy’s trust fund.  Lily (Jessica Cauffiel) is dating Max (Johnny Whitworth) , a good looking douchebag of an artist. Paige (Denise Richards) is the only one who is joyfully single but meets Brian (Woody Jeffreys) at a speed dating event.  Slowly the girls and their significant others begin to get picked off after receiving disturbing Valentine Cards signed by JM and they begin to question if one of their boyfriends could possibly be Jeremy.  By the final confrontation, there are only 3 of the main characters left along with a lot of bloody carnage.  Who is the killer and what became of Jeremy?  Watch to find out!

This isn’t a bad entry into the horror genre library.  The story flows along well, there is enough intrigue and misdirection to keep it interesting and the dialogue isn’t terrible with a twist at the end which is good if a bit predictable.  The actors all do a decent job in their roles having a cast which was full of up and coming television stars. Besides Kate and Adam, most of the characters are portrayed as unlikeable and self-centered, which may have been done to make the characters’ deaths easier to watch. The film was directed by Jamie Blanks who also directed the original Urban Legend movie which came out a few years before, was pretty popular and spawned a franchise of sequels.

Thematically and psychologically this movie makes a subtle statement (or maybe not so subtle).  Jeremy and Dorothy are relentlessly bullied and ridiculed because of their looks.  Dorothy becomes accepted because she is not as socially awkward as Jeremy, but forever feels the need to prove herself.  The other girls cannot and will never understand the loneliness these characters feel due to the trauma they experienced.  When Dorothy finally comes clean about falsely accusing Jeremy, she gives a great explanation of why she did what she did, and at the end, one of the characters encapsulates this all by saying, “All I can think is when someone is that lonely or that angry, they can learn to hide it. But inside, it never dies. It just stays there. Eats away at you. Until one day, you have to do something about it.”  There are a lot of people that believe that being bullied is just a part of life and people should just get over it, but in reality, this kind of attack never leaves you and causes long term psychological damage.