My Bloody Valentine 3D

My Bloody Valentine 3D is a 2009 American slasher film directed by Patrick Lussier, and starring Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Betsy Rue, and Kerr Smith. It is a reboot of the 1981 Canadian slasher film of the same name, and focuses on residents in a small mining town that is plagued by a serial killer on Valentine's Day. It features supporting performances by Tom Atkins and Kevin Tighe.

Filmed on location in Pennsylvania, the film was given a 3D theatrical release through its distributor, Lionsgate, premiering in the United States on January 16, 2009. It was the first R-rated film to be projected in RealD technology and to have a wide release (1,000 locations) in 3D-enabled theaters. It earned $100 million worldwide at the box office.

Plot
On St. Valentine's Day 1997, a cave-in traps six miners working in the Hanniger mine in the town of Harmony, a rural mining community. Six days later, rescuers recover a comatose Harry Warden alongside his five co-workers, whom he killed to conserve his own oxygen. Teenager Tom Hanniger is blamed for the incident due to his forgetting to vent the methane lines.

The following year, Warden, dressed in a gas mask and mining suit, goes on a murderous rampage. He murders multiple partying teenagers in the mine, but Tom, girlfriend Sarah, and friends Axel and his girlfriend Irene survive the ordeal. Ten years later, in 2008, Tom inherits the mine after his father's death and returns to Harmony after a decade-long disappearance. He finds Sarah working as a manager of her family's grocery store, married to Axel, now a police officer, and with one son.

Axel goes to his father's abandoned home in the woods to have a sexual rendezvous with Megan, a young clerk at Sarah's store. Tom checks into a motel, where Irene is having sex with Frank, a trucker. She discovers Frank has filmed their sexual encounter, and chases him into the parking lot. He is killed with a pick-axe by a man in a gas-mask and mining gear. The masked killer then murders Irene and the hotel manager.

Axel arrives at the crime scene and finds Irene's body with her heart missing; Tom becomes a suspect. At the police station, Axel receives an anonymous heart-shaped box with Irene's heart in it. The next day, Tom has an encounter with the killer at the mine. James Burke, the former sheriff, confesses to Tom that he, Tom's father, and Ben Foley, a local politician, killed and buried Warden after his 1998 murder spree, and had the crime covered up by the local police. To prove it, he takes Tom to the site where Warden was buried, but they find an empty grave.

Ben is murdered by Warden, and discovered in Warden's grave with his heart missing. Sarah and Megan are attacked by the killer, and Megan is murdered; Axel and Sarah discover her body with its heart missing, and the phrase "Be Mine 4 Ever" scrawled in blood. Sarah tells Axel she is aware of his infidelity. The killer later infiltrates the Palmer house, killing their babysitter, Rosa, and Burke.

Sarah leaves with Tom; Axel, convinced Tom is the killer, calls to warn Sarah, saying that Tom has been institutionalized for the last seven years. Alarmed, Sarah makes the car crash and flees into the woods. She hides in Axel's father's abandoned house and discovers empty heart-shaped boxes, and a high school photo of her with Tom. She runs into a mine and is confronted by Axel and Tom. Wresting Axel's gun from him, she holds them both at gunpoint. Tom confirms he is the killer. In the midst of a hallucination, Tom, who has developed an alternate personality as Harry Warden, sees Warden appear behind Sarah. Axel attacks Tom, but is injured in the scuffle.

Sarah and Axel flee into a tunnel. Sarah manages to shoot Tom in the side, hitting a fuel tank that results in an explosion. The tunnel ceiling collapses on him. Sarah and Axel escape the mine at dawn. A rescuer finds Tom in the debris, and Tom, still alive, kills him. Disguised as a rescue worker, he passes by unnoticed. In a post-credits scene, someone who appears to be Warden is seen wandering the mine tunnels.

Cast
• Jensen Ackles as Tom Hanniger

• Jaime King as Sarah Mercer-Palmer

• Kerr Smith as Axel Palmer

• Betsy Rue as Irene

• Megan Boone as Megan

• Edi Gathegi as Deputy Martin

• Tom Atkins as James "Jim" Burke

• Kevin Tighe as Ben Foley

• Karen Baum as Deputy Ferris

• Joy de la Paz as Rosa

• Marc Macaulay as Marc Riggs

• Selene Luna as Selene

• Todd Farmer as Frank the Trucker

• Jeff Hochendoner as William "Red" Kirkpatrick

• Richard John Walters as Harry Warden/The Miner

• David Theodor Blatt (uncredited) as hospital security guard

Production
The film was shot in South Western Pennsylvania, taking advantage of the state's tax incentives for film productions as well as the topographical and architectural versatility of the Pittsburgh Metro area. Filming began on May 11, 2008 in Armstrong County along the Route 28 corridor, in locations including Sprankle's Market in Kittanning, the Ford City police station, and the exterior of the Logansport Mine in Bethel. Kittanning served as main street in the film's fictional town of Harmony. The production spent 13 days filming scenes in the Tour-Ed Mines in the Pittsburgh suburb of Tarentum, a mine that has been out of production since the 1960s and now operates as a museum.

The inside of Valliant's Diner in Ross Township was used as a location for one scene, and a house on Hulton Road in Oakmont, a suburb of Pittsburgh, was also used as a location.

The film was shot entirely digitally in 4K resolution. The filmmakers used the Red One from Red Digital Cinema Camera Company, and the SI-2K Digital Cinema Camera by Silicon Imaging as digital cameras. Max Penner, the film's stereographer, found these lighter and smaller cameras easier to use.

3D aspect
My Bloody Valentine is the first R-rated film to be projected in RealD technology and to have a wide release (1,000 locations) in 3D-enabled theaters. The film was also available in 2D for theaters that were not equipped to process digital 3D technology.

Reception
The film received generally mixed to positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 57% of 90 critics gave the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.8 out of 10. However, its reception was relatively better than the original 1981 film, which only had 50% of positive reviews. On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 51 based on 11 reviews.

Joe Leydon of Variety said, "director and co-editor Lussier (a frequent Wes Craven collaborator) plays the 3-D gimmick for all it's worth: Everything from tree branches and gun barrels to bloody pickaxes and bloodier body parts appears to jump off the screen. He also makes effective use of the depth-of-field illusion, allowing audiences long views of various chest cavities from which hearts have been rudely ripped. At the very least, the overall tech package is a great deal more impactful than that of the 3-D-lensed Friday the 13th Part III (1982)". He added, in spite of the "state-of-the-art 3-D camera trickery, which helmer Patrick Lussier shamelessly exploits to goose the audience with cheap thrills and full-bore gore, My Bloody Valentine is at heart an unabashedly retro work, reveling in the cliches and conventions of the slasher horror pics that proliferated in the early 1980s".

Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times said, the implemented 3-D technology enables "startling effects, but after a while the minor thrill of the trick is gone. Advances in digital technology have allowed the filmmakers to largely avoid the physical headaches that are perhaps the biggest hallmark of the cyclical attempts at 3-D moviemaking". He added, "wooden performances by forgettable, generic actors -- again, just like in the original -- don't aid in making things any less leaden", concluding My Bloody Valentine 3D is "just good enough to not be annoying".

Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times said, "the creaky screenplay (by Todd Farmer and Zane Smith) is mercilessly at odds with the director's fine sense of pacing. From the moment you duck a flying mandible and gaze, mesmerized, at a severed hand oozing two inches from your nose, you'll be convinced that the extra dimension was worth seeking out. A strange synergy of old and new, My Bloody Valentine 3D blends cutting-edge technology and old-school prosthetics to produce something both familiar and alien: gore you can believe in".

Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly graded the film a C+ and said that it "starts in spectacular fashion. But what really leaps out at you about My Bloody Valentine 3-D is its lack of imagination". Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter felt, "While the concept of adding 3-D to the horror genre is hardly new ... Patrick Lussier's film is the most accomplished example. The 3-D effects come fast and furious, rendered with a technical skill and humor that gives this otherwise strictly formulaic slasher picture whatever entertainment value it possesses." He added, "the three leads actually manage to invest their roles with some depth, but the real acting treats come courtesy of veteran character actors Kevin Tighe and Atkins, whose presence provides a comforting bridge to horror films past.

Box office
On its 4-day opening weekend, the film grossed $24.1 million, ranking #3 for the weekend, behind Gran Torino at #2, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop at #1. In its second weekend, the movie grossed estimated $10.1 million, ranking number 6 at the domestic box office. The film grossed $51,545,952 in the United States and Canada, and $49,188,766 in other markets for a worldwide total of $100,734,718.

Home media
My Bloody Valentine 3D was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 19, 2009 and has grossed in excess of $19.7 million, with DVD sales and theater gross revenue totaling over $119.9 million.

Both home release versions have both a standard 2D version and the 3D version on the same disc using seamless branching. However, a special Blu-ray version was also created specifically for online rental chains like Netflix and Blockbuster.

On October 5, 2010, Lionsgate Home Entertainment released My Bloody Valentine 3D on Blu-ray 3D which requires a 3D-capable HDTV, 3D Blu-ray player and 3D glasses. The disc also includes a 2D version of the film and all bonus materials included in the 2D Blu-ray version released after the film's initial theater run.