Valentine * (2001, Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, David Boreanaz, Katherine Heigl) – Classic Movie Review 13,883

Jamie Blanks’s 2001 slasher film Valentine stars Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl. Four female friends in San Francisco become the target for a killer wearing a Cupid mask.

Director Jamie Blanks’s 2001 slasher film Valentine is loosely based on the 1997 novel by Tom Savage, and stars Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl.

Four female childhood friends in San Francisco become the target for a killer wearing a Cupid mask and using sinister Valentine cards in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Could he be the former school nerd? The finger of suspicion all too obviously starts to point to Adam Carr (David Boreanaz from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

It starts in 1988, when Jeremy Melton (Joel Palmer), an outcast junior high school kid, is humiliated and later expelled after he asks four popular girls to dance at a Valentine’s Day dance. Then it’s on to 2001 and one of the girls, UCLA medical student Shelley Fisher (Katherine Heigl), returns to her lab after an unsuccessful date with Jason Marquette (Adam J Harrington), gets a threatening Valentine’s card and is killed by a masked stalker, whose nose then bleeds.

This tedious, low-suspense chiller is cut to tried-and-tested old-style slasher formula, with a stale air, and with some very ordinary acting not helping out. Maybe it shows a bit of neo giallo style in the direction and cinematography (Rick Bota), and there is a script attempt to try to make the characters individual and involving. So, charitably, perhaps there are hints of a better film somewhere here, possibly.

It was shot on location in Vancouver, British Columbia, from 10 July 2000 and released on 2 February 2001.

Director Blanks toned down violence and gore in the editing process, but maybe this also toned down the scares the audience is looking for. Blanks added the idea of the killer’s nose bleeding when he commits a murder in homage to one of his favourite slasher films, Alone in the Dark (1982).

It is written by Donna Powers, Wayne Powers, Gretchen J Berg and Aaron Harberts.

Cast: Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl, Daniel Cosgrove, Hedy Burress, Jessica Cauffiel, Fulvio Cecere, Johnny Whitworth, Adam J Harrington.

 © Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,883

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