Valentine (2001) and the Slasher Foundation It Was Built On

Valentine was a slasher movie that came out in 2001. Kate (Marley Shelton), Paige (Denise Richards), Lily (Jessica Cauffiel), Shelley (Katherine Heigl), and Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw) were five lifelong friends finally coming into their own as adults. There were only two problems. The men they tried to date always came with major red flags, and there was someone harassing them for how they treated Jeremy Melton (Joel Palmer) at a sixth-grade dance.

I’m getting right into the movie because I want discuss how things got to the point where Valentine was made. On paper, it was a simple loose adaptation of a 1996 novel by Tom Savage. By loose, I mean really loose. The plot description of the movie sounds nothing like the novel they based it on. Aside from the name and the “gifts” given to the characters, that is. The main character was named Jill and there was no Jill in the movie. So, it’s pretty far off.

Now, why was this novel loosely adapted into this slasher movie? Well, that would be easy to see once you watch Valentine. It was a movie that played upon the horror trends and tropes of the time. Many of those trends and tropes built upon the movies of the past. That means, in a sense, that everything was leading to Valentine being released. Not that it was the pinnacle of filmmaking, per say, but it was the result of the state horror was in at the turn of the century.

To fully understand how Valentine came to be in the way it came to be, we need to look at three different points in slasher movie history. The first one was way, way back in the mid-1970s. Black Christmas. Then we fast forward a few years to the release of Prom Night in 1980. The final movie that was a critical point was Scream. Those three slashers, when packaged together, helped to build the foundation that grew into Valentine.

Black Christmas was one of the earliest slasher flicks. It wasn’t the movie that got the whole slasher subgenre going, but it was one that set it on the path that would inspire movies like Prom Night, Scream, and Valentine. It was the first movie to feel like the typical slasher flick. A group of sorority girls received phone calls from a mysterious person, and they were murdered one by one. There was a final girl. It was a movie that basically took the lead-up to slasher movies, created the blueprint, and led to many, many other slasher movies using the same formula. Group of friends. Killer shows up. Death to most of the friends. That’s most slasher movies.

If I follow this train forward, we get Halloween. A group of high school friends, two of them babysitters, were stalked by Michael Myers. Friday the 13^th. A group of camp counselors were stalked by Pamela Voorhees. A Nightmare on Elm Street. A bunch of high school friends were stalked, in their dreams, by Freddy. Scream. A group of high school friends were stalked by Ghostface. The Final Girls. A group of friends get trapped in a slasher movie with the group of camp counselors being stalked by Billy Murphy. All these movies shared the same formula as Black Christmas.

Valentine also shared that formula. Kate, Paige, Lily, Dorothy, and Shelley were childhood friends. They were still friends into their early 20s. A killer came into their lives and stalked them. It was that same basic formula, once again. And, much like every other slasher movie, they began to die. Some of the people connected to them also lost their lives. Kate’s next-door neighbour was killed. Dorothy’s conman boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend were killed. It was very formulaic, with that formula being established in Black Christmas.

The other thing that Black Christmas brought to slasher movies, aside from the basic formula, was the use of a holiday as the setting for the killing. It was a very simple idea. Take a holiday where people normally celebrate, twist it in a morbid fashion through violence and death. It worked for many slashers that followed. Halloween was set at Halloween. Prom Night was set at a high school prom. My Bloody Valentine was set around Valentine’s Day, as was Valentine. It’s not uncommon for slashers to set their deadly stories on or around a holiday for that extra little punch.

Going back to Prom Night for a bit, we have our next movie that led to Valentine existing. Prom Night was your basic 1980 slasher, with a twist. The killer was connected to the friends. You see, the killer knew that the friends had played a game when they were younger that led to the death of another child. The murders were revenge for the death they had caused at a young age. Their past was coming back to haunt them through the killing spree they were falling victim to.

This type of story wasn’t wholly original to Prom Night. The novel I Know What You Did Last Summer came out a few years earlier. It was about a few friends who accidentally hit a cycling child with their car and covered it up, only to be terrorized a year later by someone who knew about it. A film adaptation would come in the late 1990s. Between Prom Night and I Know What You Did Last Summer, the stage was set for that style of story to be told again.

One of the biggest changes, from what I can tell, between the novel and the film for Valentine was the inclusion of this storyline. Jill received notes and gifts from a secret admirer, while Kate and her friends received things from someone claiming to be JM. They figured out it was someone tormenting them about what happened to Jeremy Melton when they were children. At their sixth-grade dance, each of them had turned Jeremy down for a dance. Kate said she would dance later. Dorothy agreed to dance, only to accuse Jeremy of sexual assault when they were caught making out by the school bully. It was this dance that became the past which caught up to them in the present. Their actions at that dance led to deaths many years later.

The final movie I need to bring up for how it helped Valentine happen is Scream. Everyone knows Scream by this point. A group of teenagers were tormented by Ghostface, a robed, hooded figure with a mask that looked like it was straight out of the Scream painting. The main difference between Scream and the slashers that came before it was that they were aware of the situation they were in. The characters were aware of horror movies. They were aware of slashers. They knew the formula and what not to do, though they somehow still fell into the trappings and tropes.

Until the release of Scream, most slasher movies relied on casting relatively unknown actors in the main roles. Or, if the actors were known, they were mostly known for starring in other horror movies. Horror was a place where actors started their careers. Slashers weren’t where they went when they were already known properties. Scream changed that by casting known performers in some of the bigger roles. Courteney Cox starred in Friends at the time. Neve Campbell was in Party of Five. Drew Barrymore was Drew Barrymore. Audiences knew these actors. Audiences rooted for these actors.

Things changed after that. Slasher movies were filled with known performers. Joshua Jackson went from The Mighty Ducks to Scream 2 to Dawson’s Creek to Urban Legend. L.L. Cool J popped up in an important role in Halloween H20. Busta Rhymes and Tyra Banks were both in Halloween: Resurrection. People who audiences knew from their other work would pop up in slasher movies and their lives would be in danger. Slashers had turned into a star-studded affair, instead of the unknown cast they had been for decades past. That’s not to say that the older slashers didn’t feature people who would become stars. But they weren’t so much about casting people who were established.

This trend continued its way through slasher movies as Valentine was released. Denise Richards was brought in to play Paige after finding a successful movie career in the 1990s, which included playing a Bond girl in The World is Not Enough. David Boreanaz came in to play Adam, Kate’s boyfriend, during his time in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Katherine Heigl had just won awards for her work in Roswell. And then there was Marley Shelton, who had come from a successful child acting career into her adulthood. Plus, Jessica Capshaw, daughter of Kate Capshaw and stepdaughter of Steven Spielberg. They were known actors. Audiences would know them and, hopefully, care more about them because of the recognition.

Valentine was a movie that took from many of the slasher movies that came before it. It was its own thing, but the inspirations were clear. It took the holiday setting and basic slasher formula from Black Christmas, a movie that came out nearly thirty years earlier. The plot of something from the main characters’ past reuniting with them in the present to terrorize them over that event was brought in from Prom Night and the novel I Know What You Did Last Summer. Scream introduced the idea that slasher movies could be headlined by star actors instead of unknowns looking for their big break. Valentine brought all those ideas together in a revenge slasher set around the annual day of love, starring a bunch of known actors.

This is not to say that Valentine was a great movie. It was a serviceable slasher movie that had its moments. It simply brought a bunch of elements together in a way that felt like a culmination of everything the slasher subgenre had done up to that point. Nothing new was brought to the table. It wasn’t pushing the subgenre forward. It was just another entry. Sometimes, that’s all you want. The comfort of knowing what you’re getting. That’s all you need.

Now let’s get to some notes:

• C. Ernst Harth made another Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Valentine. He was previously part of Space Buddies, Dudley Do-Right, Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, The Search for Santa Paws, Say It Isn’t So, and A Christmas Story 2.
• Daniel Boileau popped up in Valentine, after showing up in Ghost Storm, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and Say It Isn’t So.
• Noel Fisher was in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Freddy Got Fingered, and Valentine.
• Jessica Capshaw was one of the main actors in Valentine. She also had roles in View from the Top and The Hero of Color City.
• Benita Ha made her third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Valentine, after showing up in Catwoman and Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins.
• Another three-timer was Haig Sutherland, who has been a part of Dudley Do-Right, Halloween: Resurrection, and Valentine.
• Denise Richards was another lead in Valentine. She previously appeared in Tammy and the T-Rex and Money Plane.
• Sterling McKay was in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 and Valentine.
• Valentine was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance for Katherine Heigl, who was in New Year’s Eve.
• Adam J. Harrington was in both Valentine and House of the Dead.
• Warriors of Virtue’s Marley Shelton was in Valentine.
• Jessical Cauffiel showed up in Valentine. She also appeared in D.E.B.S.
• You might have recognized Johnny Whitworth in Valentine. He was in a little movie called Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
• Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan featured Alex Diakun, who would go on to have a role in Valentine.
• Far Cry and Valentine each featured an actor named Adrian Holmes.
• Finally, Ty Olsson appeared in Valentine. He also popped up in 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown.
• Have you seen Valentine? What did you think of it? Do you think it used its influences well, or was it a bad rehashing of bits and pieces? Let me know in the comments or… on Threads!
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for this blog, let me know. I’m on Threads, or you can find me in the comments.
• The next movie I check out, depending on the order I post these, will be either Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation or Van Helsing (the 2023 movie). I have all three of these posts written. It’s just a matter of the editing order. See you soon with another post.