My Bloody Valentine (2009): C+

Though it stands as one of the better horror remakes to come along in recent memory, 2009’s My Bloody Valentine still only just passes for competent watchability. Though personally unfamiliar with the 1981 original, this conceptually faithful version boasts its own level of sporadically witty self-consciousness via a string of 3-D “gotcha!” moments (my recommendation for DVD viewing: screw the glasses and just watch the movie), renderings its angle as being just silly enough to tread self-parody. Would it have gone all the way and thrown in more distinctive commentary, this resourceful – however occasionally, perhaps deliberately stupid (specifically in the character department; everyone here falls down while running, too) – genre exercise might have been some kind of subversive classic. Instead, in primordially entertaining fashion, it hits all the marks at a healthy stride. An opening slasher spree gruesomely recalls Romero’s Day of the Dead (remember the severed upside down head?), while the central villain – a miner, gone berserk after a cave-in forced him to kill his fellows to conserve air, now possibly back from the dead – suggests Darth Vader’s kinky cousin. The first “kill” is delightfully abusive of the film’s 3-D making, and represents one of the few imaginative examples thereof. If anything, the film deserves to be longer and more exploratory than is ultimately allowed by the climax’s disingenuous contribution to the Donald Kaufman school of thought.