General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

My Bloody Valentine (2009 film)

My Bloody Valentine (also released as My Bloody Valentine 3D) is a 2009 American slasher film directed by Patrick Lussier, a remake of the 1981 Canadian horror film of the same name, in which a masked killer in miner's garb terrorizes a small mining town with a pickaxe. It was produced and distributed by Lionsgate, written by Todd Farmer and Zane Smith, runs 101 minutes, and was rated R.¹ It is notable as an early feature of the late-2000s 3D revival, shot natively in stereoscopic digital 3D rather than converted after the fact.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 16, 2009, in 2,534 theaters; run through March 12, 2009³
Box office	$21,241,456 opening weekend; $100,734,718 worldwide against a $15,000,000 budget³
Director / writers	Patrick Lussier; screenplay by Todd Farmer and Zane Smith¹
Cast	Jensen Ackles, Jaime King, Kerr Smith, Betsy Rue, Edi Gathegi, Tom Atkins, Kevin Tighe, Megan Boone¹
Cameras	Red One and Silicon Imaging SI-2K digital cameras; cinematographer Brian Pearson⁴
Critical scores	Metacritic 51 (mixed or average); Rotten Tomatoes 57% against 50% for the 1981 original⁵^•⁶
3D premium	Average gross per 3D screen was 6.0 times the average per 2D screen in January 2009, the highest multiple among the 3D releases listed from 2005 to 2009⁷

Spoilers

Plot and cast

Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles) returns to his hometown on the tenth anniversary of a Valentine's night massacre that claimed 22 lives, and finds himself suspected when the killings start again.³ The setting is a small mining town, and the killer wears a gas mask and miner's gear and wields a pickaxe.¹ Tom is chief suspect in part because he still has feelings for his ex-girlfriend Sarah (Jaime King), now married to the local sheriff (Kerr Smith).⁸ The supporting cast includes Tom Atkins, Kevin Tighe, Betsy Rue, and Megan Boone.¹

Unlike many slashers, the film keeps the killer's identity a mystery for the audience, with adult characters, overlapping love triangles, and clues to who is responsible.⁸ A scholarly analysis notes that it inverts the usual slasher point-of-view shot: rather than seeing through the killer's eyes, the camera repeatedly aligns with the victim's eye line during attacks, using the 3D format to put the viewer in the target's position.⁹

Production and 3D technology

Lionsgate wanted to make a 3D film and turned to Patrick Lussier, who had an editorial and technical background as a director; as the story developed, the mining location was judged suited to using 3D for storytelling rather than as a gimmick.¹⁰ Early tests clinched the decision: the crew set up a faux mine with black cloth and ladders on a stage, had someone walk through, and the results convinced everyone involved.¹¹

Native stereoscopic photography. The film was shot with digital Red One and Silicon Imaging SI-2K cameras, with Angenieux lenses, by cinematographer Brian Pearson.⁴ Working with the company Paradise Effects and stereographer Max Penner, the filmmakers produced a 3D effect the Los Angeles Times described as beyond what earlier practitioners such as William Castle could have achieved; the Red camera allowed much greater control over the two images that create the depth effect.² The glasses looked roughly like a pair of Wayfarers rather than the cardboard red-and-blue spectacles of 1950s 3D.²

Lussier's team addressed the eyestrain that audiences remembered from earlier 3D films by checking every frame of every shot for alignment. "We literally go through every single frame of every single shot and do all the correct alignments and correlations to make sure your left eye and your right eye are not only in sync, but vertically aligned," he said, adding that anything that could cause headaches or stress was removed.² Special effects makeup designer Gary Tunnicliffe wrote a document outlining ways to kill someone with a pickaxe, since the killer uses the same weapon throughout; several set-piece deaths grew out of locations found during shooting.¹¹

Release and box office

The film opened on January 16, 2009 in 2,534 theaters, earning $21,241,456 over its first weekend and ranking third.³ Against a budget of $15,000,000, it grossed $51,545,952 domestically (51.2% of the total) and $49,188,766 internationally, for a worldwide total of $100,734,718.³ A European digital cinema report recorded its screen average multiple, average gross per 3D screen divided by average gross per 2D screen, at 6.0x for January 2009, higher than any 3D release listed from Chicken Little (2005) through Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008).⁷

Reception

Critics were mixed. Metacritic assigned a score of 51 based on 11 reviews, classified as mixed or average.⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film sits at 57%, above the 50% of the 1981 original, with a critics consensus calling it "an unpretentious, effective mix of old-school horror stylings and modern 3D technology."⁶^•¹² The New York Times' Jeannette Catsoulis described "a strange synergy of old and new," blending cutting-edge technology with old-school prosthetics; the Hollywood Reporter credited the 3D effects with giving the formulaic slasher its entertainment value; the Los Angeles Times' Mark Olsen found the performances wooden.⁵ Slant Magazine called it "mildly proficient as far as throwbacks go," praising its swift pacing and severe gore while noting a rote narrative.¹ A doctoral thesis surveying the reviews found them largely ambivalent or negative, though a number of critics praised the use of the technology and likened the film to fun horror cinema of past decades.⁹

UK advertising ruling

In June 2009 the UK Advertising Standards Authority banned the film's British multimedia advertising campaign after five complaints that it was misleading. The campaign promoted the "ultimate 3D experience" with clips of effects appearing to leave the screen, but made no reference to the 2D version, which at launch was playing in more cinemas nationwide: Lions Gate UK reported that on opening night 90 cinemas showed the film in 3D and 103 in 2D, and over the first six weeks 647 cinemas had it in 3D against 463 in 2D. The ASA ruled that audiences were likely to be attracted to a 3D showing yet could find only the 2D version available, and ordered the campaign not to be broadcast again in that form.¹³

Place in the 3D revival

The film arrived during a run of 3D horror projects in the late 2000s and is credited by a retrospective in Inverse with helping reopen the door to mainstream 3D cinema ahead of Avatar's success at the end of 2009.¹⁴ Later assessments of its stereography have been divided: a 2019 retrospective argued that its foreground-thrusting effects, such as flying pickaxes and a slow-motion bullet, felt like a holdover from 1980s 3D gimmicks, while noting it was the first R-rated film shot in Real D technology.¹⁵ On home video, the DVD and Blu-ray package includes both 3D and flat versions, four pairs of 3D glasses, and supplementary material; a NOW Magazine review of the disc found the 3D worked well on a small screen, with almost no ghosting.⁸ The remake's release also prompted a reissue of the 1981 original on DVD with its previously censored gore reinstated.¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026