Holiday Horror: Valentine (2001)

Problematic messaging of the era aside, “Valentine” is a wickedly fun slasher that should be essential viewing on Cupid’s special day.

Valentine is pure early-aughts horror. 2000s grunge-rock music was popular, and heroin chic was unfortunately still seen as the height of beauty.

This slasher is a personal favorite and a yearly tradition because it’s such a fun addition to holiday horror. We have innovative kills and a killer committed to the Cupid bit, but the real horror is the dating world surrounding the women in the movie that tells them they can never be truly happy until they have a man for a pretty pointless holiday. This is coming from someone who loves Valentine’s Day; it’s great if you have someone you love to celebrate it with, but if you don’t, celebrate yourself.

Movie Summary (Spoilers!)

Jeremy Melton is at the school dance in 1988, asking his various crushes to dance — very brave of him considering it’s factually correct that girls get meaner in front of their friends when confronted by such questions from boys they aren’t interested in.

Most of the girls turn him down point-blank with a mean comment: Shelley, Lily, and Paige. Kate, a nicer girl, says, “Maybe later,” but probably doesn’t mean that, though he takes it literally. Then Jeremy asks the “fat” girl, Dorothy, to dance, and they make out under the bleachers until a group of boys find them and make fun of them both.

Dorothy panics and tells them Jeremy attacked her. The boys beat the snot out of Jeremy in front of everyone in his underwear. Jeremy is sent to reform school and then juvie after this incident.

Fast forward thirteen years and Shelley (Katherine Heigl) is on a horrible date with a very strange, self-absorbed man named Jason, who speaks in 3rd person. She leaves to focus on her anatomy exam the next day, working on her cadaver late at night all alone. Shelley finds a Valentine’s Day card with a threatening message signed JM in her locker, then is chased by a masked Cupid assailant.

Shelley runs but is trapped, deciding to hide in a body bag. The killer finds her and slices her throat, then zips her back up for someone else to find. The women are all reunited at Shelley’s funeral, and a detective comes to question them about their childhood friend.

Kate (Marley Shelton) runs into her ex, Adam (David Boreanaz), who came to show support even though his drinking problem severed their relationship.

Each woman is having her own difficulties with the impending holiday.

Dorothy (Jessica Capshaw) is single, her wealthy father is married to someone younger than her, and she receives another threatening Valentine’s, just like Shelley’s (also signed JM).

A man from yoga that Dorothy is interested in, Campbell, comes to the door, seeking her charity, and moves in, but he’s a con artist. They begin dating, but Campbell isn’t truly into her; he is merely infatuated with her money (as we find out from his disgruntled ex).

Lily (Jessica Cauffiel) is interested in monogamy, but her sleazy boyfriend, Max, is not. Paige (Denise Richards) is single and having fun but has trouble finding someone who will treat her well instead of treating her as an object. Kate is hung up on Adam, afraid to trust that he’s stopped drinking for good.

Lily also receives a threatening valentine, leading her and Paige to try and guess who JM is, which makes them consider how awful they were to Jeremy Melton since he was sent to reform school because of them. All the women discuss Jeremy Melton together at Max’s art installation event.

After breaking up with Max, Lily gets lost and is shot with a bow and arrow into a nearby dumpster by the Cupid Killer.

The detective is told about the possibility of Jeremy Melton; Jeremy’s parents apparently died in a fire that was ruled an accident, and there’s no current information on him or his whereabouts.

Dorothy finally tells her friends that she lied about that night over her embarrassment of being the “fat” girl and kissing another unpopular kid.

Dorothy throws a big Valentine’s Day party, which is disastrous for them all.

Campbell doesn’t show up to the party (he was murdered earlier by the Cupid Killer), so Dorothy feels she’s been stood up. Kate catches Adam drinking and then runs from him, eventually starting to believe he’s Melton from his suspiciously aggressive behavior.

Paige’s date turns out to be an entitled jerk, and she abandons the party in favor of the hot tub and champagne. She is trapped in the hot tub by the cover, wounded by Cupid from a drill, and murdered via electrocution.

Dorothy and Kate argue about who the killer is and then separate. Kate calls the detective, who is decapitated. She finds a gun and shoots the killer after being chased; she and Adam unmask the Cupid-faced menace to find Dorothy with a black eye.

Adam holds Kate afterward while his nose bleeds. This tips off the audience that Jeremy Melton is actually Adam because each time the Cupid Killer murdered someone, his nose would bleed.

Themes & Characterization

I love the creepy Valentine threats. Give me a slasher with a killer that sticks to his theme any day. This movie gets an A+ for slasher murder creativity, like having a potential victim hide in a body bag to escape a killer, only to get stabbed anyway, or using the broken glass from a window a woman is thrown through to impale her through the neck.

This is great horror.

The one thing I truly dislike about this movie is the amount of times characters are shamed for ridiculous reasons.

Paige was continually told she was a slut for liking sex and for being desirable. Paige had the best outfit and Valentine’s Day during-party plan, too. Hot tub and champagne? Yes, please! I wish Paige had been the main character; she was the most interesting character in the movie. A free spirit who is confident, sexy, and unwilling to take shit from men who thought she was easy. She also watched over her friends and identified horrible men on sight from vibes alone.

Enjoying sex should not have meant it was okay to slut-shame her constantly, which all her “friends” did to her at some point.

Sadly, this was pretty par for the course in 2001 and didn’t stop for many years. Paige would bite back but was clearly used to this kind of attitude towards her. Paige is considered the sexiest, so most likely, her friends pick on her out of jealousy. She wasn’t a pick-me girl (Dorothy definitely was) but lived in a category all her own, undefined by other people’s judgments and knowing how to treat herself after a romantic disappointment.

She never stopped trying to find what she deserved, even after men around her continually sexualized her. I see her as an icon.

Dorothy was fat-shamed constantly just because she wasn’t stick-thin.

The scene with Dorothy and Campbell in bed after she seduces him is horrifying because of how normalized this attitude is. They are heavily implying he can’t get it up because of how her body looks. Heroin chic isn’t healthy or normal for women to strive for, but it was, unfortunately, the style at the time.

We do see Dorothy binge-eating chicken wings, but I think they’re overselling her whole “fat girl” mentality, which is reinforced by the world around her.

I love that foreshadowing near the end of Adam wearing a shirt similar to Jeremy Melton’s; it wasn’t obvious he was the killer, but it honestly made me like the movie more.

Framing Dorothy was pretty clever, considering how deeply insecure she was.

Much of the movie focuses on Kate and her journey through this Valentine’s Day mania. This, we find out, is because she was the final girl spared by the psycho simply because she was nice to him and is now trapped in a relationship with him, not knowing who he truly is or what he did to her friends.

Jeremy has his Kate all to himself now. I’m terrified for her.

Color Coding

Characters are defined by their relationship statuses.

Lily is dating a bad artist who isn’t very serious about her and hits on her friends. Kate is on and off again with Adam, a borderline personality with a serious drinking problem. Dorothy really wants the validation of being in a relationship; her latest conquest, Campbell, is a gold-digger and isn’t as reciprocal as Dorothy or in a way that any woman would need.

All the women are swanning around with their boyfriends or would-be boyfriends because of what holiday is coming up that has no real meaning. It’s supposed to be fun, not a contest. The women’s attitudes are seen in how they’re dressed throughout the film.

Dorothy wore a lot of very dark, refined colors, black and purple, and her fashion style was sophisticated wealth.

To me, it denotes a dead heart. She doesn’t care about a genuine connection with anyone — a rental boyfriend is actually perfect for her with Campbell. Dorothy, in my opinion, doesn’t want love because it’s more important to show off to her friends/the world that there is proof she’s beautiful and worthy, even though he doesn’t make her feel that way.

This is horrible, and there’s nothing wrong with Dorothy except her low self-esteem, which is a product of the internalized misogyny of the time period that women need to be thin to be beautiful.

Lily sported bright colors like reddish-orange hues and purple with funky paisley patterns to go with her bouncy, fun hair.

She was looking at other people to date besides Max, who she probably knew wasn’t serious about her, though she clearly liked him, or perhaps what she really liked was the novelty of being in a relationship on Valentine’s Day.

She seems jazzed at his event, especially after he kisses her in front of her friends and passionately makes out with him until Lily realizes he wants a threesome instead of just her.

Paige gravitated towards devil-red as a fiery, passionate woman, though her everyday colors are a little more muted and neutral. It’s hard to say if Paige wants anything serious from the men she dates, but she does want to be treated well.

Men are often drawn to her for the wrong reasons, and the ones who aren’t are the kind Paige sees right through, which is why they don’t like her.

Kate chose many shades of blue and cool colors, communicating her subdued, calm, reserved state. She’s not overly flirtatious or very fun-loving, though she is work-oriented and wants something serious out of her relationships.

Kate is fairly nice, but that’s not reflected in her wardrobe except in perhaps the fuzzy textures she usually wears; even her “let loose” outfit is somehow professional at the party in black slacks and a silk teal blouse.

Shelly opts for brown shades and gray, which is most likely related to her wanting to be taken seriously in an academic/doctor setting. Femininity in male-dominated spaces is often viewed as a weakness, though that’s absolutely not something that can be divined from gender or the colors one wears.

The message of this movie was horrific, as were many of the movies from this time period.

The internalized misogyny alone is enough to make someone want to throw lots of 2000s movies in the trashcan.

The saving grace is how the movie uses the holiday to take revenge; this isn’t a new concept, but Valentine uses the trope in its own way and even has a twist I didn’t see coming.

I enjoy elements from the time period while also pointing out how awful they treated women and anyone considered different.

It’s a Valentine’s Day staple at my house, complete with pizza (or pasta if I’m feeling fancy), chocolate, and pink Moscato.