Horror cinema has blessed us with many masks: Ghostface, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees. Then there’s Valentine’s Cupid mask—imagine a dollar-store cherub who failed art school, spray-painted his cheeks, and decided murder was cheaper than therapy. That’s the villain here. A killer with a nosebleed problem and the charisma of a wet sponge, stabbing his way through San Francisco like Hallmark’s worst nightmare.
Cupid’s Backstory: Hormones and Humiliation
The movie opens in 1988 at a middle school Valentine’s dance. Jeremy Melton, your standard bullied nerd, gets rejected by four mean girls. One calls him creepy, another says she’d rather die, and one—played by Katherine Heigl in her cameo before escaping to Grey’s Anatomy—actually chooses “death by throat-slashing” years later. The fourth, Dorothy, kisses him but then panics when caught and falsely accuses him of assault. Cue mob beating, expulsion, reform school, and the kind of trauma that leads straight to plastic surgery and a horror movie contract.
In other words: Jeremy Melton is bullied once, and thirteen years later he’s basically transformed into Cupid from Hell. It’s the least subtle metaphor for “love hurts” since Poison released a power ballad.
Fast Forward: The Hot People Die
Now in 2001, the women are grown up, miserable, and still inexplicably friends despite hating each other. They all receive Valentine’s cards signed “JM,” which might as well stand for “Just Murdered.” Each card has death threats written in fonts so corny they could double as clip art.
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Shelley (Katherine Heigl) is the first to go, killed in a morgue after reading a Valentine that basically says, “Roses are red, violets are blue, your insides are next, boo hoo hoo.”
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Lily (Jessica Cauffiel) gets shot with arrows until she falls into a dumpster—symbolism for her entire acting career at that point.
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Paige (Denise Richards, the franchise’s one marketable star) gets electrocuted in a hot tub with a power drill. Not exactly Wild Things levels of sexy danger, but close enough for late-night cable.
Each death is meant to be poetic revenge for childhood insults, but they land with all the subtlety of a Hallmark Channel slasher.
The Cast: Stiff as a Box of Chocolates
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David Boreanaz plays Adam, Kate’s recovering alcoholic boyfriend. His job is to brood in corners and occasionally look suspicious, which is exactly the same performance he gave in Angel but with less eyeliner.
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Marley Shelton as Kate is the Final Girl, meaning she’s bland, polite, and spends most of the film looking like she’s waiting for someone to explain her lines.
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Jessica Capshaw as Dorothy gets the “fat girl” backstory, though by 2001 she’s Hollywood thin, so we’re left to pretend she was ever unpopular. The script punishes her with insecurity, melodrama, and eventually framing her as the killer—until the twist says otherwise.
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Denise Richards gets the best death scene but spends most of the runtime acting like she wandered off the set of Drop Dead Gorgeous.
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Katherine Heigl wisely dies first, proving she already had career instincts sharper than this script.
The acting ranges from wooden to whittled driftwood. Everyone looks too pretty, too polished, and too bored to be in danger.
The Mask: Cupid or Creeper?
The Cupid mask could have been creepy if it didn’t look like something a mall Santa’s assistant wears during Valentine’s promotions. With its chubby cheeks and lifeless eyes, it resembles a porcelain doll possessed not by a demon, but by crippling social anxiety. Every time it shows up, you half expect it to ask if you’ve filed your taxes.
Also, the killer has chronic nosebleeds, which is less “terrifying stalker” and more “teenager who just discovered Mountain Dew.” Imagine Jason Voorhees stopping mid-chase to shove tissues up his nose. That’s the vibe.
The Plot: Murder, Mayhem, and Mediocrity
The whole film is basically:
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Receive Valentine card.
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Roll eyes.
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Die horribly.
Meanwhile, Detective Vaughn bumbles around like a reject from Law & Order: Special Cupid Unit, and the red herrings multiply faster than bunnies in February. Is it Adam, the alcoholic boyfriend? Campbell, the suspicious new guy living off Dorothy’s money? Or is it… gasp… one of the women themselves?
Spoiler: it’s Adam. Yes, Kate’s boyfriend. Yes, the only one who seemed vaguely trustworthy. Turns out he’s Jeremy Melton with a nose job. He sets up Dorothy in the mask to take the fall, then plays innocent while blood literally pours out of his nostrils in front of Kate. Subtlety, thy name is not Valentine.
The Death Scenes: Cupid’s Lazy Arrows
Slasher movies live or die (pun intended) by their kills. Here, they’re weirdly uninspired.
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Hot tub electrocution with a drill? Sure, but we already saw this in better films.
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Dumpster dive with arrows? More comedic than chilling.
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Nosebleed villain watching you die? Just gross.
Even I Know What You Did Last Summer—another bland late-90s slasher—managed more tension with a fisherman in a raincoat. Here, Cupid waddles in like a rejected Power Rangers villain.
Dialogue: Cupid Rhymes with Stupid
The script tries to be witty, but instead delivers lines so bad they sound like rejected Valentine’s Day candy hearts:
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“Love is a tricky game… and someone’s about to lose.”
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“He loves me, he loves me not. He kills me.”
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“Don’t worry, I’m Cupid… I always aim for the heart.”
Honestly, if Jeremy Melton had just published a book of bad Valentine’s puns instead of committing serial murder, this movie would’ve been a comedy classic.
The Ending: Cupid’s Nose Knows
In the finale, Adam kills “the killer,” unmasks Dorothy, and feeds Kate the story that Dorothy snapped because she was fat-shamed in middle school. It’s all tied up in a neat bow—until Adam’s nose starts bleeding. Surprise! He’s Jeremy.
So the movie ends not with a bang, but with a drip. Literally. The grand reveal of the killer is basically, “Oh, look, his sinuses can’t handle altitude.” Terrifying.
Final Thoughts: Love Hurts, But This Movie Hurts More
Valentine is proof that horror in the early 2000s was flailing. Post-Scream, every studio wanted hot young stars, ironic deaths, and pop soundtracks. Instead, we got a paint-by-numbers slasher with a mask that looks like it should be selling chocolates at CVS.
The saddest part? It had a $29 million budget. For that money, you could’ve bought actual scary masks, a script not written on cocktail napkins, and maybe a better motive than “Remember that one time in 1988 when you didn’t dance with me?”
Instead, Valentine gave us Cupid with a nosebleed, Denise Richards’ hot tub swan song, and David Boreanaz cashing a paycheck while probably wishing he was back on Buffy.
