If it weren’t for the conceit of Real 3-D, there’d be really nothing to recommend My Bloody Valentine 3-D. Exploitation cinema tends to only really work when done on a minimalist basis, stretching every dollar for maximum effect on screen. And while I’m not saying that this Valentine was a money pit, it definitely has better production values than not just the Canadian-made original, but probably more than half the movies made in the 70s – put together. You know it’s pretty bad when you’re sitting in a horror movie bored, but it can’t possibly get worse until you realize that there are times when the 3-D’s doing nothing for you.

The convoluted story begins with a miner named Harry Warden (Richard John Waters) that kills five of his compatriots caught with him in a cave-in for “breathing his air.” (The original Valentine implied cannibalism, which is much more icky, but oh, well.) Warden survives a comma and wakes up a year later to attack teenagers partying in the mine he nearly died in. A cave-in appears to bury Warden alive and everything seems hunky-dory for the fine folks of this nameless coal-mining town. But ten years later, a gas-mask clad miner with a pick axe thirsty for blood reappears and begins attacking the town’s beloved slackers and hos. But is it Warden, or isn’t it? And what might the sudden return of mine owner’s son Tom Hanniger have to do with it?

Bor-ring. This movie was the novel device of 3-D, yet wastes a great deal of time on the supposed love triangle between Tom, his former BFF and current Sheriff Axel Plamer, and the girl Tom left behind, Sarah. And as if the soap opera crap between these three characters weren’t bad enough, you get pervert truck drivers, cashier skanks, shadowy town elders and young women without an ounce of shame. Seeing these people, especially the smug Sheriff played by Kerr Smith, get mowed down by a wacko with a literal axe to grind, should have been nearly two hours of indulgent delight. Especially in the third dimension. So why do I feel so empty?

Well, it could be the casting. The appeal of Jensen Ackles escapes me; I mean, he’s good looking I guess, but there’s really nothing there that says I’m building a character. And Smith just seemed a little too baby-faced to play someone who’s at least supposed to be 30. And believe you me, whatever that stuff he was growing all over his face was, it really didn’t make him look that much older, but more like a teenage trying to prove his manliness by not shaving for months. And could he have been any less intimidating as Sheriff? I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a small town and all, but frankly Tom Bosley as Murder, She Wrote’s Sheriff had the killer instinct of Vic Mackey when compared to Sheriff Axel.

With the actors and story a let down, I turn my attention to the movie’s one, true asset: the 3-D. Overall, it’s not that bad. Director Patrick Lussier frequently manages to get creative with some of the shots, from a view of the killer on the other side of a mesh fence to looking down the barrel of a shotgun pointed right out over the audience. A few good blood splatters here and a hurled pick axe there, and you’ve pretty much got the idea for what all the filmmakers were able to do with the medium. It’s substantial mind you, but I think I jumped a total of once, and it seems at times that Lussier forgot he was making a 3-d movie and takes long stretched where there’s really no 3-D effects on screen. Say what you want about last summer’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3-D (and I know you have), but at least it didn’t waste time in finding something new to throw at you.

So the 3-D does actually, in a way, end up as the film’s saving grace, but without whatever extra allusion those magical, plastic, Ray-Bans might afford, this is just a bad movie. In fact, there were times I forgot I was wearing them at all; times that just mostly involved what laughingly passes for dramatic tension in the script. The original got it right, and that’s not just the Canadian in me talking. At least in the original there was real shock value, which doesn’t bode well for another year of horror remakes that think they’re more cleaver than the guys that got there first 30 years ago. Sometimes the box is better than the toy that comes in it.