Valentine

Plot synopsis:
At a junior high school St. Valentine's Day dance in 1988, Jeremy Melton, an outcast student, asks four popular girls to dance. Three girls, Shelley, Lily and Paige reject him cruelly, while the fourth girl, Kate, politely turns down his offer. Their overweight friend Dorothy accepts Jeremy's invitation and they proceed to secretly make out underneath the bleachers. When Joe Tulga and his friends discover the pair, Dorothy claims that Jeremy sexually assaulted her, causing the boys to publicly strip and severely beat him, and his nose starts bleeding under the distress.
Thirteen years later, Shelley, now a medical student at UCLA, is at the morgue one evening studying on a cadaver. After receiving a vulgar Valentine's card in her locker, she is attacked by a man in a trench coat and Cupid mask. She is cornered in a cooler used to store cadavers, where she attempts to hide in a body bag, but has her throat slit by the killer. The killer's nose is seen to bleed as he performs the act.
Kate, Paige, Lily, and Dorothy attend Shelley's funeral, and admit to not having seen her in some time after her move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Kate and Paige receive cards in the same fashion as Shelley after her funeral. Dorothy who is now much thinner, receives a card which reads "Roses are red, Violets are blue, They'll need dental records to identify you". Her boyfriend, Campbell, loses his apartment and stays with her. Lily receives a box of chocolates and a card which says "You are what you eat". She then takes a bite of one of the chocolates, and vomits upon realizing that there are maggots inside of it.
As the girls attend the exhibit of Lily's artist boyfriend Max, they meet Campbell's bitter ex-girlfriend Ruthie, who accuses him of being a con artist. Lily is isolated at the art exhibit and confronted by the killer, who proceeds to shoot her repeatedly with arrows until she falls several floors into a dumpster. When they have not heard from Lily, the others assume she is in Los Angeles on a work trip. Upon contacting the police, they agree that the culprit could be Jeremy Melton.
As Valentine's Day approaches, Dorothy is planning a party at her family's large estate. Campbell is murdered with an axe in the basement by the killer the morning of the party. The others assume he has simply left Dorothy after duping her, angering Dorothy, who believes that they are jealous and still look at her as "the fat girl" of the group. After coming to the party to confront Dorothy with the truth about Campbell, Ruthie is thrown through a shower window by the killer who then impales her neck on the glass. At the party, Paige is attacked and trapped in a hot tub by the killer, who proceeds to try and kill her with a drill. After cutting her, he opens the lid of the hot tub and throws the electric drill into the water, electrocuting her.
The party disintegrates when the power cuts out, and Dorothy and Kate argue about the potentiality of Campbell being the killer. Kate claims that Campbell could be a suspect because they do not know anything about him, while Dorothy counters by accusing Adam, Kate's recovering alcoholic on-off boyfriend who is now a journalist. After being told by Lily's boyfriend that she did not arrive in Los Angeles as planned, Kate realizes she is also probably dead, and calls the detective assigned to the case. After dialing the number, she follows the sound of a ring tone outside the house and discovers the detective's severed head in the pond.
Kate then becomes convinced that Adam is actually Jeremy, disguised by reconstructive surgery and bodybuilding, and goes back into the house, only to find Adam waiting for her. To her surprise, he asks her to dance, and they dance together for a while until she becomes frightened, kneeing him in the groin and escaping. She runs through the empty house, discovering Paige and Ruthie's corpses. When confronted by Adam again, she smashes a champagne bottle over his head. She locates a gun, but is pushed down a staircase by the masked killer. Adam then appears, retrieves the gun, and shoots the killer. He pulls off the Cupid mask, revealing it to be Dorothy. As Kate and Adam wait for the police to arrive, they embrace. Kate closes her eyes and falls asleep in Adam's arms. Moments later, blood begins to drip down her face from Adam's bleeding nose, implying he is in fact Jeremy Melton.

Tags: revenge, cruelty, murder, violence

Review: