This Valentine will leave you broken-hearted.

Valentine is one of those post-Scream slashers that hoped to revive the genre by playing to the nostalgia of the 80s horror heyday. It’s got a masked killer, a high body count, and a cast plucked straight from the early-2000s teen drama circuit, but unlike Scream, it struggles to find a pulse – or a point. While it delivers a few decent kills and the occasional flash of wit, it feels like a missed opportunity, weighed down by flat characters and a by-the-numbers plot.

The premise is simple enough: A group of high school friends are being stalked by a killer who seems to be taking revenge for an event that happened years ago at a school dance. The prime suspect? A kid named Jeremy Melton, who was cruelly bullied and humiliated at the Valentine’s Day dance by the very same group of girls. Cut to the present day, and those girls – now grown women – are receiving creepy Valentine’s Day cards with sinister poems and death threats. Soon, they start dying one by one at the hands of a masked killer wearing a cherub mask that’s supposed to be creepy but comes off more kitsch than terrifying.

The cast, led by Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, and David Boreanaz, certainly looks the part of an early-2000s horror ensemble. Richards, in particular, gets some standout moments as the movie’s designated ‘bad girl,’ delivering the kind of sassy, eye-rolling performance that’s become her signature. But despite the cast’s best efforts, the film doesn’t really give them much to do beyond playing slasher archetypes. You’ve got the mean girl, the nice girl, the girl who can’t get a date, and the obligatory love interest who’s obviously up to no good. The characters feel more like fodder for the killer than actual people, which might have been fine if the movie had leaned into its campy potential, but Valentine plays things frustratingly straight.

The killer’s MO – taunting his victims with cheesy love-themed threats and offing them in elaborate ways – should have been a goldmine for creative slasher kills, but the film never fully commits to the theme. Sure, there are some fun moments, like Richards’ character being electrocuted in a hot tub (probably the film’s most memorable scene), but for the most part, the deaths are fairly tame and lack the flair or inventiveness that makes great slashers stand out. It feels like the film wants to be both a straight horror and a dark comedy, but it doesn’t quite nail either tone.

The cherub mask-wearing killer does have some potential as a memorable slasher villain, but he’s no Ghostface or Michael Myers. There’s something a bit too cartoonish about the mask, and while the killer’s motives make sense in the context of the plot, the reveal feels underwhelming. It’s one of those third-act twists that’s meant to shock, but if you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, it’s not exactly a surprise.

Visually, Valentine looks and feels like a product of its time. The glossy cinematography and early-2000s soundtrack give it that slick, MTV-esque vibe that so many slashers from that era share. It’s a polished film, but that polish doesn’t translate into much atmosphere or tension. The kills are competently staged, but they lack the kind of suspenseful build-up that could have made them memorable. Instead, they’re predictable and fairly bloodless, more concerned with the aesthetics than delivering any real sense of fear.

Valentine ultimately suffers from a lack of identity. It doesn’t have the self-aware, meta edge of Scream, nor does it fully embrace the gory fun of 80s slashers. Instead, it sits somewhere in between, trying to take itself seriously while also leaning on tired horror clichés. The film flirts with some interesting ideas, particularly the notion of a bullied kid growing up to take bloody revenge on his tormentors, but it never goes deep enough to explore them in a meaningful way. What you’re left with is a serviceable but forgettable slasher that will likely appeal to die-hard fans of the genre, but it won’t linger in your memory for long.

For all its faults, Valentine isn’t a total disaster. It’s the kind of movie you throw on for a bit of mindless fun, where you can half-watch while guessing who the killer is and maybe enjoy a few of the more absurd moments. But it’s hard not to wish it had taken a few more risks or at least leaned harder into its Valentine’s Day theme. It might have made the movie stand out from the pack, rather than being just another heart-shaped blip on the slasher radar.