-By Ethan Alter

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As Hollywood continues to search for ways of enhancing the theatrical experience (re: selling more tickets), they're increasingly turning to that old warhorse 3D as a means to capture the imaginations of 21st-century moviegoers. But anyone looking to argue that the modern crop of 3D pictures will employ the technology more artfully than the gimmicky B-grade movies of yesteryear shouldn't use the new horror film My Bloody Valentine 3-D as an example.

Were it not for the fact that the blood literally sprays off the screen, this routine gore-fest would be indistinguishable from the dozens of second-rate slasher movies that pass through theatres every year. That's not to say that the film doesn't provide a few moments of 3D-enhanced fun. A decapitation by shovel looks awesome in 3D, as does a shot of a pickaxe gouging out an eyeball. And then there's the film's pièce de résistance, a five-minute chase sequence that features a stark-naked woman (Betsy Rue, who automatically wins an entry into the Horror Hall of Fame based solely on this scene) fleeing from the requisite maniac. Let's just say that the use of 3D here could launch a whole new kind of theatrical gimmick: call it Jiggle-Vision.

My Bloody Valentine is a remake of a low-budget 1981 Canadian film of the same name that's mainly notable for being the only slasher movie in history to use a coal miner as its boogeyman. The broad outlines of the story remain the same in both versions: After surviving a mineshaft explosion, a deranged miner goes on a Valentine's Day killing spree before he's stopped by local authorities. Flash-forward several years (20 in the original, 10 in the remake) and the body count starts growing again—but are these murders the work of the original killer or an heir? In between gruesome deaths, each film also makes room for a love triangle between the town beauty (played here by Jaime King) and two alpha-male types (Jensen Ackles and Kerr Smith) who jockey for her affections.

There are plenty of things to ridicule in the original My Bloody Valentine, including the painfully amateurish cast, all of whom speak in broad Canadian accents (the film was shot entirely on location in Nova Scotia), the blatant "borrowing" from John Carpenter's Halloween (most notably the repeated use of Carpenter's pioneering killer point-of-view shot) and the fact that it's about freakin' coal miners. At the same time, seen today, the movie's unpolished aesthetic is a welcome change of pace from the slickly packaged horror films that regularly roll off the studio assembly line. The remake may offer better production values and bloodier kills, but it also employs too many of the contemporary conventions that have hurt the genre, including music-video-style cinematography and the insistence that every movie end with an illogical plot twist.

It doesn't help that director Patrick Lussier runs out of interesting ways to use 3D fairly early on. In fact, long stretches of the movie consist of the characters standing around talking to one another—moments that don't exactly cry out for the 3D treatment. With Hollywood investing wholeheartedly in 3D technology, it's only a matter of time until some enterprising filmmaker makes a great 3D horror film, but My Bloody Valentine isn't it