Valentine

A circle of gorgeous friends (led by Denise Richards and Marley Shelton) are slowly being murdered, apparently by a four-eyed nerd they all dissed in junior high school. Written by Donna Powers, Wayne Powers, Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts (allegedly adapting a novel by someone named Tom Savage), and tritely directed by Jamie Blanks, this is just the latest holiday slasher movie—no more, no less. If you’re curious, though, I’ll add that the killer, as usual, wears a mask only to conceal his identity from the audience, characters appear and disappear at random, corpses remain undiscovered even by people in the next room, and there’s a groan-causing, double-twist ending that is as unbelievable as it is unsurprising. Denise Richards cavorts in a thong bikini, if that’s why you go to the movies.