Five Essential Valentine’s Day Horror Movies

Horror movies have been set on almost every holiday, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. A holiday that celebrates (and commercializes) love and romance seems like a mismatch for horror movies. But it turns out that there are plenty of horrors to be found on Valentine’s Day. Here are five essential Valentine’s Day horror movies.

5. Valentine (2001)

On Valentine’s Day 1988, a group of teenagers bully a misfit kid named Jeremy and set him up to get expelled. Years later, on the thirteenth anniversary of the dance, the adult classmates are murdered one by one by a mysterious killer in a cupid mask.

Gee, could the killer be the kid that they bullied all those years ago? Valentine was released in 2001 at the tail end of the Scream– fueled slasher resurgence of the late ’90s. It’s a cliched and predictable slasher flick.

But it does have a surprisingly well-known cast, including Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, and Katherine Hiegl. Valentine is a pretty terrible film, but no list of Valentine’s Day horror movies would be complete without it.

4. My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Twenty years after a tragic accident, the mayor of a small mining town decides to reinstate the town’s traditional Valentine’s Day dance. But somebody isn’t happy about his decision. A crazed pickaxe-wielding killer in mining gear begins to attack the town’s residents.

Everyone believes that the murderer is Harry Warden, a crazy miner who was institutionalized many years earlier. The police chief desperately tries to hunt down the maniac before he kills again.

Meanwhile, Sarah, the movie’s final girl, is trapped in a love triangle with her current boyfriend and her ex, who just returned to town after a long absence. After “Harry” pursues Sarah and her friends deep into the mines, she discovers the horrifying truth about the killer’s identity.

Related: The Top Ten Most Underrated Horror Villains

My Bloody Valentine was part of the golden age of slasher movies in the early 1980s, when the success of the original Halloween and Friday the 13th spurred countless film studios to rush slasher flicks into production.

Although it didn’t achieve the same level of fame as the aforementioned films, My Bloody Valentine established a cult following. Decades later, it was followed by a three-dimensional remake.

3. My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009)

My Bloody Valentine returned in 2009, during the early onset of the insufferable 2010s 3-D movie craze. It is essentially a modernized remake of its predecessor.

The maniac in mining gear is back, and he’s just as pissed as he was in the first movie. Sarah is back too, and our hapless heroine is trapped in another Valentine’s Day love triangle.

Like its predecessor, this film features a mysterious killer, allegedly the notorious “Harry Warden”, who hacks and slashes his way through a small blue collar town. My Bloody Valentine 3-D is fun mindless entertainment. The film uses 3-D to great effect at times, with weapons and body parts flying through the screen.

It’s a good bet that this valentine-hating miner will be back for a third rampage someday.

2. The Love Witch (2016)

Including this dark feminist satire is a bit of a cheat because it isn’t set around Valentine’s Day, but its themes and plot make it worthy of inclusion. After the “accidental” death of her husband, a beautiful hippie witch travels through California looking for a new partner.

She uses magic love potions to seduce men, with predictably catastrophic results. You would think a woman this attractive wouldn’t need spells to get guys, but unfortunately she has the personality of cardboard.

The enchanted dudes quickly become obsessed with her, but she gets bored, disposes of them, and moves on to her next target. The witch is pursued by a police detective who is curious about all the suspicious deaths that have occurred to people close to her. Can he resist the allure of The Love Witch and solve the case?

The Love Witch was released in 2016 but it was filmed to resemble 1960s Technicolor movies. If it wasn’t already obvious, this is a bizarre film.

Samantha Robinson’s offbeat performance as the title character is truly memorable. Robinson also appears as the Love Witch in a funny Youtube video in which she rants about people who talk and text in movie theaters.

1. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

This 1975 film, directed by Peter Weir who later made The Truman Show, is set on Valentine’s Day 1900. A group of British girls attending an Australian boarding school are having a picnic at the base of Hanging Rock, a well-known local landmark. Three of the girls are summoned up the Rock by a mysterious force while their classmates are asleep.

When the rest of the group awakens, they discover that the girls (and one of the teachers) have inexplicably disappeared. Were they kidnapped? Sexually assaulted? Murdered? Or did they simply run away together? There are no easy answers, and if you’re looking for closure, you’re watching the wrong movie.

The film seems to be commenting on the relationship between English colonists and the Australian wilderness. From a British perspective, the vast continent was an exotic and alien world. By invading a land that did not belong to them, did the colonists trigger a malevolent supernatural force?

Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of the most haunting and eerie movies ever made. Weir understands that the most terrifying films leave much of the horror to the viewer’s imagination. The scene where the girls are lured away by an unseen entity is creepier than anything in 99% of horror movies.

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