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Denise Richards’ Forgotten Gem of a Slasher Movie Is Now Streaming on Netflix

Updated

September 17, 2026

Woman in a black swimsuit sitting in a hot tub next to a champagne bottle and a red rose, looking off to the side.

Before she was a Bond girl, before Grey’s Anatomy, before Buffy wrapped up for good, there was Valentine (2001) — the deliciously campy slasher that’s just found new life on Netflix. If you missed it the first time around, or wrote it off when critics did, now is the perfect moment to give this holiday-themed horror a second chance.

The film follows four childhood friends in San Francisco — played by Denise Richards, Marley Shelton, Jessica Capshaw, and Jessica Cauffiel — who start receiving unsettling, anonymous valentines in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Their old friend Shelley, played by Katherine Heigl, is murdered by a masked killer wearing an eerie Cupid mask, and it quickly becomes clear the women are being hunted, seemingly by someone connected to a boy they humiliated at a middle school dance thirteen years earlier. As the body count rises, the group races to figure out who’s under the mask before they become the next target.

Marley Shelton, Denise Richards, Jessica Capshaw, Jessica Cauffiel, David Boreanaz, and Katherine Heigl at the Valentine premiere at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood — The cast of Valentine — including Denise Richards, Katherine Heigl, David Boreanaz, and co-stars — gathered at Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre for the film’s February 2001 premiere. Photo by Vince Bucci / Getty Images.

Part of the fun of revisiting Valentine now is spotting the cast of future stars who weren’t yet household names when the film came out. Denise Richards had just come off Wild Things and was playing Bond girl Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough. David Boreanaz was right in the middle of his run on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Katherine Heigl was years away from her breakout on Grey’s Anatomy. And Jessica Capshaw, daughter of Kate Capshaw and stepdaughter of Steven Spielberg, rounded out the ensemble.

A still from the 2001 horror film Valentine — A scene from the 2001 slasher film Valentine, now streaming on Netflix. (Valentine (2001))

There are a few fun details worth knowing, too. The film was directed by Jamie Blanks, who also gave us the cult slasher Urban Legend, and it was loosely adapted from a 1997 novel by Tom Savage, though the movie departs significantly from the book. It bombed with critics on release, landing an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, but has since become a beloved cult favorite thanks to its inventive, over-the-top kill sequences (check out Denise Richards’ hot tub scene). It also made $36.7 million on a $29 million budget, a solid return for its time — and a reminder that a movie’s opening reception rarely gets the final word.