Heart Eyes Review

Valentine’s Day is a day for romance. It’s also the day a new slasher villain has chosen to go on a killing spree in the romantic-comedy horror hybrid Heart Eyes.

Ally (Olivia Holt) is a pitch designer at a luxury jewellery company in Seattle. Her latest campaign is received poorly because the Heart Eyes Killer has chosen to attack a couple in the city on Valentine’s Day. Ally is forced to work with Jay Simmons (Mason Gooding), a handsome freelancer, to create a new marketing campaign. They end up targeted by The Heart Eyes Killer who mistakenly thinks they’re a couple.

There have been plenty of seasonal slasher films. Christmas has been afflicted by numerous psycho killers, and Valentine’s Day has seen the likes of My Bloody Valentine and the 2001 movie Valentine. The seasonal slasher had a comeback with the devilishly entertaining Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving owed a lot to Scream and Heart Eyes followed suit.

Two of the writers of Heart Eyes were Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy. Both worked together on Freaky which crossed a traditional slasher with a body swap comedy, to delightfully hilarious results. Landon’s other experience with horror genre mash-up was the time-loop slasher Happy Death Day. Adding to the horror-comedy credentials was the choice of director, Josh Ruben, who started his career with College Humor before moving into filmmaking.

Heart Eyes leaned hard into the rom-com tropes. When the story properly started Ally had a meet-cute with Jay in a coffee shop before realising he might be taking her job. They were stock characters like the bitchy boss and sassy, annoying best friend, a series of misunderstandings, and Ally who had become jaded with love due to her failed previous relationship. There was some wit due to the self-awareness and many of the characters acting like arseholes, from baristas to social media users. If its opening kill didn’t happen Heart Eyes and early references to the Heart Eyes Killer weren’t present then Heart Eyes could have been a conventional rom-com and could have surprised audiences with the horror twist.

However, the focus on the rom-com aspects did have a drawback: it led to frustration due to the lack of death and violence. This frustration was made worse by the opening kills which showed an unlikeable couple getting brutally murdered in some creative ways. It was too much of a tease.

When the killings do start properly, Heart Eyes was a perfectly fine slasher experience. It gives audiences what they want, lots of violent deaths. At times the film felt like a throwback, like when the killer was at a drive-in theatre and went on a rampage and used a variety of weapons.

Heart Eyes does reference other slashers. Like Scream there was a mystery/investigation storyline with two police detectives being on the case, and a reveal felt close to what the Scream series would have done. Another Scream reference came early when a random arsehole dressed up like the Heart Eyes Killer, like how some teens dressed up as Ghostface. A portion of the film took place in a police station and it brought back memories of the first Terminator movie. Due to many of the characters and bystanders acting like dicks there was a sadistic glee watching their demise.

Heart Eyes wasn’t a revolutionary film, but it was an entertaining, self-aware experience that was an enjoyable piss-take of rom-com and slasher cliches.