‘Heart Eyes’ offers an amusing deconstruction of horror and rom-coms, but struggles to achieve much more

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — He’s got his heart eyes set on you.

Synopsis

Over the past few years, the Heart Eyes killer has been moving from city to city, murdering couples on Valentine’s Day. Heart Eyes begins a new killing spree in Seattle, targeting advertising employees Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) after they go out for dinner. Ally and Jay insist they’re not a couple, but Heart Eyes sees differently, terrorizing and hunting them throughout the night.

My thoughts

There are plenty of holiday-themed horror movies out there, but they usually take place around Halloween or Christmastime. Valentine’s Day is often overlooked, but every two decades or so, some filmmakers will come around to give the holiday that’s all about hearts the copious amounts of blood it deserves to pump. 1981 gave us My Blood Valentine and then we got Valentine in 2001, so I guess we were due for a new Valentine’s Day-themed slasher in 2025.

In some ways, Heart Eyes is like any other holiday horror flick out there that exploits the traditions and gimmicks of the holiday for horror carnage. There’s a catch this time, though. This really isn’t your straightforward slasher, nor is it some satirical deconstruction of either the slasher or romantic comedy genres. No, this is something completely different and bizarre, even if the execution sort of falls flat.

Horror… but funny!

You see, Heart Eyes is written by Christopher Landon & Michael Kennedy, as well as Phillip Murphy. Kennedy, and especially Landon, have sort of branded themselves as horror filmmakers who inject comedic twists inspired by classic comedy movies into their horror ideas. Happy Death Day was Groundhog Day as a slasher, Freaky was Freaky Friday as a slasher, Time Cut was Back to the Future as a slasher, and It’s a Wonderful Knife was It’s a Wond… yeah, you get the idea.

This screenwriting team and director Josh Ruben decided to take things a whole step further with Heart Eyes. It’s not “x movie, but a slasher," but it’s as if the entire romantic comedy genre was a slasher. In fact, we focus so much on the rom-com aspect that it feels like it goes beyond satire or parody, and like a serial killer, it just straight-up invades your standard love story.

Usually implying a movie feels like two different movies is a negative, but it kind of works in this case. It’s not long before you realize this is the intent of the filmmakers, so when you’re going through classic rom-com tropes while knowing the Heart Eyes killer is lurking about, waiting for him to burst onto the scene makes it that much more funny and surprising.

This does mess with the pacing quite a bit, unfortunately, as the movie is never as suspenseful as it should be. The scenes featuring the Heart Eyes killer slicing and dicing people up give audiences the slasher goods (one of the kills in the opening scene is spectacular), but they take too long to get there without the proper build-up. The whole “rom-com suddenly turning into a slasher” angle is an amusing idea for a bit, but you’re eventually just itching to have Heart Eyes break up the monotony.

Josh Ruben doesn’t bring much visual panache to his direction either, particularly during the horror sequences. There are some neat heart-shaped POV shots when the titular killer is stalking his victims (part of me feels like this is what sparked the idea in the first place), but it’s never all that scary or atmospheric. Even if some kills show the effects in all their bloody gory, there’s just as much kept off-screen.

Roses are red, movies are gray

I didn’t quite get the bubbling sense of chemistry from our main characters like Heart Eyes did to want to kill them in the first place, but Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding were both adequate leads. They play off each other well in the sense of “two people thrust into a deadly situation.” It never got old seeing both of them constantly exclaim to Heart Eyes, “We’re not a couple!” in a futile attempt to save their lives.

The rest of the cast do their jobs by hitting their marks and saying their lines, but there isn’t much to any of their characters. I was elated to see Devon Sawa pop up in the beginning, only for him to be thanklessly wasted like the other supporting cast members. The pieces are all there for these characters’ roles in the story, but it all rides this awkward line of doing too much, but also not doing enough.

Maybe I would have enjoyed the performances more if I could actually see them because this is one of the darkest movies I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t know if a crew member ran off with all the lights or something, but I could hardly tell what was going on during pretty much all of this. Drab could not be a more fitting word for Stephen Murphy’s cinematography, with the daytime scenes being washed out and the nighttime scenes borderline incomprehensible. It’s a Valentine’s Day movie, so give us some more pink and red, for crying out loud!

Seriously, though, I’m getting really sick and tired of this modern trend of cinematographers lighting their scenes using only “natural” light sources. You can light a scene in a way that it’s dark, but the audience can also see what’s going on, you know. DPs were doing it for decades before digital cinematography and post-production color correction came and changed everything, so can we find a way to somehow go back? Movies are a visual medium, so I’d like to see what’s actually going on, please!

Final verdict

Heart Eyes is certainly not your typical slasher flick, or your typical rom-com. Poking fun at the conventions of both genres, it doesn’t completely work all the time, but I admired the commitment to the premise. Having a brutal serial killer practically invade a Hallmark movie was a fun little twist, but it could have been taken further with a more consistent and (visually) clear execution.

Still, we don’t get too many brand-new slasher characters in this day and age, so even if Heart Eyes didn’t flawlessly execute its concept, I’d welcome any new movie masked killers we can get. He’s relentless, brutal, looks cool, and utilizes his gimmicks well to give the audience some gnarly blood and gore. Heart Eyes more than justifies his induction into the Valentine’s Slasher Hall of Fame along with The Miner from My Bloody Valentine and Cupid from Valentine.

Now, if we could just get a versus movie involving all three…