“Heart Eyes” - Film Review
A promise of equal parts romantic comedy and bloody slasher sets expectations quite high. In all honesty, it shouldn’t work. In a cool 97 minutes, it should be impossible to tell a swoon-worthy romance and a blood-soaked murder tale. And yet, filmmaking is all about making the impossible look utterly effortless. Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes makes good on every promise it offers, to create what might be one of the first entries into a heart-skipping, heart-stabbing, romantic slasher comedy genre.
Ally (Olivia Holt) has given up on romance. She recently ended a years-long relationship, but continues to stalk her ex’s every move on social media, disinterested in moving on. On Valentine’s Day, Ally finds herself in a meet cute of her own when both she and a stranger reach for the same obnoxious coffee order. That stranger is Jay (Mason Gooding), and despite the two of them hitting it off, Ally runs away to work where she’s reprimanded by her boss (Michaela Watkins) for a poorly-received advertisement she helmed. As it would happen, Ally’s boss has called in a big-time freelance ad designer to fix the problem, and that designer is Jay. The two are now forced to find a way to work together to save Ally’s job.
Oh, yeah, and there’s a masked serial killer named Heart Eyes who spends every Valentine’s Day murdering couples. But since Jay and Ally aren’t a couple, they have nothing to worry about. Or do they?
Screen Gems, Republic Pictures
Romantic comedies have been the butt of the joke for a few decades now. After their heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, they’ve (unfortunately) fallen out of favor. It’s a trend in movies that exists beyond the rom com genre. The emergence of superhero films in the late aughts killed sentimentality. Everything suddenly had to be dark, gritty, and above any sort of genuine emotion. Romance and feelings are played for laughs instead of given the respect they deserve. We are, thankfully, seeing the bursting of the superhero bubble and a course correction to a place of filmmaking that values sentimentality and vulnerability. As odd as it may seem, Heart Eyes doesn’t treat its romantic plot as any less important than its murder-focused one. The film is as much of a reverential product of loving romantic comedies as it is a product of the great slashers before it. The two exist in a bizarrely charming equilibrium. Each kill is celebrated with the same admiration as each almost-kiss. Heart Eyes is a blending of genres that can only be achieved by holding both romance and horror in the same high regard.
Even though the reveal of who’s underneath the Heart Eyes Killer mask is easy to sniff out, it doesn’t make the ride any less enjoyable. The film twists itself through the dark corners and dreamy lights of Seattle before setting up a massive showdown at a drive-in theater. As thrilling a ride as the film is, the chemistry between Jay and Ally is what really makes it easy at times to forget there’s a killer chasing them. The two share a sweet moment while hiding at the drive-in, where they talk about why they feel they’re both still single and, mere moments later, a couple is bludgeoned with a tire iron without even skipping a beat. For those who like a little murder with their romance, let Heart Eyes be your Valentine this year.
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