Heart Eyes
Directed Josh Ruben
Written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, Michael Kennedy
Starring Jordana Brewster, Mason Gooding, Olivia Holt, Devon Sawa
Runtime: 97 minutes
In theaters February 7

by Kimberly L., Staff Writer

For the last two years a killer has resurfaced in a new city each Valentine’s Day to pick off unsuspecting couples pair by pair. What happens when a recently dumped, down-on-her-luck and jaded jewelry marketing exec meets her romantic match with a man who might be there to take her career? Laughter, gratuitous blood, and very gooey romance, of course. The consensus seems to be that Heart Eyes is a directorial love letter to the full spectrum of date movies. This is a film I am going to watch again if only because it made me feel good by the end and I don’t get to say that very often anymore.

Valentine’s Day has developed an increasingly lousy reputation in recent years, often referred to as a greeting card push or a commercial cash grab when most holidays are ultimately both. Is the true target of V-day dismay love itself? The macabre sister in consumer festivities, Halloween has collected heaps of her own black and wilted roses over the years while the pink crinoline and candlelight of February 14 falls to the wayside. Sending Cupid to hell and back, Josh Ruben’s new cinematic love potion Heart Eyes marries rom-com and slasher in a champagne-pop explosion of rose-colored love story and gory, fetishistic body count. With heaps of well-received horror comedies over the years (Shaun of the Dead, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, The Cabin in the Woods), Heart Eyes takes the blood-soaked cake for sweetest slasher since Stu Macher and Billy Loomis stole our hearts in Wes Craven’s first stab at the Scream franchise.

I approached Heart Eyes like a blind date where I checked out the basic credentials to see if we were compatible (Josh Ruben directing, Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon on the script, and, be still my millennial heart, what appears to be a Jordana Brewster/Devon Sawa buddy cop duo? I’m in) and somehow still got something completely different from what I imagined. Like a Whitman’s Sampler, the film was full of familiar Easter Eggs and homages to 90s slashers and romcoms in equal measure. The filmmakers even sneak a Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion dance sequence complete with accurate holographic mini dresses in the midst of a makeover montage brimming with nods to wardrobe scenes of the late 20th century from Clueless to The Princess Diaries.

Since you’ve made it to paragraph three, I will share a secret with you: as a diehard fan of horror and all things creepy and dark, I’m equally romantic to my core despite every attempt to fight it. While I can find much of recent cinematic romance off putting and woefully unrelatable, plucking the right chords will leave me weeping with hope in my theater seat. Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) have a sappily sweet onscreen chemistry from their first moment on screen together. And as no stranger to the slasher dynamic, it’s rare to find multiple protagonists leave me on the edge of my seat hoping they both make it to the closing credits. Spoiler:  It’s been half a day and I have not recovered from the sudden fate of the romantically inclined rideshare driver.

However, we still know what we’re showing up for when a film even suggests a slasher theme is underway and this film is packed with kills between the nods to lighter films. The opening sequence plays out like an early sequel to Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer, setting the killer profile of our mysterious darling, the Heart Eyes Killer aka HEK in motion with disposable characters set like a perfectly calculated pinball machine to die in fantastical and violent ways at a picturesque winery before the title card arrives. Without spoiling more than necessary, one of the most creative kills of recent years happens in the first few minutes, and it’s not even the most standout death in the movie. The effects are practical and as believable as they are silly, splattered with gore that is deliciously generous, and, dare I say, kind of pretty.

Expect to laugh, gag with delight, and maybe even cry a little if you’re the mushy type. A horror comedy with a lot of heart and the power to transport you to the year 1999. There are playful jabs at polyamory and the popularization of extreme kink culture, plus so many comedic foreshadowings that the film invites the viewers in like a chummy, self-aware inside joke before the first watch is over. The overabundant helpings of references to other films occasionally walked me out of a most linear viewing experience, but they never go unappreciated. 

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