Director – Josh Ruben, Screenplay – Christopher Landon, Michael Kennedy & Phillip Murphy, Producers – Greg Gilreath, Adam Hendricks & Christopher Landon, Photography – Stephen Murphy, Music – Jay Wadley, Visual Effects Supervisor – Matt Holmes, Visual Effects – Crafty Apes (Supervisor – Damien Hurgon), Special Effects Supervisor – Brendon Durey, Makeup Effects Designer – Stef Knight, Heart Eyes Mask Designed by Alterian Studios, Inc. (Designers – Bryan Christensen & Tony Gardner), Production Design – Rob Bavin. Production Company – Divide/Conquer Productions.
Cast
Olivia Holt (Ally McCabe), Mason Gooding (Jay Simmonds), Gigi Zumbado (Monica), Jordana Brewster (Detective Jeanine Shaw), Devon Sawa (Detective Zeke Hobbs), Michaela Watkins (Crystal Cane), Yoson An (David), Bronwyn Bradley (Fran), Ben Black (Collin), Alex Walker (Patrick), Lauren O’Hara (Adeline Garrett), Chris Parker (Tommy), Kharisma Grebneff (Sienna)
Plot
The Heart Eyes Killer or HEK is a serial killer who has been killing romantic couples on Valentine’s Day in the last couple of years, each time in a different city across the USA. As Valentine’s Day arrives in Seattle this year, The Heart Eyes Killer eliminates a couple at a winery just as they propose. Ally McCabe works in advertising for a jewellery franchise but is expecting to be fired for her Valentine’s Day commercial that emphasizes death. She bumps into cute guy Jay Simmonds over an order mix-up in her coffee shop, only to then discover he has been brought in as a freelancer to fix her campaign. He invites her to dinner. Outside the restaurant, she bumps into her ex Collin and spontaneously kisses Jay, saying he is her new boyfriend. Afterwards, Jay helps her when she locks herself out of her apartment. She invites him in, only for HEK to burst out of the closet and attack them. They are pursued through the city by HEK, while insisting they aren’t a couple, at the same time as admitting a mutual attraction for one another.
Heart Eyes was the third film as director for Josh Ruben. Ruben had started in tv. His previous directorial films have all been in genre material with Scare Me (2020) and Werewolves Within (2021). The latter gained good word of mouth and even has some people calling a latter-day horror classic (although this author is more muted in celebrating its merits). The film is co-written/co-produced by Christopher Landon, a horror regular and the director of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Happy Death Day (2017) and Freaky (2020), among other works.
Heart Eyes is a homage to the Slasher Film. The genre was at its heyday in the 1980s after the successes of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980). There have been a great many entries made since then, while the 2000s brought a series of remakes of the originals. One major development was the success of Scream (1996), which led to a unique and often very clever series of parodies and deconstructions that were often more witty and sophisticated than their 1980s counterparts.
The original 1980s slasher films often took a particular holiday (or celebratory) date as a holiday as a title – Halloween, Friday the 13th, Mother’s Day (1980), Graduation Day (1981), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), New Year’s Evil (1981), April Fool’s Day (1986) etc. In this case, Heart Eyes is set around Valentine’s Day. This was used back in the 1980s with My Bloody Valentine (1981), which was later remade as My Bloody Valentine (2009), as well as one unrelated modern entry Valentine (2001), although one would have to say that Heart Eyes actually makes a more substantial use of the Valentine’s theme than all of these films do.
The Heart Eyes KillerOlivia Holt and Mason Gooding in a surprisingly adept blend of slasher and romantic comedy
Heart Eyes is carried a good way through by the snappiness of its script. It comes with some great one-liners that had me laughing out loud – comments on boss Michaela Watkins’ botox, or Olivia Holt remonstrating Mason Gooding “Mr Romantic doe-eyed, first love, Esther Perel mama’s boy know-it-all … Are you just another fake-ass, ho-hunting, ankle-cuff prick in a suit?” Olivia Holt holds her own, while I was very impressed with Mason Gooding (the son of Cuba Gooding Jr) who comes fully into his own as an actor, shows great handsomeness and presence.
The enjoyable thing about Heart Eyes is how it manages to balance both being a slasher film and a Romantic Comedy, two genres that you do not think would mesh together at all. Mindedly, we have seen some bizarre cross-genre mash-ups with the slasher film – most notedly the slasher musical of Stage Fright (2014), the slasher time travel film in Totally Killer (2023), while Christopher Landon seems to have the corner marketed with the slasher and Groundhog Day (2003) crossover in Happy Death Day and slasher/bodyswap film in Freaky.
It is to Josh Ruben’s credit that he juggles both genres adeptly. We can go from a sincere moment where Olivia Holt invites Mason Gooding into her apartment and attraction flows to a jump out of your seat moment where she unexpectedly opens the closet door. This gets wittily subverted later in the film where Olivia is trying to warn Bronwyn Bradley not to go in the closet – “I see nothing there.” It all works together rather appealing on just about every level.
(This one’s for Zach A.D. so he can stop pestering me when I’m going to put the review up)
