Heart Eyes Charmingly Blends Horror And Rom-Com Staples

Right off the top I’d like to expectation-set: Heart Eyes is a romance pastiche with horror elements more than it is a straight horror movie. While there are multiple (really good) horror set pieces there’s also romance tropes out the wazoo. Which is excellent for me as I love both horror and romance films.

Our slasher in this picture is the titular Heart Eyes — a man wearing a cowl with heart shaped eye holes. He only kills couples on Valentine’s Day. So our film opens on a couple getting engaged at a winery. It’s going pretty well until the unthinkable happens: the photographer doesn’t get the money shot. While they reset the pose for the photographer the unthinkable happens again: Heart Eyes has found them and kills them one by one. This opening sequence is gore heavy and has some creative kills. It is a little bit gorier and more traditionally slasher-like than the rest of the film. 

After the opening sequence we are introduced to Ally (Olivia Holt), our charming every girl main character who works in marketing and has just had a doomed lover’s campaign for jewelry drop on Valentine’s Day, while there is a masked couples killer on the loose. Whoops. We also meet Jay, the overly slick marketing freelancer who’s been brought in to fix up the mess, played by Mason Gooding who rocks in this, as he also rocked in the Scream sequels. Chemistry abounds and in fact they get along so well that Heart Eyes thinks they’re a couple and sets his heart-shaped sights on them. 

The attention to detail for me is where this film really shines. It has so many rom-com tropes and references woven in and little horror details that will make your skin crawl. Heart Eyes not only uses a crossbow (Cupid, anyone?) but also has little hearts engraved into his knives. There’s a clothing try-on sequence with references to famous rom-com outfits, an assertive but ultimately sweet best friend and an extended sequence devoted to His Girl Friday (which as a big Cary Grant fan I was very into). 

Is it a perfect movie? No, there are sequences that drag a little here and there and I could’ve done with some editing in the final showdown scene, but it was good, surprisingly cute and the audience erupted in hoots, hollers and cheers at one of the final moments. Honestly, I found this take on slasher films really charming. While Thanksgiving did something similar (tailor a slasher to a specific holiday, kills inspired by that holiday etc.) Heart Eyes goes on a slightly different path using all the tailoring but infusing a healthy dose of the holiday’s films into it. I never thought I’d describe a film where you see so much ichor as sweet but here we are. 

I give Heart Eyes (Screen Gems; R; 1 hr 37 mins) a 3.5 out of 5.