I didn’t know what I was going into with Heart Eyes, directed by Josh Ruben. I looked at the trailer a few days before seeing it, and I can’t lie; it seemed pretty corny. It looks like an also-ran slasher movie from that trailer. It was safe to say I was not excited about seeing it. Luckily, I was surprised and very wrong. Heart Eyes is a very fun and inventive movie coming out on Valentine’s Day. This movie is a Romantic Comedy flipped on its head with a slasher element. It makes both genres this movie pulls from more interesting and not something you’ve seen before. It’s not like Happy Death Day or even a classic like Scream that becomes meta about slasher horror.
This movie follows a young woman named Ally, played by Olivia Holt, a young marketing exec who’s still dealing with a recent (kinda) breakup and how her ex has already moved on. All the while, Valentine’s Day is approaching, making it all worse. With this happening, she made an ad for the company that is in a pretty depressing direction at the worst time in Seattle when the dangerous Heart Eyes killer is Seattle, causing murderous havoc.
Ally ends up having a meet-cute with a man named Jay, played by Mason Gooding, who is essentially perfect, in the coffee shop. He’s a nice, romantic guy who seems to be really into Ally, but there’s a surprise: he’s a freelance marketing genius who was brought in to fix her ad. This puts them at odds, but after trying to have a work dinner to figure out how to fix the ad, the Heart Eyes killer thinks they are a couple and spends the rest of the night trying to murder them all over the city. From here, you get most of the opposites attract and come together that you might see in a Romancing the Stone or Overboard yet here is trying not to die violently. Ally is the cynic and has lost her belief in love and romance, while Jay is a true believer in such a way it’s like he’s from a Hallmark movie. These two characters are essentially tropes while also being young and attractive work because the situation in which they fall in love is bananas.
The Heart Eyes killer is a perfect mix of Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, and Ghost Face (Scream); there are times when they are an unstoppable killing force and then times where they are fightable. It can throw you off a bit about what the movie is going for, but then it does explain itself in the last act. The movie is pretty gory but not a big scare-filling horror fest. It is a movie that is closer to being a comedy, but it could still be a bit much for most. Heart Eyes might not be what you expect, good or bad, but this movie endeared me to it with its strong humor, fun kills, and a great mix of genres.
Score: B+
