Heart Eyes, which is currently only available to watch in theaters, opens with a thoroughly modern scene. A young couple is on a romantic outing at a vineyard, and he is about to propose. This being set in the current times, of course, everything is being recorded so it can be posted later on social media.
But what starts out as cutesy opener turns into slasher horror very quickly, and the female half of our couple ends up literally running for her life as a masked killer mercilessly hunts her down. And yes, the mask includes “heart eyes.”
As we soon find out, the Heart Eyes Killer has been brutally murdering couples on Valentine’s Day for the past few years, and Detectives Hobbs and Shaw (Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster) are hot on the case.
At the heart (pun intended) of the story are Ally and Jay, thrown together to do damage control on a disastrous ad campaign Ally put together for a jewelry company. It seems she is a bit bitter after a recently ended relationship, so maybe putting her in charge of a “romantic” Valentine’s ad campaign wasn’t a great idea.
There is true chemistry between the two, despite their different personalities. Ally’s jaded attitude is nicely offset by Jay’s adorable easy-going charm, and sparks fly – so you can’t really blame Heart Eyes for thinking they are a couple, right? And you know what that means: the bloody chase is on.
Who stars in Heart Eyes?
Just stating the obvious here, but you can’t really present a successful rom-com/slasher without two completely charismatic actors in place, and Heart Eyes nailed it with Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding. Gooding has been featured in the two most recent Scream movies (and it appears he will also be in the upcoming sequel), and despite the fact that Holt is a “Disney kid”, she also has some horror chops, thanks to her appearance in Prime’s Totally Killer. The two are a fantastic duo as they trade barbs, flirt and get blood-splattered together.
Sawa (Final Destination, Chucky) and Brewster (The Faculty, Random Acts of Violence) are great in Heart Eyes as well, portraying a detective duo who know each other pretty well. Their chemistry is tight, and you can tell they both had a lot of fun in their roles.
Director Josh Ruben has really outdone himself this time, and that’s really saying something because his two other horror-comedies were pretty solid. He is responsible for Scare Me and Werewolves Within. The screenplay for Heart Eyes was written by Phillip Murphy (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard), Christopher Landon (Freaky, Happy Death Day) and Michael Kenny (Freaky), so we know going into this that the dialogue is going to be crisp, sharp and very funny.
Together, the creative team has put together a nearly perfect mashup of comedy, horror and romance – not an easy thing to do. The horror stuff does not fall in the shadow of the romance and comedy; the kills are creative and the gore is extra-gory. This should make fans of slasher horror very happy, and land Heart Eyes on everyone’s list of the best horror-comedies of our time.
You have to admire a slasher that respects and honors both the sense of humor AND the intelligence of their audience. Heart Eyes is the perfect date night movie for horror fans who want a fun, light-hearted, but still gross and clever scary movie to watch on Valentine’s Day (or any other time).