Two co-workers find themselves the latest target of a maniac who murders
couples on Valentine's Day.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Josh Ruben
Starring: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa,
Jordana Brewster
For a long time you had to go back as far as '80s classics like An American Werewolf in London and Return of the Living Dead if you hungered for a movie that successfully combined horror and
comedy. In recent years however we've seen a minor revival of the
horror-comedy sub-genre, and it's largely been down to two men: Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy. With movies like Happy Death Day, Freaky and It's a Wonderful Knife they've hit on a thus far successful formula of taking the
distinctive plots of beloved past movies - Groundhog Day, Freaky Friday, It's a Wonderful Life - and throwing a knife-wielding maniac into the mix. Kennedy and Landon are two of the screenwriters on director Josh Ruben's Heart Eyes, along with Phillip Murphy. Once again comedy tropes are
given a slasher twist, but this time it isn't one specific movie that's
riffed on but rather the entire rom-com genre.
Heart Eyes gives us two distinct narratives that lean into the tropes of
both slasher flicks and rom-coms, sending both plotlines on a collision
course. Its slasher plot is centred on the "Heart Eyes Killer," or HEK
as they've become known, who for the past couple of years has spent
Valentine's Day butchering couples, first in Philadelphia, then
Boston the following year, and now Seattle.
It's in that rainy city that we find our heroine, Ally (Olivia Holt), who believes she's about to get fired from her job in the ad
department of a designer jewellery manufacturer when her tasteless
campaign revolving around doomed lovers coincides with HEK's latest
rampage. Brought in to save the campaign is hunky freelancer Jay (Mason Gooding), with whom Ally earlier had an awkward meet cute in a coffee
shop.
Key to Heart Eyes' success is its respect for both slasher movies and the rom-com,
investing equal energy in both of its disparate strands. After a
prologue in which we see HEK take out an obnoxious couple at a winery,
the movie settles into full-on rom-com territory for its opening act,
establishing a classic will-they-won't-they dynamic between the
bickering Ally and Jay. The former has recently broken up with her
boyfriend and is cynical towards love, while the latter is an eternal
romantic who embraces Valentine's Day, luring Ally on a date under the
pretence of trashing out campaign ideas. While the movie mocks the
clichés of the rom-com, it also understands that those same tropes are
essential to the genre's success, and it works within the lines of the
rom-com far more successfully than most recent straight-up examples of
the genre.
Holt and Gooding have a winning chemistry, the latter proving he has
leading man chops after a slew of supporting roles that have seen him
relegated to one-note jock figures. By the time Ally and Jay find
themselves targeted by HEK, they've won us over, so the stakes are
considerably raised. The pair's grappling with sexual tension while being chased through the
night is reminiscent of classic Hollywood screwball comedies, while Holt
and Gooding channel the cartoonish energy of Cybil Shepherd and Bruce
Willis in Moonlighting. Some of the film's biggest laughs come from Ally's insistence that
she isn't romantically interested in Jay, either to fend off Jay's advances or to convince the
killer they're barking up the wrong tree.
On the slasher side we get an instant iconic antagonist in HEK, who wears
a distinctive mask that resembles a horrific riff on the eponymous emoji.
In a nod to The Terminator, those eyes glow in the dark as the killer activates infra-red vision
during a late night assault on a police station. Like the villains of the
Abbott & Costello Universal Monsters tie-ins, the masked killer here
doesn't realise they're in a comedy, so whenever they appear the film
shifts tone flawlessly into the sort of bloodshed you expect from a more
conventional slasher flick. Heart Eyes also does a far more convincing job of setting up potential
suspects than the recent Scream sequels. With a winning combination of romance, comedy, crushed
skulls and decapitations, Heart Eyes makes for the perfect date movie.
Heart Eyes is in UK/ROI cinemas
from February 14th.
