Based on how Heart Eyes begins, I assumed the masked killer known as “Heart Eyes” (or HE, for short) hated Valentine’s Day and was taking his anger out on anyone celebrating the holiday.  The people HE initially dispatches–an annoying couple and their engagement photographer–indicate as such.  Subsequent victims, all engaged in conspicuously lovey-dovey behavior before they were sliced and diced, also appear to prove my hypothesis.  However, as we follow the ill-timed courtship of the two lovebirds at the center of this story, I realized that the movie isn’t about homicidal anger, but love.  Serial killers just have a funny way of showing it.

As news of HE’s slayings spreads throughout the Seattle area and the rest of the country, Ally (Olivia Holt) finds herself in hot water.  Her marketing campaign for a jewelry company is all about famous couples who died spectacularly (Bonnie and Clyde, Romeo and Juliet, etc.).  Thanks to HE, Ally’s campaign is viewed as tone-deaf and scrapped immediately.  Ally’s boss Crystal (Michaela Watkins) orders her to work with Jay (Mason Gooding), who has made a name for himself on other love-centric campaigns.  The two actually met-cute at a coffee shop earlier in the day, which makes their new work arrangement uncomfortable.  Well, not that uncomfortable for Ally.  Jay is polite, respectful, impossibly handsome and stylishly dressed.

Despite all signs pointing to a love connection, Ally’s been in the doldrums ever since her boyfriend Patrick (Alex Walker) broke up with her.  A glutton for punishment, Ally still follows him on Instagram, where all of his posts feature his gorgeous new girlfriend.  Fortunately, Ally’s sassy Latina best friend Monica (Gigi Zumbado) is having none of her sad-sack routine.  She insists that Ally get dressed up for her dinner meeting with Jay.  (It must be said that Ally would look adorable wearing a potato sack.)  When the two meet for dinner, it’s obvious that this impossibly handsome couple is made for each other.  But Ally is not in a romantic mood, and she insists on leaving before sparks can fly.

Ally spies Patrick and his girlfriend walking over to their restaurant and is afraid of being seen as the “still-single” one.  She gives Jay a proper kiss and awkwardly introduces him as her boyfriend.  Unfortunately, her performance is not only convincing to Patrick, but HE as well, who observes everything from across the street.  Even more unfortunate is that Ally lost her apartment key, requiring Jay to break into her place.  After bandaging Jay’s bleeding hand, Ally finds HE hiding in her closet.  

Jay and Ally manage to escape, but HE kills their rideshare driver.  (Dude is a crack shot with a crossbow.)  They run to a nearby park, where HE knocks Jay unconscious.  Ally fights off HE, but detectives Hobbs (Devon Sawa) and Shaw (Jordana Brewster)–a nice little inside movie joke–arrest Jay because he was found with HE’s mask.

At the police station, the detectives tell Jay he’s a suspect, but he argues that their evidence is circumstantial and silly.  Shaw, however, still believes he’s HE and is very interested in Jay, if you know what I mean.  Before Shaw’s interrogation of Jay could get any more intense, HE attacks and turns the precinct into a bloodbath.  Ally and Jay escape again, but how much longer can they outlast a lethal killer like HE?  And could they have picked a worse place to hide than a drive-in theater on Valentine’s Night?

Recommendation

Heart Eyes is a remarkable film, not because it breaks new ground with either the romantic comedy or slasher genres, but because of the nostalgia it made me feel for those kinds of movies.  The affection director Josh Rubin and writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy have for those genres is apparent throughout the film, which succeeds because its intentions with both are always sincere.  For example, they love Friday the Thirteenth as much as Ten Things I Hate About You, the difference here is that instead of choosing to honor one or the other, they do both at once.

Genre mashups can be difficult to pull off, but Landon and Kennedy have a knack for it.  They accomplished a similar feat with 2020’s Freaky, which both wrote and Landon directed.  In that film, they combined the body-swap plot device with a slasher film, and the film was clever, scary and a lot of fun.  I’m very intrigued by what they’ll combine the slasher genre with next.  Alien invasion?  Time travel?  Workplace comedy?

Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt are terrific as the couple we all know will fall in love by the end of the movie, unless Heart Eyes guts them first.  The romantic scenes between the two are electric not because they make for an undeniably handsome couple, but because their characters are so well-written.  The dialog between them pops because they’re smart and empathic people who Gooding and Holt always portray as such.  Like the filmmakers, they respect genre conventions and their performances come off as genuine and affecting.

The filmmakers also make clear that the only thing they enjoy as much as witnessing an attractive couple fall in love is a savagely brutal slaying.  The film revels in the slayings committed by Heart Eyes, showing us every stabbing, slashing and impaling in bloody detail.  Similar to their approach with rom-coms, the filmmakers take this aspect of the film very seriously.  The movie features several killings so gruesome that I found myself laughing at the audacity while marveling at the “execution”.  Unlike other slasher films I’ve seen recently that offer up CGI blood and guts, this one looked authentic.  Additionally, the killing scenes are filmed with a zeal that I haven’t seen in a while either.  Director Rubin isn’t just throwing buckets of blood at the screen, he wants us to feel the killings as well.  (Fans of slasher movies know what I’m talking about.)

Heart Eyes is a surprisingly touching, funny and scary horror-comedy mashup.  The way the film effortlessly combines scenes of bloody killings and tender romance is impressive.  The movie is a well-acted, well-made and thoroughly entertaining throwback to the genres it celebrates.  Recommended.

Analysis

So what exactly is Heart Eyes trying to tell us through its surf-and-turf combination of splatter film and heartfelt romance?  On the one hand, the rom-com stuff is played straight.  The dialog between the couple is earnest and witty, with no trace of irony or snark.  Although Ally and Jay are incredibly handsome, their feelings towards each other are understandable.  She’s had her heart broken and wants nothing to do with romance, while he’s a hopeless romantic.  The movie would work fine with this aspect alone, without a serial killer barging in at inopportune times.

Heart Eyes does have a serial killer in it, and he’s a good one as far as serial killers go.  Like Michael Myers and Jason, Heart Eyes is a lumbering, physically dominating killer who always avoids capture whenever the law appears.  As a predator, he certainly has a passion for killing.  The enthusiasm with which he dispatches his victims shows that killing people makes him feel alive.  Murder is Heart Eyes’ passion.

Because of the movie’s underlying sincerely, I believe the message behind Heart Eyes is twofold.  First, we should never deny ourselves a chance at love because no one knows when “the one” will appear.  You always need to be open to love whenever it presents itself, because you might suddenly find yourself lying in a pool of your own blood filled with regret.  The movie constantly reinforces this notion with Ally by juxtaposing Jay’s nice guy behavior with the existential threat of Heart Eyes, reminding her that she could die at any moment and would be foolish to let Jay slip through her fingers.

The second message within Heart Eyes is that we should always embrace what we feel passionate about, because a life without passion just isn’t worth living.  Instead of living his life as an underappreciated IT guy, the man behind Heart Eyes finds his true calling is being a serial killer.  He murders lovers on Valentine’s Day not because he’s a mindless killing machine out for revenge, but because he really enjoys it.  

Interestingly, both messages apply to the Detective Shaw character.  She joins forces with Heart Eyes because she realizes that like him, she also has a sadistic side and a taste for killing people.  Instead of setting for uninteresting blobs of testosterone like Hobbs, she chooses happiness and mayhem with Heart Eyes.  Too bad for her that Ally finally got over her fear of blood at the church.

Come to think of it, the movie has a third message: you should always be nice to that dorky IT guy, because you never know what his hobbies are outside the office.

References abound

As I mentioned above, the filmmakers behind Heart Eyes don’t just name-check rom-coms, they celebrate them in clever ways.  The movie features several scenes that have been staples of rom-coms for eons.  First is the dressing montage, where Ally tries on a multitude of outfits for her “working dinner” date with Jay.  Then there is the dinner date itself, situated at a fancy restaurant with both of them dressed to the nines.  In the year 2025, when everyone is far too comfortable going everywhere in sweatpants, tee shirts and crocs, it was nice to see Jay and Ally treat their special moment accordingly.

The filmmakers further convey their love of well-dressed characters speaking snappy romantic dialog by referencing classic romantic comedies like His Girl Friday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

When Monica gives Ally a pep-talk, her monolog is funny jumble of modern romantic comedy movies:

“Ally, listen to me. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have someone love you for the beautiful, neurotic mess that you are. I mean you can be so clueless sometimes. It’s one of the 10 things I hate about you, honestly. You can’t let Jay go off to his best friend’s wedding, and hook up with a bunch of bridesmaids and move to Notting Hill. No. No, mama. Some kind of wonderful, crazy, stupid love, actually. Go get him. Go get that beautiful melanin man.”

On the serial killer side of the movie, Heart Eyes is an interesting amalgamation of several famous serial killer characters.  At first, he looks and acts like Jason from the Friday the Thirteenth franchise.  The movie knowingly includes a shot where we see the victim through the eyeholes of his mask.  When Heart Eyes turned on his masks’ infrared vision, it reminded me of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs.  His assault on the precinct certainly was inspired by The Terminator.  Finally, when we learn that Heart Eyes wasn’t a single person but three people, it recalls the first Scream movie.