Slasher flicks and seasons go together as naturally as a maniacal killer and an elaborately designed mask and you’d be hard pressed to find a public holiday that doesn’t have at least three or four murderous movies using it as some sort of gimmick. In fact Valentine’s Day has had more than a few entries with My Bloody Valentine, it’s three dimensional remake and the obviously titled Valentine to name just a few. However, this year there’s a new contender who is out to claim your heart in the form of Heart Eyes, a brand new stalk and slasher that aims to give moviegoers and brand new date – with death.
Directed by Josh Ruben, the guy who gave us the fiendishly fun Werewolves Within and starring a bunch of slasher veterans in the form of Olvia Holt (Totally Killer), Mason Gooding (Scream), Jordana Brewster (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Begining) and Devon Sawa (Chucky), can this new stab at creating a horror icon get the blood well and truly pumping?
While Valentine’s Day should be a time for couples to celebrate their time together by going out for a meal, obnoxiously performing painfully staged marriage proposals for social media, or (my personal favorite) staying in while wearing comfy clothes and eating junk food; however, thanks to a serial killer who likes to commute, the last two years have seen a bloody reign of terror by a maniac dubbed Heart Eyes. But after butchering beaus in Boston and slaughtering loved up pervayors of PDA in Philadelphia, this year the lunatic has decided to slash their way through Seattle and begins a long day full of carnage by wiping out a couple in a vineyard.
Meanwhile, Ally is in hot water as her job as a pitch designer when her latest ad campaign bombs hard and brings a lot of stink back upon the jewelry company she works for, however, at least she can console herself that she met a hot guy at the coffee show earlier in the day. However, even her silver lining sprouts another cloud when that guy turns out to be Jay Simmons, the exact person her boss has brought in to create a new ad campaign and possibly take Ally’s job while he’s at it.
It’s yet another hit an a long, unbroken combo of indignaties in love that’s constantly on her mind thanks to the constant updates of her ex’s thriving new romance that keeps popping up on her phone, but as bad as things have gotten, the addition of a raving, couples-killing psycho can always make things worse. So even though Ally and Jay aren’t actually a couple – despite having dynamite chemistry – they are soon targeted by Heart Eyes and have to spend their night fighting for their lives and trying to convince local, arrest-hungry detectives that they aren’t the maniac they’re seeking. And you thought remembering to buy flowers and chocolates on a certain day was stressful?
Despite a noticable rise in extreme gore (more on that later), Heart Eyes is essentially yet another in the line of slasher movies emulating other genres by sticking a masked killer in the plot of other, existing movies. Joining Happy Death Day (Groundhog Day), Freaky (Freaky Friday), Totally Killer (Back To The Future) and It’s A Wonderful Knife (fairly self explanatory, that one), Heart Eyes ups it’s game slightly to move on from lovingly mock a single movie and instead attempts to tackle an entire genre in the form of the romantic comedy. It’s a strange play, mostly because I don’t think you can get two genres so utterly different from each other aside from the fact that slasher movies and romcoms probably have more identifiable and overused tropes than probably all other genres combined.
What Heart Eyes is trying to do is smoosh the two together so completely that the main joke (aside from some truly snappy banter) is that crams so many duelling clichés into its tight, ninety minutes, that the two become one bizarre, fused, super-sub genre that feels like its stumbled out of the telepod from The Fly after hiding in there for a makeout session. Thus in the quieter moments we get every gooey romcom moment in the book; a female lead jaded on love with a feisty best friend; a male lead who falls in love too easily; a coffee shop meet up where they awkwardly bump heads and share a weird coffee order and of course, the forced animosity caused by the fact that he’s the one brought in to possibly take her job. However, not to be out done, the slasher parts hit back with chase scenes that carry the same energy as a Scream movie; a walking killer who always catches up; some hilariously exagerated kills and some rather well executed jump scares. Director Josh Ruben obviously is having a ball making the two disparate genres kiss like a particularly romantic child with a couple of dolls and it manages to traverse through the screen to create a very enjoyable night out. However, milage may vary depending on how much (or how little) you are able to tolerate either the horror or the romance separately. When the focus is on horror and the knives and arrows are flying, the sudden shocks are loud and the viscera starts flying, the movie doubles down on the kills and delivers some pretty grisly imagery like a painfully gradual beheading, a skull popping like a zit and an impressive double kill with a tire iron.
However, even though I’m a gorehound, I’ve always been a gorehound and I’ll always be a gorehound, I can’t help but think that the film probably has shot itself in the foot by being so violent as the higher rating will probably stop the target audience from seeing it in cinenas. Similarly, to make the joke work, the movie also takes time to delve deeply into the bubbly realms of the romcom, spending just as much time riffing on that notoriously fluffy of genres as it does on the carnage which may simultaneously put off both romantics and horror fans who wanted something a bit more generic.
However, while the movie proves to be just as enjoyable as it is gory, it’s secret weapon proves to be its two leads who manage to get the balance just right. For a start, both Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding manage to display some legitimately cracking chemistry and bounce off each other really well as they seamlessly skip between genres thanks to their prior experiences dodging razor sharp knives and making goo-goo eyes at a potential romantic entanglement. Another plus point is HEK himself (Heart Eyes Killer, in case you were wondering) whk proves to be quite a nifty, all-purpose murderer with a weirdly amusing look – the heart eyes light up to become night vision goggles – and a neat line in stylised weaponry. In fact, while Heart Eyes may be a slice of comic/horror fluff, it’s made with such an obvious love for the two, polar opposite genres, that it’s pretty tough not to get caught up in its charms despite being very much a “movie” movie that isn’t afraid to create a plot hole or two in order to try and be as enjoyable as it possibly can.
Less a serious scare machine and more of a loved-up salute to two genres that should be nowhere near each other, Heart Eyes ultimately goes in to prove the old romcom trope correct – opposites really do attract.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 