Heart Eyes (2025) Screen Gems/Horror-Comedy RT: 97 minutes Rated R (strong violence and gore, language, some sexual content) Director: Josh Ruben Screenplay: Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy Music: Jay Wadley Cinematography: Stephen Murphy Release date: February 7, 2025 (US) Cast: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa, Jordana Brewster, Latham Gaines, Chris Parker, Ben Black.
Rating: ***
Two movies are vying for top honors this weekend, the action rom-com Love Hurts and the slasher rom-com Heart Eyes. So which one is the better date movie? I’d say Heart Eyes has the edge. It’s romantic comedy with a body count. How do you top that?
The killer in Heart Eyes is a psycho who appears on Valentine’s Day and kills couples. Every year, he shows up in a different city and plies his craft before going quiet for the next 364 days. He hides his identity with a leather mask with heart-shaped eyeholes that glow red. When he kills, it’s a mess. He dispatches some of his victims with arrows (as in Cupid). This year, he’s in San Francisco.
Pitch designer Ally (Holt, Cruel Summer) finds herself in deep, hot water after an ill-timed commercial for a high-end jewelry company featuring doomed lovers (e.g. Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose, Bonnie and Clyde) creates mass controversy on-line. In order to keep her job, she’s ordered to work with a freelancer on a new campaign. The freelancer in question is Jay (Gooding, Scream V and VI), the same fellow she had a meet-cute with at a coffee shop that morning. They have differing opinions about love and romance. He’s a romantic who believes in the power of love. She’s thinks it’s all a sham. She’s been burnt too many times. A set-up like this just screams romance, doesn’t it?
An ill-timed kiss puts the not-couple in the crosshairs of the Heart Eyes Killer dubbed “HEK” by the police and press. Ally plants one of Jay outside a restaurant when she sees her ex with his new girlfriend. HEK sees it and starts stalking them. It’s a night of terror and romance as the pair fights off the killer and their obvious feelings for each other. At one point, Jay finds himself accused of being HEK by the two detectives on the case, Hobbs (Sawa, Final Destination) and Shaw (Brewster, The Fast and the Furious). Yes, the joke is acknowledged to humorous effect.
My favorite Valentine’s Day slasher is the original 1981 My Bloody Valentine (uncut version, of course). It still is. You can’t beat Harry Warden and his infamous candy boxes (pray you never receive one). Heart Eyes comes pretty damn close. Even though it’s CGI, it has some great kills. I can’t decide which one’s my favorite, the victim crushed in the wine press or the slow, graphic decapitation. They’re both messy and cool. There are other good ones. Somebody is impaled and lifted off the ground with a flagpole. A male victim gets a machete between the legs. A man and woman are killed simultaneously with a tire iron during sex in the back of a van. He gets it through the mouth then her head is pushed down on the protruding implement. Yeah, this one’s a bloodbath alright, but it’s tempered nicely by the love story at the center of the carnage.
Who would have ever thought that two genres as fundamentally different as slasher and rom-com could form a near-perfect union? Director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) crushes it more or less. It’s not perfect. Ally’s boss, played to great comic exaggeration by Michaela Watkins (Enough Said), feels somewhat out of place. It’s almost like she’s making a different movie. A few other small parts aren’t a neat fit, but the intelligent and surprisingly insightful screenplay more than make up for the minor flaws. I like how the writers take jabs at both sides of the equation. Valentine’s Day is the most polarizing of holidays, people either love it or hate it. Some embrace all the corny clichés; others dismiss it as a creation of greeting card companies looking to boost sales. The writers, which include Christopher Landon of the Happy Death Day movies, have a great handle on the debate and Ruben presents it with a knowing wink and smile.
Unlike Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose in the tepid action rom-com Love Hurts, Holt and Gooding have chemistry. It’s not the greatest pairing in cinema history, but it doesn’t feel like the two actors were thrown together at random either. Holt is convincing as cynical Ally who claims she’s over her ex while stalking him on social media. Gooding turns on the charm as Jay, the kind of “Mr. Perfect” every girl except Ally dreams of meeting. Gigi Zumbado (The Rookie) makes for great comic relief as Ally’s bff Monica, a woman totally into having a sugar daddy to pay for everything like impromptu shopping montages. Sawa and Brewster are good as the alt-Hobbs & Shaw. They work well off each other.
If you’re looking for a fun date movie this Valentine’s Day, look no further than Heart Eyes. It’s a lot of fun. It takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to both genres even showing different kinds of couples. The opening scene depicts a proposal at a vineyard that turns out to be one of those staged deals that end up on Instagram. The couple is so annoyingly vapid that you’ll be cheering HEK on when he finally shows up on the scene. It’s touches like this that make Heart Eyes so enjoyable. See it with someone you love. Happy Valentine’s Day!
