"Heart Eyes" - Has the tone of Scream with a laugh track.

Josh
Mar 31, 2025
5 min read

Updated: Apr 24, 2025

Josh Ruben (2025)

Close to a worthwhile Valentine's Day slasher.

What do you get if you combine Scream (1996) and Hallmark holiday rom-coms? Why, you get Heart Eyes, another chapter in the long list of the slashers' holiday-themed sub-genre. Even more so, entering a recent sub-genre of “It’s like this classic movie… but a slasher.” Two out of the three writers (yes, three), Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, are familiar with this subgenre with their resume including, Freaky (2020) (It’s Freaky Friday but it’s a slasher), It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023) (It’s a Wonderful Life but it’s a slasher) and Time Cut (2024) (It’s like Back to the Future but it’s a slasher). Yet it takes an untapped market of the holiday slasher, a rather neglected holiday, Valentine's Day. The list is pretty limited to My Blood Valentine (1981 + 2009), Lovers Lane (1999) and some segments with anthologies such as Holidays (2016) and Happy Horror Days (2020). Heart Eyes openly wears its influences on its sleeve, although it's not enough to stop it from blending into the rest of the slasher twist genres.

So, it’s all-around a pretty simple plot. The Heart Eye’s Killer (HEK) has returned to take out couples on Valentine’s Day. Our lead, Ally (Olivia Holt), is struggling as an ad executive as she just released a “Til death do us part” advertisement campaign around the time of recent murders. The ads feature famous couples, such as Bonnie and Clyde or Jake and Rose, poetically dying to sell jewellery. To help, her boss (Michaela Watkins) hires a freelancer, Jay (Screams very own Mason Gooding), to help clean up Ally’s mistake. A man she had recently bumped into earlier in a cafe, with a meet-cute that’s ripped right out of a stock standard rom-com, painfully ripped. While on a business date, the Heart Eyes Killer mistakes them as a couple and shifts focus to them. This leads to a cat-and-mouse chase across town while trying to uncover HEK's identity.

*Heart Eyes Killer - courtesy of Screen Gems*

The majority of the comedy comes from the chase between the non-couple and the HEK, as similar to Scream, the violence is rather slapstick-ish. However, something that stood out as a big difference between the two is the professionalism of the killer. In Scream, victims often manage to hold up against Ghostface and get some swings against them. We see them stumble and awkwardly chase their victim again. So when you re-watch and know who the killer is, it makes sense that they come off rather pathetic. Heart Eyes comes across like a standard Jason or Michael Myers, yet they have John Wick-level skills with a crossbow and small throwing knives—also, spoilers.

One could argue that the skills of the killer are the result of their profession, although that really only works for one of them. This is where predictability comes into play. Unlike other whodunits, the cast of characters is rather limited. When thinking of the earlier slasher mysteries, we have a larger cast of teens on whom we’re able to bounce around our suspicions. But when you’re main cast is two people, it doesn’t work. And then, when they do introduce other key characters, it becomes obvious who we’re meant to be pointing the finger at. So when we get introduced to the two detectives who step into the scene, Detective Hobbs (Devon Sawa) and Detective Shaw (Ironically played by Jordana Brewster from the Fast and Furious franchise) and if you’ve seen a Scream movie before… You can read the room on who is likely to be the killer. Yet, there is a small component of the twist that genuinely made me laugh out loud. During the final showdown, the Heart Eye Killer take their mask and… it’s just some guy. A random tech guy that Ally ran into very briefly, who she barely remembers. The juxtaposition between the camera movements and the rise in tension to just be some guy was chuckle-worthy. Then it's followed by an underwhelming reveal of Shaw being the secondary, as they murder for fetish reasons.

Oliva Holt and Jason Gooding - courtesy of Screen Gems — *Olivia Holt and Jason Gooding - courtesy of Screen Gems*

Which is the tricky thing with the tongue-in-cheek take on stuff, when you don’t do anything different to the cliches you’re making fun of, it can come off as pretty lackluster. Although the beginning heavily parodied stuff you would see in a standard rom-com, that genre began to bleed away once the slasher plot jumped into gear. The colour pallet, exposure, and flat framing were spot on for a quickly shot together rom-coms. Transitioning into the slasher plot, there isn’t much different visually, other than it’s a tad darker. However, we do get a reference to The Silence of the Lambs (1991) with Heart Eyes vision, as they stalk our lead in a dark hallway bathed in red. In one of the best scenes, there is meant to be a sentimental moment between our characters as they express their feelings while hiding from Heart Eyes in a mini-van. This scene is one that you would see in both a rom-com and slasher (Think the sex scene between Sydney and Billy), yet right behind them is a hippy couple having sex in the back of the van. In between sentences, you hear mumbles and moans, honestly, the whole thing felt like it was ripped right out of a Zucker Brothers comedy.

Disappointingly, the kills aren’t unique enough to stand out. As a slasher, it'll be in and out of my mind within a couple of weeks. Maybe when the holiday comes around again, or when the trailer for the inevitable sequel comes along, I'll be reminded of it. Despite issues with it, Eli Roth's Thanksgiving (2023) was a holiday slasher that utilised the seasonal expectations to the throughline. Heart Eyes gives us nothing seasonal other than seeing couples around, a dinner date and the killer using cupid/heart-themed weapons. Even at the top of my head I could think of tropes related to the holiday like leaving valentine themed calling cards, deadly stuffed teddy bears, poison heart shaped chocolate and god damn it, kill someone with a rose or something. The most attractive kill in the movie, again from the best scene, involved the hippie couple. Although I shouldn’t be reminded of the 2009 “smash hit” Sorority Row during your film, as the weapon of the choice was a tire iron.

At best, Heart Eye’s is a self-aware wink to the audience. At worst, it’s just another holiday-themed slasher that’s waiting for someone to swing around and take on the holiday with more gravatas. Not to insult the movie too much, but it reminds me of a drive-in flick where couples will go see where the girl can be scared and the boy can act tough, but we all know the reason why they’re there at the end of the day… and it’s not to watch a movie. It's essentially a touched-up, modern-day version of that, something different to watch on Valentine's Day or to have playing in the background. Netflix would love the second screenability of this one.

Heart Eyes 60 second review