The horror genre has one of the biggest outputs in the film industry. For this reason, it is one of the genres that has the most spins and reinventions. From different unique sub-genres such as slasher or found footage. Others try to blend horror with science-fiction, romance, or comedy. Films like Scream put their own spin by acting as a metacommentary, commenting and playing with the tropes of the genre. Heart Eyes is the latest film trying to spin the horror film, with heavy rom-com influences.
The film follows the Heart Eyes Killer, who the past two years has been on a mass murdering spree on Valentine's Day in different US cities where he specifically kills people in romantic relationships. This year he is in the city of Seattle, where he spends the evening hunting down two work colleagues mistaken for a couple. That couple is Ally (Olivia Holt), an anti-romantic who works on the marketing team of a jewellery company, who meets Jay (Mason Gooding), an advertising connoisseur flown in to fix Ally’s poorly pitched doomed romance ad. It begins as a will-they won’t-they, with a meet-cute at a coffee shop, where the pair share the same complicated order. However, there is more on their mind when they become the Heart Eyes Killer’s number one target.
Right from the off, Heart Eyes is a film that isn’t taking itself too seriously, much more focused on nods to other rom-com films with a Scream-style acknowledgement of horror and rom-com tropes. The opening scene sets the tone as a tacky staged proposal scene gone wrong, poking fun at the saccharine romance narratives, whilst also noting our voyeuristic eyes in both romance and horror films.
There are some gripping scares, from the latest slasher killer, who is absent from a good 30-40 minute section of the film, setting up the tension for his eventual return, but also setting up the central romance. This is as much a rom-com as it is a horror. It is a film that does not take itself too seriously, a heightened sense of reality, from the news broadcasts saying Valentine’s Day is on high alert, to the heart-shaped weaponry the villain uses, everything feels perfectly selected to play with the fusion of genres.
However, I’m not quite sure whether the central romance ever fully clicked into place for me. With the imminent threat you know is about to come from the Heart Eyes Killer, you can never properly settle down and get to know the two protagonists. Likewise, it feels as if it is trying a little too hard with the comedy at times, attempting to get through a rapid rate of jokes, which feels like the writers were emptying out every joke in the notebook – good or bad. That is not to say there aren’t some great ones, most notably a bit where a character weaves into a conversation about 10 iconic romance film titles.
Heart Eyes is definitely a fun throwaway horror. But the more you think about everything that happens, the more the pieces of the jigsaw don’t quite click into place, with a villain reveal that doesn’t make sense. So whilst Heart Eyes is a fun Valentine’s Day release, it isn’t a great one.
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