Heart Eyes

Simultaneously spoofing both the rom-com and slasher-horror genres, Heart Eyes isn’t entirely effective as either, but its self-aware meta-comedy and dark sense of humour keep things entertaining.

Premise:  Junior advertising agent Ally (Olivia Holt) has a ‘meet-cute’ with hunky Jay (Mason Gooding) in a coffee shop on Valentine’s Day ... only to discover that the Heart Eyes Killer, a serial killer who murders couples on Valentine’s Day, has mistaken them to be a real couple and is now targeting them.

Review:

I discovered after watching Heart Eyes that it was co-written by Christopher Landon, who made the Happy Death Day films and Freaky – which are all hugely enjoyable horror comedies.  It makes perfect sense that he also co-wrote Heart Eyes, given that it shares the other films’ desire to satirically combine genres – Happy Death Day combined the time-loop and multiverse subgenres with horror comedy, Freaky combined the body-swap subgenre with horror comedy, and now Heart Eyes merges the rom-com and slasher-horror genres.

Except that, for some reason that’s hard to pin down, Heart Eyes just isn’t as effective at combining those genres as the other films which Christopher Landon co-wrote were.  The easy conclusion is that, given that he co-wrote Heart Eyes but he didn’t direct it, maybe the film’s director (Josh Ruben) wasn’t quite able to pull off the tonal shifts as smoothly as the previous films were able to.

“…its satirical elements poke fun at the genre tropes…”

But I think, ultimately, the issue is that the film is arguably more of a ‘spoof’ than the other films were, and so it’s mocking the individual genres as much as it is merging them.  The rom-com elements, for example, come across as deliberately cheesy, whereas (for example) the romance subplot in the Happy Death Day films felt more organic.  Similarly, the horror elements in Heart Eyes are parodying the slasher genre – so much so that when the Heart Eyes Killer’s identity is finally revealed, it’s an intentionally over-the-top moment that spoofs films like Scream – but that also means that the reveal doesn’t really have any real emotional impact.

Great horror comedies – from Shaun of the Dead to last year’s Abigail – never lost sight of the need for their characters to be compelling, as without that, audiences won’t engage with either the horror or the emotional elements.  In a horror-comedy/rom-com, we need to care about the characters in jeopardy and we need to be emotionally invested in the romance subplot, but with Heart Eyes, I could appreciate the satirical elements poking fun at the genre tropes, but I just didn’t connect with either the romance or the horror.

“…Olivia Holt & Mason Gooding are both great…”

In an odd move for a slasher horror, there are very few secondary characters outside of the main pairing for Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding (both of whom, I should add, do a great job with the material they’re given).  Gigi Zumbado and Michaela Watkins appear at the beginning of the movie as Ally’s best friend and boss respectively, but they are then forgotten about once the Heart Eyes Killer starts pursuing Ally and Jay – meaning that (because we know the H.E.K. won’t kill either of them straightaway) the only people in jeopardy are random passersby who we have no emotional connection to.  Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster (who both had breakthrough roles in horror films in the 90s) have fun cameos as a pair of detectives named “Hobbs and Shaw”, but otherwise Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding are really left to carry the film themselves.

I realise that most of the above sounds quite negative, but the truth is, I still had a blast with this film.  It may not be destined to join the ranks of the great horror comedies, but it’s by no means a bad film.  Even without being emotionally invested in the characters, there’s still a lot of fun to be had watching the film play with cliches and tropes from both the rom-com and slasher horror genres, and some of the kills are delightfully over-the-top and darkly comic.  Heart Eyes may not be ‘the one’, but it’s a perfectly fun ‘for now’ partner.