Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heart Eyes’ on VOD, a ‘Scream’ Wannabe That Amusingly Spoofs Rom-Coms and Slashers

Cynics who’d rather watch cupid murder lovers with his little arrows instead of doing his usual love-proflagation thing may enjoy Heart Eyes (now on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video), a horror/rom-com hybrid from director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within). Former Disney Channeler and MCUer Olivia Holt (Totally Killer, Cruel Summer) headlines as an anti-romantic who probably wouldn’t be interested in her Mason Gooding-played love interest if a slashy-slashy serial killer bent on slaughtering happy couples wasn’t trying to serially kill them under protest, since they’re one of those we’re-NOT-a-couple doth-protest-too-much non-couple couples we know all too well. That’s irony for you, I guess. Now let’s see if this thing makes us laugh enough to warrant a recommendo. 

HEART EYES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The fake country music that accompanies the opening scene is enough to make one want to see the people in said scene get slayed in a rather rude and disgusting manner. One glimpse at the guy in beige pants and a beige shirt with a beige phone proposing to his beige girlfriend, and you’ll NEED to see all that offensive ecru spattered with a different color, like, oh, say, red. And so knife goes in, guts come out, and the bride-to-be is squished inside a grape-squishing machine on the grounds of a picturesque winery. The offending party now dead, the heroic serial killer, who of course wears a mask, gets away to continue his annual Valentine’s Day murder spree. The mask has heart-shaped eyes and so the hyperventilating media has dubbed the guy Heart Eyes, which is more fun than just calling him Chuck the Serial Killer or something. They always have fearsome names, don’t they? And it always puffs up the homicidal maniac’s ego, I bet.

Now, cut to Ally (Holt), our protagonist. She scrolls through her ex’s Insta feed with compulsive self-loathing. Poor kid. Heartbroken. And angsty about it – this Valentine’s Day can eff right off as far as she’s concerned. How angsty is she? Well, she finds herself smack in the middle of a meet-cute and she digs in her heels and resists: She and Jay (Gooding) have the exact same ridiculously convoluted coffee order, so their hands touch when they simultaneously reach for the cup. Then she goes to work at the advertising arm of a jewelry company, where her loathsome boss (Michaela Watkins) can chew Ally’s ass out for assembling a brutally tone-deaf ’Til Death Do Us Part campaign just as Heart Eyes is making headlines. And guess who’s been hired to fix the campaign? Right. Jay.

So of course, now Ally and Jay have to work together, and if you’re thinking this movie is treading heavily in the pool o’ cliches, rest assured, it’s well aware of that and it’s all part of the big joke. Ally and Jay go to dinner together under the pretense of working on the campaign, although I think he wants it to be a little more romantic than that – he’s leaning into the electromagnetic attraction that occurs between the two most beautiful people in a movie, but she still resists. She’s rather sour and bitter about her breakup and she spews some pretty salty dialogue at Jay (“Are you really looking for love or are you just another fake-ass, ho-hunting, ankle-cuff prick in a suit?”), and there’s just no room on her tongue for anything sweet. He might have been deterred after that litany, but circumstance – read: the Heart Eyes killer – forces him to work with Ally not to save an ad campaign, but to save their asses from being macheted to death. Will they live long enough to love each other or end up on the wrong end of an impalement? NO SPOILERS, CHIEF.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The self-aware satire of the Scream series is an obvious influence – so much so, Ruben ported Gooding over from the last two movies in that series. And while Heart Eyes belongs to a long line of Valentine’s Day slashers including Valentine and My Bloody Valentine, it has less in common with those slaughteramas and more in common with the spoof-of-a-satire Scary Movie movies.

Performance Worth Watching: Heart Eyes has interests outside of developing the chemistry of its two leads – the emphasis is kills and comedy, possibly not in that order – but Gooding and Holt have enough of it to make you kinda wish they smooched more frequently. 

Memorable Dialogue: Of course there’s some question as to who, exactly, is beneath the Heart Eyes mask, so Jay gets arrested and the cop tells Ally, “We’re going to have to take your tall, ripped friend in for questioning.”

Sex and Skin: Eh. Just sounds of humping coming from the back of a van.

Our Take: Heart Eyes takes nothing seriously. Even the one quiet moment where the two leads share their pain is soundtracked with, well, sounds of humping coming from the back of a van. It targets tropes from both genres: Flickering lights, stalker-POVs, jump scares, all lampooned gently. The sassy bestie, the meet-cute, the old bit where the protags bump into the ex-boyfriend, also lampooned gently. If anything, the movie could stand to be less gentle. What happened to movies being nasty as a bear shot out of a hellcannon and slashing the guts out of its victims? It’s as if Ruben actually LIKES Halloween and Notting Hill. Mean is memorable, people! I want bile and misanthropy and I want to feel miserable while the end credits run!

I kid, somewhat. Again, this is a couple of pratfalls and three-to-five kneebuckling puns away from being a Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker or Wayans Bros. production. Like Scream, Heart Eyes knows it’s a movie and enjoys being a movie so it’s going to point that out as often as possible with its chest puffed out and a twinkle in its eye. Not all the jokes hit, nor should we expect them to – there’s a dialogue spiel that cheekily references several behemoth rom-coms, and that should be thrown into the sea, and Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster play detectives named Hobbs and Shaw, which, just, no, please and thank you! I do appreciate Brewster being cast for her underrated comedy skills, and the fact that any movie that sorta not-so-secretly wants to be Scream needs to cast someone who bears a more than passing resemblance to Courtney Cox.

Heart Eyes generally worked for me in its genial confusion of IT’S NOT A DATE and HE’S NOT THE SERIAL KILLER archetypes, although the characters could use a little more beef so they have a little more to do than simply survive one set piece so they can participate in the next one. Not that anyone wants to feel invested in a movie like this, mind you. It’s well-paced, light on its feet, competently made, crisp in its banter, and the kills should be gruesome enough to satisfy you mid-tier and lesser goremongers out there. It’s silly fun, and nothing more. 

Our Call: Heart Eyes sets out to be amusing and meets that modest goal. Good enough! STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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