Heart
  Eyes

Slasher Trash with Panache?

Review: JA Kerswell

Giving us the rom-com/slasher movie mashup we never knew we wanted, HEART EYES (an alternative title could be HEADLESS IN SEATTLE) manages to deliver on both counts. Clashing co-workers are mistakenly tagged as a couple by a serial killer who targets lovebirds each Valentine’s Day. Amusing rather than laugh-out-loud funny, the film, however, manages to be both sweet and outrageously gory—complete with some rip-roaring slasher movie set pieces. 
 
HEK (or the Heart Eyes Killer) is the name the press has given to a psycho who only appears on Valentine’s Day. For the past two years, amorous couples in Boston and then Philadelphia have been butchered by the killer, who wears a mask with glowing heart shapes for eyes. This year, it seems that Seattle has picked the short straw after a couple and the photographer they hire are attacked and gorily dispatched during an Instagramable marriage proposal at a vineyard. This is bad news for young advertising executive Ally (Lauren O’Hara), whose campaign idea for a jewellery range showcasing stylised doomed couples is condemned by focus groups in light of the ongoing killing spree.
 
Instead of being fired, Ally is told that she must work with the new agency hire Jay (Mason Gooding), who has been brought in to fix the campaign. The down-on-love Ally had already bumped into Jay at a coffee shop, where they had an awkward but flirty conversation. She reacts badly to his suggestion that they talk business over dinner but then pulls him in for a kiss when she spots her ex-boyfriend out with his new beau to make him jealous. They are not aware that the Heart Eyes Killer has been watching and follows the decidedly platonic pair back to Ally’s apartment, where they are attacked and barely manage to escape with their lives. Their consistent protestations that they are not a real couple fall on deaf ears, and the killer continues to doggedly pursue them through the night. Will romance blossom among the spurting blood? Or is this the last Valentine’s Day they will ever see? 

HEART EYES pokes fun at the conventions of both the rom-com and the slasher movie but also succeeds in satisfying the expectations of both subgenres. On the face of it, it shouldn’t work, but most rom-coms have initially hostile individuals drawn together out of necessity and falling in love despite themselves. And what situation is more likely to draw out extreme reactions in a short amount of time than being chased by a psycho killer? O’Hara and Gooding make for a likeable and engaging pairing. Despite the lightness of some of the comedic elements of the script, importantly, the Heart Eyes Killer isn’t played for laughs. They are methodical, brutal, and even genuinely creepy in certain scenes. The film doesn’t skimp on the red stuff, either—with limbs flying, heads punctured, and a whole assortment of other gore gags. Although the film—despite its glee for splatter—never feels mean-spirited. It never loses sight that it wants to be a popcorn slasher hybrid movie designed to be a pure, unadulterated crowd pleaser—and in that aim, it succeeds. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the best of the post-SCREAM 90s horror movies—a feeling boosted by the inclusion of Jordana Brewster (THE FACULTY (1998)) and Devon Sawa (FINAL DESTINATION (2000)).
 
HEART EYES deftly jumps between the two subgenres in a way that feels organic rather than forced. Once the killer starts the pursuit, the film moves from one expertly constructed suspenseful set piece to the next and has chases for days through abandoned botanical gardens and memorably a fairground merry-go-round. The scene that perhaps melds the film’s two elements best takes place at a crowded Valentine’s Day Drive-in where Ally and Jay try and dodge their deadly pursuer—only to realise, in horror, that they have essentially lined up countless necking couples to the slaughter. The film showing at the Drive-In is the old screwball Cary Grant comedy HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), which cleverly tips its hat at the approach the makers were going for—although Grant and Rosalind Russell probably never had to dodge a wildly swinging machete.
 
The film arguably can’t maintain its momentum to the very end. The reveal as to who is under the mask is suitably ludicrous in the grand slasher movie tradition but perhaps doesn’t land as well as it might. That said, the journey to get to this point is just so much fun that even this slight shortcoming is forgivable.
 
Having exhausted the time travel/slasher angle, HEART EYES was co-written by a trio including frequent collaborators Michael Kennedy (FREAKY (2020), IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE (2023), and TIME CUT (2024)) and Christopher Landon (HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) and HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019)). The pair have helped reinvigorate the slasher movie comedy beyond the arguably now worn-out post-modernisms of the SCREAM series and the all-out gag frenzy of the SCARY MOVIE franchise. Tellingly, none of the characters here make references to other horror movies, but the clever situational humour works within its slasher framework and still feels fresh. Will it replace our affection over MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)? No, but HEART EYES is still a bloody delight.  

BODY COUNT 16: 
Female 5 / Male 11

1. Male is stabbed through the eye
2. Male is shot in the head with an arrow
3. Male is hit in the face with a throwing knife
4. Female has her head crushed
5. Male is shot in the head with an arrow
6. Female is impaled on a spear
7. Male is slashed across his crotch with a machete
8. Male is stabbed with a machete
9. Male is stabbed through the mouth with a tyre iron
10. Female is stabbed through the moth with a tyre iron
11. Male is slashed with a machete
12. Male is hit in the back with a throwing knife
13. Male is hit with a car
14. Female is slashed with a machete
15. Male is stabbed through the face and shot in the head with arrows
16. Female is stabbed in the neck with a metal straw and decapitated 

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