Eyes, Eyes Baby

You would be forgiven for thinking Heart Eyes is a simple holiday themed slasher movie riding the coattails of 2023's Thanksgiving. While it takes place on Valentine's Day and features a killer dispatching people with a cupid themed arsenal of weapons, that is only half the story. What Heart Eyes really is, is a full on rom com with a slasher slapped over the top of it. How does that work? Thanks to a heightened comic tone and some sharp writing, pretty bloody well.

Olivia Holt plays Ally, a love cynic who stalks her ex online and whose bitterness has seeped into her work, endangering her job as a marketing agent for a jewellery company. She has a meet cute in a coffee shop with Mason Gooding's Jay, only to later find out he has been hired by her company to fix her campaign and may be a threat to her position. True love sceptic forced to work with a hot new guy (who happens to be a hopeless romantic) under tense circumstances is a classic rom com set up and there is even an overly sexed, super supportive best friend. There's just one slight wrinkle, our budding love birds catch the eye of the Heart Eyes Killer, a serial killer who surfaces every Valentine's Day to murder loved up couples. Consequently, the central couple have all their standard romantic moments; learning each other's story, near miss first kiss, realisation of their feelings, etc.. while being chased by a masked killer. We also periodically check in with Jordana Brewster and Devon Sawa as detectives (in a nod to Jordana's Fast and Furious connections) Hobbs and Shaw, who are on the trail of the Heart Eyes Killer.

If the premise doesn't make it clear, this is a wonderfully weird film that takes a bit of adjusting to. The dialogue is stereotypical romance banter tuned up to ten (there is one phone call where someone speaks almost entirely in the names of rom coms) and logic takes a back seat. In the world of Heart Eyes, abandoned theme parks are mere seconds away from upmarket city centre living apartments and police stations are 90% empty, barely functional buildings. Taking this approach really pays off with some laugh out loud humour and characters entertaining enough that you aren't wishing they would just hurry up and get killed, as is the case with many traditional slasher films. Not that the movie skimps on the slasher stuff, in amongst all the rom com beats you get a glut of entertainingly OTT kills, a good bit of tension and plenty of "where did he come from/go?" moments. The titular death dealer looks cool too, with his glowing heart eyes and leather clad look (killing couples is his "kink") he kills people with cupid arrows, love heart handled daggers or whatever nearby apparatus he can lay his hands on.

The central couple are both great, although the film does suffer from the common problem of there being no discernible reason these two people with completely different attitudes would be drawn to each other at the beginning beyond the fact they are both really good looking. The genre blend certainly helps here as fighting for your life together is bound ferment a little closeness. It lacks it surprises but that's not really the point here, you are waiting to see how the slasher and romance beats interact with each other rather than waiting for a shock.

Director Josh Ruben already has two entertaining and fairly unique movies under his belt with "Scared Me" and "Werewolves Within", this is another step in that direction and his strongest effort to date. Heart Eyes is destined to become either a franchise starter or a cult favourite.

8 Its isn't you, its me's out of 10

Comments

Eight is the Loneliest Number of Legs

Spider-Man: Brand New Day swings into cinemas to deliver a much needed box office shot in the arm to the once invincible MCU and prove that the wall crawler is Marvel's most enduring hero. It delivers on the Spiderman feeling but loses steam as the 2 hour 20 minute runtime rolls on. Since everyone he cares about is either dead or has forgotten him after the events of No Way Home, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been focusing solely on his Spider-Man duties. As a result, he has more or less eradicated organised crime in New York and is idolised by the city populace. On the downside, he is devoid of real human contact apart from phone calls to a detective and a grudging pseudo-friendship with gun toting vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal), aka The Punisher. He still pines after his lost relationships with MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) and it seems his isolation is beginning to have a physical effect on him. This couldn't come at a worse time, with a new threat that can s...

Sick Burn

The Evil Dead is horror's most consistent brand, with six films spanning over forty years and not a dud in sight. With Evil Dead Burn, French director Sébastien Vanicek keeps the streak alive, even if he doesn't quite manage to nail the unique feel of earlier entries. Souheila Yacoub plays Alice, whose husband dies in a Deadite (person possessed by a demon) induced car crash. A very tense post funeral get together with her in-laws goes from grim to apocalyptic when the dead arrive looking for a dagger that is capable of sending them back to hell. This is a slight change-up to the usual Evil Dead formula. Normally some fool reads from the Book of the Dead and the Deadites show up to torment and kill people with gleeful abandon. What distinguishes the undead nasties from those in other films is the fun they take in the mayhem. They are neither mindless monsters nor serious soldiers of Satan. They are just here for the love of the game. This somewhat softens the gore and allows ...

The Old Man vs The Sea

The Odyssey represents something of an epic journey for director Christopher Nolan himself. Back in 2004 he came close to directing sword and sandals epic Troy before eventually being passed over in favour of the then far more renowned Wolfgang Petersen. Now, an entire Odysseus away from Ithaca length of time later, he brings us his uniquely Nolan take on the next part of Homer's epic works. It's worth the wait as he crams everything he has learned and refined over the last twenty-odd years into his most ambitious project yet. Spoiler for a 3,000 year old poem but the combined Greek army win the Trojan war after a decade long siege thanks to Odysseus (Matt Damon) tricking the Trojans with the famous wooden horse. A series of catastrophes befall him and his crew on the way back to his kingdom of Ithaca, meaning the journey takes him another ten years. Meanwhile his queen, Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Thelemachus (Tom Holland) have to deal with an army of suitors, led by ...

Icky Ice Cream

Note before the review: It has emerged that generative AI featured in the making of Ice Cream Man and the filmmakers appear to have been less than 100% honest with how much it was used. I have reviewed the film as I saw it and have not taken the way it was made into account. If you (understandably) want nothing to do with a movie that used generative AI then give this one a miss. "The kids have gone fucking insane" screams a father just before his son and daughter, having already mangled his hand in the garbage disposal, set fire to him. How you feel about the idea of that scene pretty much tells you what you will think about the whole of Ice Cream Man, the latest bloodstained offering from gore hound Eli Roth. The premise is a basic one: a quite overtly sinister ice cream man comes to town and, the day after he hands out his freezer based treats, any child who consumed them turns into little murder bots and begin dismembering the local adults. A couple of kids who didn...

2025 Halfway Ranking

2025 is halfway done so its time to get ranking. Only films I've seen for the first time in the cinema are eligible and we are talking UK releases from 1st January to 30th of June. If your favourite film of the year isn't here, I didn't see it on the big screen. If it is here but low, feel free to tell me how wrong I am. 39. Hurry Up Tomorrow When a musician decides to write and star in their own movie the results are often pompus nonsense, so the problem with this effort from Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye isn't that its ridiculously self-aggrandizing (although it very much is), its that its unrelentingly dull, hideous to look at and worse to listen to. The star should have just made a concert movie. 38. A Working Man Jason Statham is the perfect Hollywood action man, able to look cool shooting guns, punching people's lights out or driving fast cars. Sadly, the meandering script and piss poor production values on display here give him no chance to shine and...

It Sure Does

Love Hurts is Ke Huy Quan's first ever lead role. After decades out the game and struggling to keep his insurance prior to his Oscar winning turn in "Everything Everywhere, All At Once", you can hardly blame him for taking the chance to front a movie. Unfortunately, in Jonathan Eusabio's directorial debut, he has landed in a misfire. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a cheery real estate agent living his best life as he crushes the sales game and keeps everyone in the office (except for his depressed assistant) happy with his home baking. Unbeknownst to his colleagues he used to be a gangland hitman for his mob boss brother "Knuckles" and when the mysterious Rose, who Marvin was supposed to have killed, remerges, big brother dispatches the goons to get some answers from him. Cue high jinks as Marvin battles henchmen kung fu style while trying to keep his current and past lives from colliding. It's a fun idea but nothing quite comes together in the execution. Th...

Smile for the Cameras

The October horror train continues with Smile 2 , follow up to 2022 breakout hit Smile. Director and writer Parker J. Finn returns with a much more textured character story that is let down by retreading the same beats and half frights as its predecessor. After a brief segment involving Joel from the first movie we focus on pop star Sky Riley (Naomi Scott) as she attempts to mount a comeback a year on from a drug induced car crash that claimed the life of her boyfriend and left her needing extensive surgery. Unable to get strong painkillers due to her addiction problems she visits an old drug dealer friend to procure some Vicodin but when he smashes his own face in with a plate weight she inherits "The Smile" curse. She begins to experience bizarre goings on and people creepily grinning at her as she enters a race against time to discover what's going on and find a way to rid herself of the demon. By far the strongest element of Smile 2 is the character of Sky and the...

Really Kinky Boots

Pillion has been described by one of its stars, Alexander Skarsgård, as a dom-com. What he means by that is that this motorcycle romance ticks plenty of rom-com boxes while sporting a heavy coat of BDSM and graphic sex scenes. This description actually sells the film a little bit short. Harry Melling plays Colin, an openly gay but quiet and reserved young man who lives at home with his father and terminally ill mother, Peggy. After singing in a Christmas barbershop quartet, Harry is spotted by enigmatic and unfeasibly handsome biker Ray (Skarsgard), who identifies him as someone with subservient tendencies. After a Christmas Day hook-up in a high street alleyway, Ray gives Colin the cold shoulder for months before taking him back to his house. Upon arrival, Colin discovers where his place in the household is, somewhere lower than the dog and slightly above the mud off Ray's shoe. He is tasked with completing all the daily chores, as well as anything else his master deems needing d...

Husband and Strife

If the purpose of cinema is to make the audience feel something, then few films succeed as completely as The Drama. The fact that said feeling is one of wanting to curl up and die of awkwardness shouldn't even be taken as a warning. Like a masochist munching down on a giant bowl of ghost peppers, you will likely find every bite delicious. Robert Pattinson and Zendaya play soon to be married couple Charlie and Emma. They have the picture perfect relationship. They have successful jobs, a beautiful Boston apartment and look like Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. Little differences in their attitudes toward a wedding dance rehearsal and their potentially drug smoking DJ hint they may not be completely on the same page, and when a drunken game leads to Emma disclosing something from her past, their relationship experiences some severe turbulence. It's tricky to fully discuss The Drama without spoiling Emma's revelation (and it absolutely should not be spoiled), but it points to ...

Can't Surf On Our Turf

The Surfer is a 70's style, psychedelic, psychological thriller set entirely on a beach and adjoining car park. Nicholas Cage is the eponymous character who may or may not be losing (or already have lost) his mind. It is simultaneously playfully fun and ickily unpleasant. Cage (his character is not named) takes his teenage son surfing, his plan being to show off the fancy clifftop pad he is in the process of buying, which also happens to be the house he grew up in. He doesn't get the chance however, as a group of alpha male surf bros have taken over the beach and declared it for local use only. His son returns to school, but Cage stays in the car park, determined to finalise his house deal and find out what is going on with Julian McMahon and his cult like band of beach thugs. Suffering a series of mishaps, he ends up stranded in the car park, and the baking heat, for days and begins to resemble the local hobo more than the successful businessman he began as. Two thin...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog