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

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