When I went to see Companion (review coming soon), the trailer for Heart Eyes was playing before it. I do my best to avoid trailers, even when I’m in the theatre, but when this one started, I thought it looked so bad that I’d never bother watching it in the first place. That feeling quickly subsided though as I realized the genius of this premise. The start of the trailer was meant to look like a crappy Netflix hallmark-esque romantic comedy, before it shows what it really is: a horror slasher mocking the genre and Valentine’s Day itself. 

Heart Eyes was directed by Josh Ruben, who I recognized from College Humour videos on YouTube back in the day, and the movie was written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy. Landon is the most notable of these writers, having written five of the Paranormal Activity movies, and directed the Happy Death Day movies, as well as Freaky. 

The cast includes lead turns from Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, who play Allie and Jay, two colleagues at a jewelry company. 

Having watched the trailer again after seeing the movie, I would still suggest skipping it. All you need to know going in is that the titular Heart Eyes Killer (or HEK) has gone on murder sprees on Valentine’s Day in two different cities over the past two years and now appears to have begun another killing spree in Seattle, where Allie lives.

So is Heart Eyes love at first sight, or does it just lead to heartbreak?

My Thoughts

The only logical place I can start this review is at the very beginning because that was where the movie peaked for me. As the opening title cards played, the song “Amazed” by Lonestar played and I immediately started laughing. The perfect earworm for this moment and this movie that I heard 10,000 times growing up on Mom’s favourite local radio station, Country 93. Anyway, the opening sequence was perfect and I hoped it was an indication of things to come. Unfortunately, it was the best part and I found myself chasing that high for the rest of the movie. 

That’s not to say that there weren’t other enjoyable moments in here, because there definitely were. I laughed pretty consistently, especially in the first two acts (though not as much as the guy behind me, holy smokes), but the movie did some things that really took me out of it, especially in that back half. 

I have a gripe with a lot of horror movies these days and, unfortunately, Heart Eyes was guilty of this problem. Specifically, I really dislike when horror movies also try to be more than their fun or intriguing premise. Last year it was Abigail that screeched to a halt because we took a break from the child vampire ballerina and Dan Stevens hamming it up so we could get an extended sequence with the main character about their tragic backstory in a cheap effort to make the audience care about them. This kind of tonal clash completely takes me out of the movie and the thing is, I don’t need it. If you cast a strong lead that I enjoy spending time with, I’m going to be invested enough that I don’t need this added backstory or for the character to sit down and leave a voicemail in the middle of a chase sequence to hit that backstory beat even harder. 

In Heart Eyes, I was super excited by the opening because it mocked the romantic comedy genre (which are my guilty pleasure movies, by the way), but then as the movie progresses it becomes the exact thing it was mocking earlier, except worse. There were some moments that they undercut with humour, one in particular in a van, but it still had plenty of monologues and serious and heartfelt moments that weren’t cheesy enough to be funny or endearing and just had me rolling my eyes most of the time.

I think part of this comes down to the cast, too. I didn’t dislike the leads, but I also don’t feel like they had the kind of charisma required for a good romantic comedy pair. They were fine, which I think makes these serious beats just come across as flat and uninspiring. 

I also had some issues with the script. Every single “twist” in this movie is apparent from 100 miles away. I don’t want to give anything away, but I mean, there was less than zero mystery for me in this movie. As a result, the final act fell completely flat for me. The reveals are so uninteresting that I felt almost mad that they bothered to include it. There’s a fourth act sequence in this that genuinely made me a little angry about how forced and cliched it felt. 

Before that final act though, I was enjoying myself enough, but nothing really worked for me in the back half of the movie. If it stuck the landing better, this would’ve been an easy recommendation. Unfortunately, this isn’t the storybook ending I wanted.

Verdict

Heart Eyes had me hooked from the start, but the longer it went, the less it lived up to its own promise. What began as a clever play on romantic comedies slowly turned into the exact thing it was making fun of, just without the charm. While the humor landed more often than not, predictable twists, forced emotional moments, and a finale that fell completely flat kept it from being the fun genre mix it could have been. If you are not as burned out on these clichés as I am, you might have a better time, but for me, this was a bit of a missed opportunity.