Heart Eyes

Romancing
The Tone

Heart Eyes
Directed by Josh Ruben
USA/New Zealand 2025
Paramount
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some minor spoilers on details of violence.

Well now, if you’re a long time reader you might be wondering why I booked a ticket to see an American slasher movie like Heart Eyes, a sub-genre of thriller I really hate (although I absolutely adore Italian gialli, which of course gave them their start). Well, all I can say is this film was part of the Cineworld chain’s Secret Screaming screenings, previewing the movie six days before its release on Valentine’s Day in the UK. So, yeah, I almost walked out of the cinema when I realised it was this but, I didn’t and, I have to say, I really didn’t have a bad time with it although, given a lot of negative elements in the movie (and the fact that one of the writers wrote the absolutely awful It’s A Wonderful Knife, reviewed here) I’m really surprised that I didn’t hate this one. I was also surprised because I’d mistakenly assumed that the Secret Screaming branded screenings would all be horror films but, no, in this case just a thriller.

Okay, so Heart Eyes is set on Valentine’s Day, which is a day that a notorious killer with lighting up ‘heart eyes’ (when they’re in infrared mode) as part of the costume, is continuing the yearly tradition of picking a town in the US and killing random couples on their Valentine’s celebration (in the most brutal and goriest ways that can be had, of course). In this film the killer mistakenly fixates on a new, ‘almost couple’, jewellery marketing executive Ally (played by Olivia Holt) and her emergency ‘campaign fixer’ Jay (played by Mason Gooding). Carnage ensues which, over the course of the movie, brings them both together to cement an actual relationship between the two leads.

And if that sounds like a cliché then, yeah, it really is and one of the biggest weaknesses of the film is that it’s filled to the brim with similar clichés, I mean all over the shop. Which means there are zero surprises in store for absolutely anyone familiar with the tropes of this particular genre... and I can tell you that I personally am not that familiar with them and I was still rolling my eyes at what I’m sure the writers would call a clever manipulation of plot mechanics of these kinds of movies but, nah, that’s just an excuse to hit the same tired old beats all the other similar movies seem to bash you over the head with.

Fans of these kinds of entertainments will surely relish the bloody carnage which litters the film - the opening sequence alone has a big knife through an eyeball, a crossbow bolt through a face and a woman squashed in some kind of industrial press at a vineyard, her head exploding as her eyeball pops out - so there is something for slasher fiends to keep close to their heart.

But, yeah, the terrible story and use of hackneyed borrowings from other movies doesn’t help things, to be honest.

However, the film has a few saving graces which turn it around, in my opinion. Firstly the dialogue between the two main characters is pretty good and, since Holt and Gooding give such brilliant performances, it means you can totally be behind their characters all the way and they are not just cyphers. 

Secondly, the film is a slasher rom-com with the emphasis on romance, not the killings. I mean, yeah, sure, the violence inevitably ramps up as the film progresses but it’s more like a proper romantic movie with the (admittedly cliché) extended ‘meet cutes’ and where the characters and their attitudes to each other are properly explored at a leisurely pace, just punctuated with a grisly murder here and there. And even though it’s not an out and out comedy (there are some scenes like that though, such as when they’re at a drive-in watching His Girl Friday and two characters are sexing it up in the back of the vehicle while they’re hiding from the rampaging killer) there is a sharp sense of humour injected into the movie which shines through, even when everybody is playing it straight. So there’s that.

Ultimately, my expectations of this movie were as low as they can get and so I was pleasantly surprised that, with the dialogue and the wonderful central performances, Heart Eyes manages to rise above many in this genre and I actually did find myself enjoying a lot of it. It’s probably a nice, gory thriller to see on Valentine’s Day, if that’s your kind of thing but, the cynic in me can’t help but think that this film is now going to be milked through several, probably lesser, sequels over the next few years. Which I'll now feel obligated to see because I've seen this one.