It’s been a while since a truly mainstream or even remotely well-known Valentine’s slasher movie has graced audiences with its presence in a theater. In fact, you can likely count the number of Valentine’s Day-specific slasher movies on your hand (this includes 1981’s My Bloody Valentine and 2001’s Valentine). Oh sure, there are some V-day “adjacent” offerings, like 1975’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and 1992’s Raising Cain, but, by and large, the genre is a gaping hole of emptiness. Thus, Heart Eyes’ director, Josh Ruben (best known for another horror-comedy, Werewolves Within), clearly wanted to help fill the void.
But, as usual, it’s the writers who are owed the debt for doing so. And if the overall tone of the movie seems familiar, that’s because Christopher Landon is a co-writer. Also known as the screenwriter who brought audiences other horror-comedies like Happy Death Day, Happy Death 2U and Freaky, the latter being another movie he co-wrote with Michael Kennedy. With Heart Eyes, there’s a throuple of writers involved, rounded out by Phillip Murphy (of Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard repute), who helps create a narrative that gets into the “Valentine’s Day spirit” in a way that does what it can to avoid too much schmaltz. And yes, considering that it’s increasingly difficult not to make audiences cringe, one essentially has to release a horror-comedy instead of a straight-up rom-com to “honor” Valentine’s Day in the present epoch.
And so, to make the instant attraction between Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt, fresh off another horror-comedy, Totally Killer) and Jay Simmons (Mason Gooding—yes, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s son and also no stranger to the horror genre thanks to Scream VI) feel, well, stomachable, Landon, Kennedy and Murphy entrench it in over-the-topness. Starting with their meet-cute at a Seattle coffee shop where they both fight over the same drink order, with Jay asking Ally if she’s sure the “large ice blended Americano with oat milk, two honey, one sugar” is hers. When she says of course it is because no one else would get that, the barista then hands Jay the exact same order, prompting him to “quip,” “Guess we’re…coffee mates.” The deliberate cornballness of the exchange continues when Ally replies, “I thought I was the only one in the world with the most obnoxious coffee order.” It is here that the barista (Esaú Mora, proving, like Leigh Zimmerman before him, that there are no small parts) pisses on their parade with, “It’s a pretty common order actually. Can you guys move? We’re busy.”
And so they do move—over to the “accoutrements” area, where they engage in more “witty banter.” This time, about plastic straws (Ally carries her own metal one because she hates the paper kind—not that it will matter anymore since the only legislation the Orange One wants to enact is bringing back plastic straws). Ribbing the ridiculousness of these types of encounters, Landon, Kennedy and Murphy then have the pair bump heads so hard (for the second time) that Jay ends up with a nosebleed. The stuff of comedy gold (as slapstick always is), further heightened when Ally runs out abruptly in a state of embarrassment. Her friend and co-worker, Monica (Gigi Zumbado), who has been standing nearby, apologizes to him on her behalf with the excuse, “Sorry, she’s getting fired today.
To further riff on the common tropes of rom-coms, Jay predictably ends up being the new hire at the office where Ally works. Not just a new hire, but the person tasked with cleaning up the mess Ally has made via an insensitive ad campaign that couldn’t come at a worse possible moment due to the return of the notorious Heart Eyes Killer (HEK being the abbreviation that makes more sense than the BTK Killer’s nickname, with that abbreviation standing for “Bind them, torture them, kill them”). For he’s at it again on Valentine’s Day, having already struck in two major cities (Boston and Philadelphia) in the years prior to this one. With his signature mask and signature fetish—murdering couples—Ally’s decision to center an ad around famous doomed romances that end in death (namely, Romeo and Juliet, Jack and Rose and Bonnie and Clyde) for Crystal Cane Jewelry is met with an especial backlash with news of HEK’s return.
To add to Ally’s overall stress levels, she keeps stalking her ex’s social media, seeing him in various “lovey-dovey” images with his new girlfriend. And, thanks to the wonders of expository dialogue, the viewer learns that despite her sadness over this, she was actually the one who broke up with him. Not just because she has a tendency to run in terror when things get too serious, but because she’s spent her whole life looking for the same “storybook romance” that her parents had while also fearing it like a plague—for it means getting too close to someone and then enduring the risk of losing them (as was the case when her father died, and her mother never recovered).
Of course, this isn’t the story she spins to Jay when he insists that they go out to dinner together to discuss new ideas for the campaign—apparently oblivious to the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day a.k.a. the worst possible day for a non-couple to go out anywhere, what with couples overrunning every public location with their PDAs and other performative acts that have only ramped up since the birth of such entities as Instagram.
No, what Ally tells Jay instead is (at first alluding to her botched campaign): “The most romantic stories of all time are doomed. You’ve got husbands, wives, partners, twin flames, soul mates, whatever you wanna call it—it’s all going to end. It’s just a matter of time before someone cheats, bails or dies… You know how I feel about romance? It’s a farce. A lie. Not to everyone, I know that. Some people get really lucky and stumble into something real and forever, but the other ninety-nine percent of us are just bouncing from one failed experiment to the next. Chasing the same regurgitated fairy tale bullshit that’s been stuffed into our brain since we were kids.” All the while, Jay observes her with a combination of keen interest and disbelief as she concludes her tirade by scoffing, “Prince Charming? Till you catch him fucking your sister.” Jay, in contrast, is unabashed about being a romantic. To the point where he often scares women away with his fervor and intensity. But Ally is the closeted romantic between the two of them—the one who can’t admit how badly she wants exactly what she’s mocking (when she admits to liking His Girl Friday, interwoven into the movie at one point for meta rom-com reference, that’s when Jay knows for sure).
Not wanting to force her to do something she’s not interested in—both be on a “date” with him and work on revamping the campaign—Jay leaves the restaurant. But, alas, “destiny” keeps conspiring to throw them together when Ally realizes her ex and his new girlfriend are walking toward the same establishment. Wanting to make him see that she’s fine without him, Ally kisses Jay in that “Hollywood” kind of way. And it’s not only convincing to her ex, but also to the Heart Eyes Killer, who sees them from afar and accordingly homes in on his next target(s). So it is that Ally wasn’t lying when she said that love is a farce. And, in this case, a comedy of errors, to boot—with Ally and Jay consistently being thrown together by circumstances seemingly beyond their control…whether they want to or not. But of course they do, otherwise the ongoing magnetic pull between them wouldn’t exist at all. Unfortunately, with all the focus on trying to make their chemistry as “non-cringe” to modern audiences as possible (primarily through “wink-wink, this is so cleverly self-aware” methods), Landon, Kennedy and Murphy lose the plot when it comes to revealing the identity of the Heart Eyes Killer.
Even so, Heart Eyes works itself to the, er, bone as a “cynical” horror-comedy that “hides” romance in plain sight. Because, while poking fun at the concept (and it’s often performative nature), the movie also continues to assure audiences that love is, indeed, still in the air this Valentine’s Day (and beyond). Try as you might to run and hide from its murderous tendencies, so to speak…aimed at your heart like Cupid’s arrow.
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