“Romance is Dead”
I read an interview with the director of Heart Eyes, Josh Ruben, about how he used Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives as his guide and “north star” for making his horror rom-com. The setup suggests a fun ride, something akin to Scream by way of When Harry Met Sally, but what unfolds is disappointingly tepid.
After watching his finished product, I have to question if Ruben has even seen a Friday the 13th, let alone one of the best in the franchise. Jason Lives, directed by Tom McLoughlin, was the first entry in the famous slasher franchise to blend more comedy into the horror. Sure there were funny moments and characters in the first few but McLoughlin was able to find the right pinch of campiness along with the Universal Monster flair of yesteryear. If you don’t believe me, try Friday the 13th Part 6 out in black and white.
Unfortunately, Heart Eyes fails on both the rom-com and horror fronts and ends up in a muddled and generic what could have been. It starts off with a pretty strong opening scene as we open up with “Amazed” by country band Lone Star playing as an overly fake couple who have an obviously staged tender moment at a beautiful vineyard. Within seconds of meeting these people, you want them to die and that’s what we get. After some brutal kills and a fun chase through the vineyard, I was hooked…Well until we spent the next 30 minutes or so watching a lame opening to a rom-com that even our resident rom-com expert Romona Comet would roll her eyes at. Oh, and we don’t even see the Heart Eyes Killer this entire time. If you are using F13 Part 6 as your guiding star then you would have realized we never went more than 5-10 minutes without seeing Jason which made for a frenetic pace that constantly kept the threat of danger looming. Jason is resurrected at a cemetery at the beginning of the film and begins to work his way back to the campsite full of kids while leaving a path of destruction along the way. Instead here, Ruben chooses to tell us about other kills instead of showing them with way too long of intervals of murder and mayhem in between. HEK never feels like a threat
The story follows Ally (Olivia Holt), a commitment-phobic marketing executive, and Jay (Mason Gooding), a charming consultant who enters her life at the worst possible time—just as a masked killer known as the “Heart Eyes Killer” or “HEK” begins targeting couples on Valentine’s Day. We get all the staples of lame rom-coms: the awkward meet cute, the talkative, supportive best friend that disappears for most of the movie, the messy apartment she has to clean up so he doesn’t see it, etc. Although, there was a funny dildo gag.
Of course, this non-couple gets confused for an actual couple by Heart Eyes and the chase begins. We get introduced to some awkward detectives named Detective Jeanine Shaw and Detective Zeke Hobbs. Do you get it?! Hobbs and Shaw! Because a joke about a bad Fast and Furious movie is just what this movie needed. (Pssst, if you want a good version of lame cops in a horror movie that works, go watch James Wan’s 2021 movie Malignant. Maybe Ruben also watched that and didn’t know how to adapt it here.) As the chase continues, we get a few kills and the obligatory misdirection of who the killer is as we eventually get to the best part of any film. The lame reveal and, of course, the evil villain monologue that was nauseatingly long.
I get what Ruben was going for and there are some positives. The Heart Eyes killer design is fantastic and it deserves a better movie. There are a few brutal kills and some actual funny moments. Unfortunately, none of it felt cohesive and it simply felt like ADD riddle monkeys were just throwing feces against a script to see what would stick. The film aims for satire, but unlike Scream or Happy Death Day, it doesn’t have much to say. Is it a parody of modern dating? A send-up of horror tropes? A love letter to the genre? The film itself never seems sure of what it wants to be. A lame slasher or a lame rom-com. Sadly, Heart Eyes commits the biggest movie sin and that is being utterly forgettable. Either be great or be so bad you’re at least memorable. Here’s to hoping a sequel can get it right.
