Heart Eyes
Heart Eyes
When the "Heart Eyes Killer" strikes Seattle, a pair of co-workers pulling overtime on Valentine's Day are mistaken for a couple by the elusive couple-hunting killer. Now, they must spend the most romantic night of the year running for their lives.
Jacob O’Neal reviewedMarch 21, 2025
What happens when you mix bad Hallmark romantic comedies with every post-Scream horror movie trope, with just a sprinkling of wokeness and bad jokes? You get Heart Eyes, a movie directed by Josh Ruben, best known for the better than expected Scare Me and Werewolves Within. It was co-written by Christopher Landon, writer director and son of Michael Landon. Normally I like his stuff. Sure, he’s made some stuff that was lower quality, but I liked Happy Death Day and Freaky a lot. So I was actually looking forward to this movie. Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding star as the two people with the “Meet Cute” story that you want to see together, but obstacles get in the way. In this case that is the Heart Eyes Killer (HEK for short) who saw them in the least passionate kiss ever put on screen.
This movie had stiff and stilted dialogue, terrible characters and little to no chemistry between anyone in the film. People like Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster couldn’t save it. The movie somehow manages to fall into every single cliche of romantic comedies and slasher movies. It felt like they had a checklist they were ticking off that the Paul Rudd and Amy Pohler movie They Came Together spoofed. Then they used Scream as the horror model. But Scream was meta and showed the tropes to everyone, pulling back the curtain and telling the world we needed something new in horror, not just using Scream as the new template.
There is a moment near the end of the film when Holt is on the phone with her obnoxious friend who tells her to go to the airport and get her man by throwing romcom titles into her monologue. It was such a cringeworthy moment that made me almost turn the film off. I was insulted that anyone would think this was a good idea to make into a movie. But what was it? Is it the directing, the cast, the script? What made it bad? The acting wasn’t terrible. The directing was good on a technical level. The script could have been better with a better cast and crew, I suppose. I think it was just a perfect storm of poor choices. Don’t waste your time.