HEART EYES (2025)

Studio:   Screen Gems
Director: Josh Ruben
Writer:   Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, Michael Kennedy
Producer: Christopher Landon, Greg Gilreath, Adam Hendricks
Stars:    Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa, Jordana Brewster

Review Score:

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Summary:

A masked murderer who kills couples on Valentine’s Day targets two coworkers mistaken for being romantically involved.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While a photographer named Nico captures the moment on camera, Patrick proposes to his girlfriend Adeline in a picturesque Seattle vineyard for Valentine’s Day. The Heart Eyes Killer, a masked murderer whose previous Valentine’s Day killing sprees terrorized Boston two years ago and Philadelphia last year, kills Nico, Patrick, and a winery security guard before chasing Adeline into a massive grape crusher that flattens her.

At a coffee shop with her friend and co-worker Monica, Ally McCabe shares a meet-cute moment with Jay Simmonds. Afterward, Ally and Monica attend a work meeting where their boss, jewelry icon Crystal Cane, chews out Ally for delivering an ad campaign designed around doomed lovers, which was poorly received due to coinciding with the Heart Eyes Killer’s return.

Crystal surprises Ally by introducing Jay as a freelance marketer with whom Ally will be working on a revised ad campaign. Jay invites Ally to discuss the project over dinner. To capitalize on Jay’s attractiveness and to help Ally move on from her ex-boyfriend Collin, Monica convinces Ally to treat dinner with Jay like a date.

Seattle PD detectives Jeanine Shaw and Zeke Hobbs investigate the murders at the winery. The two of them find a wedding band at the scene engraved with the initials J.S.

Ally’s dinner with Jay goes poorly after Ally insults him with her pessimistic views on romance and being single. Outside the restaurant, Ally sees her ex Collin approaching with his new girlfriend Sienna. Hoping to make Collin jealous, Ally spontaneously kisses Jay and presents him as her new boyfriend. Unbeknownst to them, the Heart Eyes Killer witnesses the kiss and decides to make Ally and Jay the next couple killed.

Through a series of mishaps, Jay ends up accompanying Ally back to her home. Springing from Ally’s closet, Heart Eyes suddenly attacks. Jay and Ally flee outside where Heart Eyes kills their cab driver. Jay gets left behind as Ally escapes to a nearby park. Heart Eyes prepares to kill Ally, but he is frightened away by the timely arrival of police officers.

Having supposedly found him with a Heart Eyes mask and weapon, detectives Hobbs and Shaw arrest Jay on suspicion of being the killer. Jay expresses frustration over being abandoned by Ally. Ally tries telling the detectives that Jay was with her when Heart Eyes attacked, prompting Shaw to speculate there may be more than one killer working alongside Jay.

Focusing on the recovered wedding band bearing his initials, Hobbs and Shaw separately interrogate Jay at the police station. Meanwhile, IT guy David asks Ally on a date, but she declines.

The power suddenly goes out in the station. In the darkness, Heart Eyes kills Hobbs and another police officer. Ally wildly fires a dropped handgun to stop Heart Eyes from killing Jay.

Ally and Jay escape the police station and make their way to a drive-in where they hide in a van with a stoner couple having sex. While hiding, Ally apologizes for ditching Jay earlier as they bond during a heart-to-heart conversation.

Heart Eyes embarks on a massacre that causes mass panic at the drive-in. Feeling responsible for having brought the killer there, Ally convinces Jay to help her make a stand against the murderer. Their faceoff ends with Jay killing Heart Eyes by thrusting a long blade through his chest. Ally and Jay unmask Heart Eyes, but they do not recognize his face.

While recovering in an ambulance, Jay invites Ally to come back to his hotel before he leaves town to attend his best friend’s wedding. Ally declines, but Jay gives her his phone number. Showing her own romantic interest in Jay, Detective Shaw arrives at the scene and offers to give Jay a ride.

During a phone call with Monica, Ally realizes it was a mistake to let Jay go. Ally rushes to the airport to look for Jay, but she then receives an unexpected phone call from Heart Eyes telling her he has Jay held captive. Heart Eyes instructs Ally to come to Saint Valentine’s Chapel under threat of killing Jay.

Ally arrives at the church to find Heart Eyes holding Jay hostage. Heart Eyes unmasks to reveal himself as David, the IT guy from the police station. David explains that the man killed at the drive-in was Eli, the third person in a throuple with David and his wife, all of whom took turns as Heart Eyes. Detective Shaw enters to identify herself as David’s wife, with the initialed wedding band belonging to him, and confesses that the two of them share a kink for murder. Shaw and David also explain their original targets were Ally’s ex Collin and his new girlfriend, but they pivoted to Ally and Jay after seeing their kiss. A fierce faceoff between the two couples ends with Ally decapitating Shaw and Jay killing David with his arrow gun.

One year later, Ally and Jay celebrate their successful ad campaign for Crystal Cane as Ally prepares to return to med school. At the drive-in later, Ally surprises Jay by proposing marriage. Jay accepts and the two of them kiss. Unexpectedly, Ally receives a taunting phone call from a menacing voice, but it turns out to be her friend Monica merely playing a prank.

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Review:

In a different decade, and with a healthier budget, “Heart Eyes” might have been fronted by Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. Or Drew Barrymore and Matthew McConaughey. That’s because despite its horror-loving heart, deep down the movie is really a rom-com, complete with meet-cute slapstick, a what-to-wear montage, and a mad dash to the airport to stop true love from flying away. While all this couple’s comedy proceeds according to Nora Ephron-approved plan, “Heart Eyes” just happens to have a masked maniac committing gruesome murders, too.

Leading lady Ally could use some of that classic Bullock or Barrymore energy. Olivia Holt looks the part of a workaholic young woman bumbling her way through bad relationships. Her wavy blonde locks, cherubic face shape, and fashionable fits present traditional prettiness. What she doesn’t provide Ally is a sprightly personality to put sympathetic substance behind superficial attractiveness.

Of course, Ally has to have a bit of a “bah, humbug” attitude toward being single. For someone who must be convinced to believe in love again, that’s to be expected, to a point. Ally unfortunately passes that point with behavior that alternates between confusingly dopey and aggressively insulting.

After badly botching an ill-advised ad campaign by basing it around the deaths of doomed lovers, which goes over like a lead zeppelin since it coincides with the Heart Eyes Killer slaughtering lovers on Valentine’s Day, Ally’s angry boss Crystal Cane (Michaela Watkins hamming it up as a larger-than-life jewelry icon) punishes Ally by pairing her with hotshot marketer Jay on a makeup project. Ally already met Jay when they bumped heads, twice, at a coffee shop earlier. Even though he’s love-at-first-sight handsome, Ally isn’t excited about her demotion to a subservient role, although her extroverted best friend Monica sees an opportunity for Ally to turn a work-related dinner into a first date with Jay.

One of Ally’s obstacles is she can’t stop obsessing over her ex-boyfriend Collin. She sighs at Instagram pics of him smiling happily with his new girlfriend, which Ally scrolls through every time she picks up her phone. Later in the movie, we get to meet Collin in person, and discover he’s an insensitive clod who was supposed to double date with friends brutally butchered earlier that day, but he didn’t want to give up his restaurant reservation, so he went to dinner anyway. Jay suspects Ally was mainly attracted to Collin’s accent, which would be in keeping with how shallow she’s portrayed as both a character and as a person who would pine for someone like this.

At her own dinner with Jay, Ally uses the verbal equivalent of an assault rifle to violently shoot holes in Jay’s idealistic views on romance as though he suggested they drown puppies in lava. Sure, there needs to be conflict for them to overcome, but Ally is already behind the 8-ball by being a disappointing project manager, a mopey sourpuss, and now she adds abrasive annoyingness on top. When you look under the hood of how she’s characterized, you wonder what she ever saw in Collin, and what Jay could possibly see in her.

Luckily, Mason Gooding makes up for some of Ally’s chilliness by giving Jay ample charisma to compensate. It helps that Jay also gets the better quips to barb back with, though it’s the way Gooding chews on his offhand remarks with knowing intonations that increase his fast-firing injections of levity. He's easier to root for than Ally, which shouldn’t be possible since he’s also a suspect for the murderous man in the Heart Eyes mask.

Horror fans who may be scratching their scalps at discovering the movie’s true DNA should be somewhat relieved to know “Heart Eyes” does what all good slashers do, and that’s deliver the goods on gory deaths and creative kills. They’re not in large supply, but they do come with stylish splatter that’s in keeping with the overall vibe of a slightly surreal world where snark is a regular part of everyday exchanges.

What’s unexpected about the subdued tone is director Josh Ruben and co-writers Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy have previous titles under their belts that better balanced horror and humor with distinctive flair and sharper comedy. Maybe since Ruben didn’t write and Landon didn’t direct their own material, something got lost in translation, resulting in a disconnect that might have been tightened with a heavier hand on the humor portion, especially since a slim suspect list doesn’t put much meat on the mystery. “Heart Eyes” casually entertains as a fun-focused slasher, but its temperature isn’t turned up as high as it should be, or could be if it had gone all-in on being a raucous rom-com parody.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 60

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