I'll stab what she's stabbing
Your ninth scoop of ice cream will never taste as good as the first, and, as such, these high-concept slashers have lost a bit of their novelty. Either that, or they’re just getting worse. The trend really kicked off with Happy Death Day in 2017, a film I watched before the glut of “slasher-but-it’s-in-a-[blank]” started hitting screens. That one rode a zippy pace, a razor-sharp script, and a remarkable lead performance from Jessica Rothe to feel genuinely fresh bordering on great. Or maybe I just thought “Groundhog Day meets Scream” was a bucket of fun.
Now here we are, a dozen iterations later, with Heart Eyes. The gimmick this time is “slasher-but-it’s-in-a… romantic comedy!” It leans especially hard into its Scream inspiration, as the characters deconstruct the masked stabber’s actions in meta-movie logic (including a prominent scene at a drive-in theater), and the gore is fully R-rated. The script is co-written by Christopher Landon, one of the key figures of this wave of high-concept slashers via Happy Death Day and Freaky.
Ally (Olivia Holt) is an advertising designer in hot water after her macabre-tinted Valentine’s Day campaign flops. The problem is that dark ads remind everyone of a masked serial killer prowling the streets named Heart Eyes by the media for the distinct red hearts on his costume. Heart Eyes targets happy couples, particularly around Valentine’s Day. Luckily (at least for her bodily safety), Ally is in a romantic rut after a nasty breakup — hence her dark take on Valentine’s Day ads. It sure would be problematic if she fell for a hunk and put her own life in danger.
Enter: Hunk. Ally meets Jay (Mason Gooding) when they make identical orders at a Starbucks and accuse each other of stealing the other’s drink. Since Heart Eyes executes both the romcom tropes and the slasher ones, we get a bit of contrived conflict common to cosmopolitan romcoms: Jay happens to be the corporate honcho pulled in to overhaul Ally’s ad campaign. Thus, Jay and Ally must wrestle through a professional rivalry at the same time as romantic sparks fly between them. Their big dinner to discuss the future of the campaign gets interrupted first by a spontaneous kiss… and then by a butcher’s knife when the Heart Eyes killer appears and attempts some disembowelry.
As far as slasher crossover concepts go, this is one of the flimsiest efforts I’ve seen. I joked in my Freaky review that Landon has a long list of non-horror story templates he’s meticulously iterating through to crossbreed with Scream. Now I’m not so sure it’s a joke, and I fear he’s hit the dregs and some writers block. I certainly think there’s the possibility for wit and subversion in the slasher-meets-romcom pitch, but Landon and his cowriters Phillip Murphy and Michael Kennedy (the latter the architect of multiple high-concept slashers himself) fail to get the slasher and the romcom in sync. Surely there’s some juice here: Slashers have been driven by the simultaneous fascination and repulsion of sex since Halloween defined the tropes in 1978 and Friday the 13th codified them into a mass-produced product in 1980. Romcoms are all about navigating sexual attraction to a partner. There must be a way for a clever script to get those concepts in dialogue with each other. I guess the big handicap is that romcoms are all about the tension between one set of well-developed partners, whereas slashers by design have a large, nondescript cast, more like a sex comedy.
Alas, this is not that clever script. One problem is that the creative team doesn’t distinguish between satire and homage. Delivering romantic comedy cliches and pointing at them doesn’t really result in any big laughs or deep insight. Heart Eyes never feels inventive or insightful like Happy Death Day does about its dual objectives. This is just two stacks of formulaic beats from over-familiar genres shuffled together.
The film is directed by Josh Ruben in his third film. This is the first time he’s made a movie with real suspense and jump scares, as both Scare Me and Werewolves Within are comedies first. It’s also the first time he’s deployed gore and death scenes as a major component of his film. And even with this growth and new skill set, my prognosis is that he caps out at “adequate.” A few of these scenes are fun and scary, with a couple kinetic chases and abrupt deaths. The best part of the movie is the design of the killer, with that memorable mask and his cruel Cupid weaponry.
But, mostly, this is a film that falls just a step short on most important metrics. The core suspense-chase-kill filmmaking is functional but forgettable. (And, lest we take functional for granted, It’s a Wonderful Knife and even Time Cut are worse as slashers than this.) The script, as mentioned, doesn’t fully connect the dots, either. The twists and surprise unmaskings are not disasters but not especially clever. The cast chemistry is merely decent. So why am I watching again?
But it has some fun elements. Ruben and/or his music supervisor Rob Lowry get playful with the juxtaposition of horror and romance with the needle drops. And the cast: Olivia Holt (also star of the novelty slasher Totally Killer) plays the lead; Scream alum Mason Gooding is the co-star. Both are capable. More fun are the supporting cast members — Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster (both veterans of Scream knockoffs from the late ‘90s) play the detective duo investigating Heart Eyes and lock in with the tone in a way Holt and Gooding don’t quite land; they’re sharp, funny, and mean. I also enjoyed Michaela Watkins (returning from Ruben’s Werewolves Within) as the uptight ad executive.
And it all holds together modestly well. It’s not broken or dour or draggy. Ruben, low ceiling though he provides, at least demonstrates once again a knack for a fleet and unobjectionable film texture. I couldn’t believe when the film had hit its climax, as the runtime just flies by.
I’m not sure what to rate Heart Eyes. I felt dissatisfied when the credits rolled, but I also don’t think it’s any worse than Ruben’s Werewolves Within. “Nearly Good” feels slightly generous, but let’s put it at the lower region of that rating.
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
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