Chronological

• Scare Me (2020) (Not Good)
• Werewolves Within (2021) (Nearly Good)
• Heart Eyes (2025) (Nearly Good)

By Rating

Nearly Good (4/8)

• Werewolves Within (2021)
• Heart Eyes (2025)

Not Good (2/8)

• Scare Me (2020)

Last Updated

• 4/19/25

Review Index

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 is capable: Holt (also star of the novelty slasher Totally Killer) and Scream alum Gooding are forgettable but not anathema to charisma. 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 are sharp, funny, and mean. I also enjoyed Michaela Watkins (returning from Ruben’s Werewolves Within) as the uptight ad executive.

And the direction is not catastrophic: This is not broken or dour or draggy. Ruben, low ceiling though he provides as maestro, at least demonstrates once again a knack for a fleet and unobjectionable film texture and mood. 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.

Even with that low standard to bear, I’m still pretty surprised to see Vulture pick Werewolves Within as the greatest video game movie ever made. I would not consider this a “great” movie in really any definition of the word — it’s neither remarkably good nor remarkably ambitious or large-scale. In fact, that seems to be part of the reason Vulture has honored it. Most video game movies insist upon themselves; their video game-ness is paramount to their existence: Some, like The Super Mario Bros. Movie (and, based on reviews I’ve read, the new Minecraft movie), are more video game trailer than film. Others mimic the epic scope and spectacle of video games. But you could easily watch Werewolves Within and not know that it’s based on a Steam and PlayStation VR social deduction game. Quoting Jordan Crucchiola at Vulture: “It just feels like a fun little genre comedy that would premiere at SXSW and everyone would get a kick out of.” Sure; I don’t really disagree! But that’s what gets you to #1?

Werewolves Within is the second film by CollegeHumor and Dropout comedian Josh Ruben who has carved a niche as a horror-comedy director the past few years. His first film, Scare Me, was not my cup of tea, a stinker in both concept and execution. Werewolves Within is a big step up, in part because he didn’t write the screenplay. It’s credited to Mishna Wolff, a humorist who makes the rounds on New Yorker-type publications and — like Ruben and several members of the cast — has a background in improv comedy.

The story is a breezy horror riff on And Then Were None (also, more relevantly, a riff on the parlor game Mafia/Werewolf). People and animals in the backwoods town of Beaverfield start dying to wounds that appear to come from a large lupine creature, as per the film title. Newly hired forest ranger Finn (Sam Richardson) pairs with mail carrier Cecily (Milana Vayntrub) to investigate the deaths. Pretty much all the residents of the town have one reason or another they might want to exact violence on their peers. Some of it relates to interpersonal beefs — e.g. Trisha (Michaela Watkins) uncovers that her husband Pete (Michael Chernus) has been having an affair. Some of it is based on social strata: A local wealthy couple (Cheyenne Jackson, Harvey Guillen) resents the lifestyle of the local working class (Sarah Burns, George Basil), and vice versa.

The town’s most prominent conflict, though, concerns a proposed pipeline. Businessman Sam (Wayne Duvall) wants to buy large chunks of the town’s land for his capitalistic purposes. This proposal would upend the local hangout spot owned by Jeanine (Catherine Curtin) and gravely upset the intimidating, rugged loner Emerson (Glenn Fleshler). Environmental scientist Dr. Ellis (Rebecca Henderson) is against the proposal as well.

So we have our lineup of suspects who start falling, one by one. The suspicion shifts from person to person as more evidence and violence pile up. It’s an Agatha Christie tribute, but with its frequent deaths and B-rate gore, it feels more like a slasher at times. Ruben and Wolff keep it fleet and featherweight. They probably could have trimmed a couple of characters to keep a bit more narrative focus and make each personality pop a bit more, but it’s reasonably sturdy as a story. The story threads the needle of obfuscating whether its violence is actually supernatural or just staged to appear so. I genuinely didn’t know where it would go, though I had my guesses based on its “horror” marketing.

Unfortunately, Werewolves Within is neither a standout comedy nor an exemplary horror film, meaning it’s in a bit of a no-man’s-land. Maybe you’ll vibe with the sense of humor more than I did; it’s a little too much “well that just happened” for me. But there are a few small laughs tucked in: “Heavens to fuck” is a charming turn of phrase, and “a good old fashioned sleepover… with guns” made me chuckle. Richardson is game and does a great job keeping the film light and comic without being too try-hard. Vayntraub keeps up (and she’s, um, easy on the eyes). The supporting crew is colorful; shoutout to Watkins, in particular, who is on my list of comedy character actors who make everything they appear in better.

The conclusion is… fine. The film simultaneously introduces a bit of a didactic thematic thrust and makes fun of itself for doing so. Its slight pivot to darkness is at least more effective than the one in Scare Me. Overall, Ruben is doing much steadier work here; I think pulling himself out of both the cast and the writing credit turns it into less of a vanity project and lets him focus more on craft and tone control. I still don’t see him ever making a great or even very good film, but I’ll catch up with his recent Heart Eyes, which has the promise of a Christopher Landon script.

So it’s all a modest, slight, watchable horror comedy. Not exactly good, but never painful to sit through. It has a few fleeting moments of joy. And if that really makes the greatest video game movie of all time, so help us.

Anyway, I do not begrudge Scare Me’s existence, but I also don’t think it’s very good. I would, in fact, call it “bad” outright but for the saving grace of Aya Cash’s dynamic performance as Fanny Addie. And given the film’s premise, having a strong lead performance does indeed go a long way. The film is the directorial debut of Josh Ruben, a sketch comedian of College Humor and Dropout fame. Besides his directing and writing duties, Ruben is the film’s other co-star, and he is considerably worse than Cash. (In fact, I will say he is “bad” outright for most of the film.)

By the way, what is it with sketch comedians making horror films? Is it simply because Jordan Peele made a quarter billion with Get Out that the likes of Ruben and Zach Cregger (of Barbarian) are getting greenlit? Or does the well-documented neurosis required to be a professional comedian (see: Funny People) incline them toward demented material?

In Scare Me, Fred (Ruben) is an aspiring novelist who rents a house to hunker down and draft his opus, a werewolf novel that he hasn’t even outlined. He bumps into Fanny (Cash) who is coincidentally doing the same thing one house over, except Fanny has already released a well-regarded horror bestseller entitled Venus. (At one point, a character unironically calls it “the best horror novel of all time” and claims the New York Times made the same proclamation.)

The power goes out one night, and Fanny shows up at Fred’s front door. Two horror writers with nothing better to do? Might as well swap spooky stories! And so the rest of the movie is Fred and Fanny taking turns telling stories to each other. In another film, this would be a mere framing story, and each narrated “story” would in fact cut to an actual horror short. But in Scare Me, we witness the characters narrate the story, with some radio play sound effects and spooky lighting thrown in for dramatic effect.

The result is boring. None of the stories narrated are any good. Ruben apparently couldn’t decide between making them funny or scary in tone, and the halfway point between those is deeply unsatisfying. Fanny is supposedly an acclaimed storyteller, one of her generation’s great authors, but if it shows up on the page, it doesn’t show up in her improvised ghost stories, which are 1990’s cable TV anthology fodder. Meanwhile, Fred’s are just woefully unfunny and rote; and even if they were meant to be sorta-bad on purpose, it’s not fun to sit through.

Scare Me is what I call a “lunch napkin” movie where the film never really developed beyond that first flash of an idea: it’s an idea you jot down on a napkin and nothing deeper than that. There is no insight into storytelling as a human necessity or the crafting engaging narratives. (The most we get is Fanny encouraging Fred to improve his dumb werewolf idea by saying — and this is the exact quote — “add more details.”) There are a few whiffs the story swapping operating as a strange seduction game between the pair, but it fizzles before it goes anywhere. And the film sets up that the pair are essentially living the exact scenario of a horror story they’d write about — power out, rain falling, house making creepy noises, figures appearing, etc. — but it’s mostly throwaway texture rather than actual mood setting.

What keeps it strung together by the thinnest and flimsiest of fibers is, again, Cash’s comic performance. Cash was terrific in the under-appreciated You’re the Worst, a TV show that flips rom-com tropes upside down, but this is the best I’ve seen her talents used in a movie. She is funny and hot and sympathetic; her face and physical acting are great, her silly voices are excellent, and her snarky line delivery is aces. I’m not sure why she doesn’t have a career halfway between Rachel Sennott and Zoey Deutsch — she should be in everything. Maybe it’s because she’s in that awkward early-40s age for actresses where they’re too old to play pretty young things but too young to face midlife crises. Toss her some MILFy roles, Hollywood. (And, to be fair, she’s worked steadily on TV shows, which is probably the real reason her Letterboxd page is lean.)

Meanwhile, Ruben lacks the charisma to keep up with Cash and pull off the two-hander. A better version of this film and performance would make Fred aggressively neurotic and flawed, or perhaps take the sympathetic route and make him a deluded sweetheart. He’s neither of these and so an unpleasant pest on screen. He also has remarkably little chemistry with Cash, and since I’m already being ungenerous towards Ruben, I’ll just blame him for that rather than Cash.

Perhaps most annoyingly of all, Scare Me gradually builds up a “theme” (he says in scare quotes with disdain). You see, Fred is resentful that a woman is more successful than him, and mad that she still corrects him when he makes misogynist remarks despite her good fortune. Men sure do be presumptuous pigs, don’t they? The movie’s climax half-heartedly pivots to real horror and psychological terror as if the previous 75 minutes weren’t just a bunch of wacky riffs. This serious finale is painful — not because there’s anything wrong with the message (indeed, horror is still too often a sausage fest) but because it’s so awkwardly shoehorned in and poorly executed. (I feel bad being this mean to an indie, but Ruben’s made a career as a director and has had plenty of nice reviews written about his films, so he doesn’t need a shoulder rub from me.)

When it’s firing its comic cylinders, having fun with voices and stage lighting and all that, Scare Me is not actively unpleasant. Ruben is a seasoned comedian, right? But Scare Me constantly made me wish it was something different. Anything different. This version just doesn’t work. I can imagine enjoying a breezy, conversational comedy with a similar setup and cast: just a bantery, single location rom-com rather than a pseudo-horror anthology gimmick, since the “horror” sucks. Shudder would not have distributed this hypothetical version of Scare Me, so maybe nobody would have ever seen it, but I contend that a non-horror take on this setup would have been more watchable, damn it. I know I’m partially projecting my biases when I say that, though; I’m one of those rare champions of the mumblecore movement.

Alas. The Scare Me we have is a bummer more often than it’s the horror-comedy it pretends to be, let alone the incisive satire and piece of metafiction Ruben probably envisioned it to be.