Heart Eyes review – a gim­micky hor­ror fauxmance

At the risk of sound­ing like a recent­ly can­celled mur­der­ous clown cre­ator, I’m tired of big stu­dio hor­ror movies hap­haz­ard­ly attempt­ing to wres­tle with trau­ma, grief or throw a pseu­do-fem­i­nist spin on every­thing. The promise of Heart Eyes, Josh Ruben’s Valen­tine slash­er where the ser­i­al killer is armed with an emo­ji-inspired mask and a big knife, sound­ed devoid of sen­ti­ment and there­fore per­fect. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Heart Eyes is so vac­u­ous and con­fused that it can’t even decide if it’s cyn­i­cal or sen­ti­men­tal about love itself.

At the cen­ter of this mis­guid­ed mix of roman­tic com­e­dy and slash­er movie is Ally (Olivia Holt), a guard­ed young woman in adver­tis­ing who believes her dash­ing cowork­er Jay (Mason Good­ing) is threat­en­ing her job. While Jay’s entire per­son­al­i­ty seems to be being help­ful and kind to the point of annoy­ance, Ally’s main traits revolve around stalk­ing her ex on Insta­gram and an ​“eco-con­scious” atti­tude which man­i­fests in the form of her trusty met­al straw that nev­er leaves her side. Of course this pair are relent­less­ly thrust togeth­er till their unde­ni­able ​“chem­istry” (a ques­tion I’ve been ask­ing since Not­ting Hill, is there chem­istry or are the actors just hot?) draws the atten­tion of the tit­u­lar killer tar­get­ing cou­ples. The pair con­tin­u­ous­ly scream that they’re ​“not a cou­ple” at their approach­ing mur­der­er until the ene­mies-to-lovers trope has been beat­en to death with more force than most of the movie.

To intro­duce a new slash­er killer, audi­ences need some­thing more than a fun mask with glow­ing red heart eyes. We already have Jason and Michael Myers deliv­er­ing their stoney silence, Ghost­face has the sar­cas­tic wit and Art the Clown offers a sick mime humour. But Heart Eyes is as emp­ty as the hol­i­day he’s themed around, and no amount of heart-based weapon­ry makes up for watch­ing the same slow inten­tion­al walk of masked killers. It’s not even clear what Heart Eyes’ motive is beyond his desire to kill cou­ples – the film opens with him tar­get­ing an influ­encer cou­ple stag­ing their pro­pos­al for Insta­gram, imply­ing a hatred of fak­ery, but for the rest of the run­time Heart Eyes con­cen­trates their pur­suit on those with a gen­uine connection.

The killer – much like the film itself – can’t decide whether it’s cyn­i­cal or infat­u­at­ed by this Hall­mark hol­i­day, try­ing to make a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between the fak­ers and real love. Half the time attach­ment the­o­ry is a throw­away com­ment mak­ing online ther­a­py speak the butt of the joke, except of course when Ally and Jay are open­ing up to one anoth­er. Not only can the film not decide where it stands on ​“true love” (a cook­ie cut­ter con­cept in itself) but Heart Eyes seems unsure of the bal­ance it wants to strike between romance and blood­shed. Between a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion homage, a sick­en­ing­ly sweet meet-cute and even an unnec­es­sary fash­ion show, plus aes­thet­ic choic­es that make the whole film look like a Pret­ty Lit­tle Thing advert, Heart Eyes ends up feel­ing as fake as the optics-obsessed cou­ples it claims to hate.