Last year there was a well-reviewed Valentine’s Day slasher movie playing in theaters. Normally I’d be all over that shit, but I boycotted for political reasons. You see, the production company behind it, Spyglass Media Group, were the assholes who fired the star of SCREAMs 5 and 6 from SCREAM 7 for posting about the Gaza genocide. (And being against it.) I grew up on ‘80s horror sequels, so obviously I can roll with the loss of a main character and the derailing of a storyline, but doing it for that reason was too much. They not only fired her but smeared her as having written anti-semitic hate speech and “false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion.” I’d say they’re fucking cowards for not having publicly apologized yet, now that it’s a couple years later and the genocide and ethnic cleansing continue, but I suspect they have no guilt about it whatsoever.

I think back to 2003, when the band then known as the Dixie Chicks got into trouble for saying they were against invading Iraq and embarrassed to be from the same state as George W. Bush. If there had been a SCREAM 4 in the works at that time and then one of the stars criticized the war and got fired for it, I’m positive SCREAM would’ve been dead to me then. So it’s dead to me now. I love my “horror franchise” completism bullshit but not enough, it turns out, to stomach something like this. That’s just my personal decision for myself, I’m not telling anyone else what to do.

For that Valentine’s Day movie though I decided it was okay to watch and review now because I didn’t pay money and it’s not vying for box office dollars. So here’s my right-on-time late review of HEART EYES, which is directed by Josh Ruben (WEREWOLVES WITHIN) and written by Phillip Murphy (HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD), Michael Kennedy (IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE) and Christopher Landon (HAPPY DEATH DAY, FREAKY, DROP, was going to direct SCREAM 7 but left after the firing). It’s about an infamous murderer known as the “Heart Eyes Killer,” who kills couples on Valentine’s Day, and the idea is to combine a slasher movie with a romantic comedy. In my opinion they were partially but not fully successful with each side of that coupling.

The cold open is emblematic of the movie’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s a funny scene about a wedding proposal to a would-be-bride (Lauren O’Hara) so ready for it she mouths parts of it, including the “will you marry me” part, like Ed Wood backstage at his play. Then the music is interrupted by her suitor (Alex Walker)’s “Pony” ringtone and he argues with the guy he hired to film the proposal from a distance. Ruben has said his reference point for the romance parts is Nora Ephron; it certainly looks much more cinematic than it would if it were a Hallmark movie (director of photography: Stephen Murphy, Atlanta, Mr. & Mrs. Smith). When they’re suddenly attacked by the H.E.K. the kills are extravagant and the music (composer: Jay Wadley, I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS) is heart-pumpingly bombastic. For me, though, there’s a tonal issue: we start the movie with a few minutes of laughing at these ridiculous cartoon dipshits, now we need to turn on a dime to accept them as real, vulnerable humans in danger and fighting for their lives in a serious situation. This sort of thing can work, but I’m having trouble with it here.

And that continues to be an issue. I do think Ruben and company ultimately want us to take the murders and the love story seriously, but they don’t have the discipline to let go of the jokes or the performances that will undermine their success. The romcom meet-cute has to be pushed to parodic levels of silliness – Seattle advertising person Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt, TINKER BELL AND THE LEGEND OF THE NEVERBEAST) and handsome stranger Jay Simmonds (Mason Gooding, Y2K, SCREAMS 5-7) are confused by somehow having the same ridiculously complicated coffee order, then they awkwardly flirt and embarrass themselves with clumsiness to the point that his nose is gushing blood from an accidental head butt. And of course the barista (Esaú Mora) has to be a sarcastic jerk to them the whole time. You know how those service workers are, at least in movies.

The convoluted-coffee-order joke is so hacky it didn’t even occur to me until now that it must’ve been a Seattle joke, as is a bit with flannel-wearing teens credited as “grunge girls.” But I will give them a freebie on that. Seattle is a pretty popular setting for romances (SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, SAY ANYTHING, SINGLES, 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, numerous Hallmark Christmas movies) and sometimes also in horror (THE CHANGELING, THE RING, DEATH NOTE, MALIGNANT, M3GAN), so it’s a fitting choice for this mash-up. Many of those use Vancouver for Seattle, this one was somewhere in New Zealand. My problem isn’t that it doesn’t feel like the real Seattle, but that it doesn’t feel like the real world. The news doesn’t sound like news, the people don’t sound like people, again you can get away with this but there are limits. You gotta get something that feels true in there. I don’t think this gets the balance quite right.

Ally runs away from Jay in embarrassment, as her Supportive Best Friend Monica (Gigi Zumbado, THE PRICE WE PAY) explains, “She’s getting fired today!” Still reeling from a break up with douchey hunk Collin (Ben Black, BLACK CHRISTMAS 2019), she built an entire advertising campaign around a theme of couples dying together (Bonnie and Clyde, Romeo and Juliet, etc.). A terrible idea that seems even worse now that the Heart Eyes Killer has struck Seattle. Her cartoonishly southern and sassy boss Crystal Cane (Michaela Watkins, WANDERLUST) blames her, but doesn’t fire her. Instead she has to work with a cocky freelancer being flown in to come up with a new campaign. And of course that’s Jay.

Jay invites Ally to dinner to discuss their plans, then he tries to hit on her, and she’s not going for it. Not getting along at first is part of the romance formula, and it sort of works here, as it usually does, though again I think in trying to show they’re in on the joke they go a little too broad, make him a little too much of a jerk to seem like the same character when he starts being charming. The instigating romcom event is that they run into Collin and his new girlfriend on the way out, so they kiss and pretend to be dating. It’s also the instigating slasher event, because the Heart Eyes Killer is watching, and he targets couples. So they have to keep clarifying that they’re not a couple, even as they seem to be becoming one. That’s clever, I like that.

Holt does a good job with the awkward front, dorkily telling them “Happy V-Day!” But wouldn’t it work better if Collin was a perfectly normal ex-boyfriend who didn’t work out but doesn’t make her look like a total jackass for having any interest in him? I figured the choice to make him awful meant they needed to make us hate him so we would enjoy seeing him get killed later. But no. Not the case.

One advantage to combining these genres is it moves pretty quickly from the wacky deceit to the chasing, running, hiding and fighting. As soon as Ally realizes she loves Jay he becomes a suspect in the killings. The movie acts like we might believe it’s him, but I sure didn’t. Then again, Billy got blamed pretty early in SCREAM.

During the section set at a weirdly abandoned police headquarters I kept wishing Zoe Bell’s character from MALIGNANT would show up. There’s a pair of homicide detectives played by Devon Sawa (ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS) and Jordana Brewster (THE FACULTY). I think the joke that their last names are Hobbes and Shaw but they don’t think that’s funny might work if one of the actors wasn’t an actual Fast family member. To me it’s not that far off from the “joke” in SCREAM 3 where people point out that Carrie Fisher’s character looks like Carrie Fisher. But Sawa and Brewster are two actors who are always game, they’ve shown themselves to be valuable in even the most lowbrow material, and I enjoyed seeing them in these roles. Though they’ve both been in horror movies it feels more like casting solid, perhaps under-appreciated veterans than making a genre reference.

HEART EYES reminds me of the post-SCREAM era of slick studio horror, during which there was already a pretty fun/stupid Valentine’s Day one called VALENTINE. And later MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D. I think I liked both of those a little better than this, but they’re on a similar level, and that’s a positive. I like this sort of crap. The killer wears an inexplicable but cool looking mask (designed by Tony Gardner, THE DARK BACKWARD). It looks like it’s sculpted out of plastic or something, and it literally has red heart-shaped lenses, which are revealed to light up and be equipped with heat-vision! Or was it night vision? Now I can’t remember. But he uses a crossbow (cupid reference) and murders people at places associated with love and romance: a winery, a drive-in screening of HIS GIRL FRIDAY, a carnival, a chapel. He also has advanced fighting and knife throwing skills – why not?  There’s a good practical/digital effects mix, including a shot that seems inspired by that one memorable shot from the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE remake. (The one in the van.) There are some fun, funny kills, which is not always the case even in some of the better slasher movies these days, so I have to respect it.

It follows the whodunit format of slasher, which I usually think of as the SCREAM style, but obviously it goes back earlier, including to the original MY BLOODY VALENTINE. Some of what happens I saw coming from far away, but that’s okay. You never guess all the details. Here is a NON-SPECIFIC SPOILER BUT STILL A SPOILER: there’s more than one killer and it’s kinda funny that they explicitly spell out which ones did which killings, instead of letting fans speculate, as with the SCREAM movies.

They’re already planning a sequel and I suspect it will be the SCREAM format that we follow the same leads, who will not die, and they get stalked by a rotating gallery of copycats. Whoever they may be, the Valentine’s Day and romance themes do lend themselves well to slasher movies, since broken hearts, jealousy and feeling left out are standard backstories for killers. Detective Hobbes assumes the killer is an incel, a modern concept but it could arguably apply to Jason, Leatherface, Jacob Goodnight, and many others.

I don’t think HEART EYES lives up to the potential of its premise, and I hope its producers go broke and have to become baristas and deal with coffee orders even more complicated than Ally and Jay’s. And I hope nobody ever tips them, even one time. But I am a fair man so I will admit that this is a reasonably entertaining movie with some good aspects, so it’s decent enough Valentine’s Day horror viewing if you’re in the market for something like that.

P.S. If you read my review of BLUE MOON you may remember me writing about how the methods of making Ethan Hawke look short were devised by his friend who scores the movies he directs and who also is the son of the guy who wrote the book PUMPING IRON is based on and invented paintball, and the brother of the first women’s snowboard champion. That guy’s name is Latham Gaines and he plays Nico, the aforementioned cameraman who’s first person killed in HEART EYES. A funny character with a good death. 2025 was his year I guess!