Heart Eyes is what happens when your favorite cozy Valentine’s Day movie swipes right on Scream. Directed by Josh Ruben and written by Phillip Murphy, Michael Kennedy, and Christopher Landon (yes, that Happy Death Day guy), this one doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel so much as stick a big bloody heart in the middle of it. And while it’s not flawless, it is fun — sharp, self-aware, and gleefully unhinged when it needs to be.
The premise is the kind of pitch you wish more studios greenlit: A serial killer targeting couples every Valentine’s Day mistakes two coworkers for a pair of lovebirds and stalks them across Seattle. The result is a slasher that leans heavily into rom-com tropes — meet-cutes, misunderstandings, last-minute dashes — then blindsides you with spurting neck wounds. It’s Notting Hill by way of Urban Legend, and somehow, that works.
Chemistry, But Also Blood Chemistry
Let’s start with the couple at the heart of all this. Olivia Holt’s Ally is a jewelry pitch designer reeling from a breakup, saddled with a murderously bad commercial idea, and stuck collaborating with Jay, a smooth, possibly smug advertising consultant played by Mason Gooding. It’s a classic enemies-to-lovers setup, complete with sarcastic jabs and slow-burn flirtation. Only here, their first big fight is interrupted by a masked killer with a heart motif and a fondness for creative homicides.
Holt and Gooding have solid chemistry. They actually feel like real people caught up in a cartoonishly bloody situation. Ally is sarcastic but vulnerable, Jay is confident but not annoying — which is a bigger feat than it sounds like. Their banter carries the film through some of its clunkier exposition dumps and even manages to hold up once limbs start flying. That’s more than I can say for most horror couples.
The supporting cast? Mostly there to die. Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster play the cops (and more, as we learn), and they lean into the material with just the right amount of genre-awareness. Michaela Watkins shows up as Ally’s chaotic boss with exactly the kind of weird energy you want in this kind of movie. And yes, there’s an IT guy named David who goes from awkward to absolutely terrifying with impressive speed.
Death by Love Language
The kills in Heart Eyes are gleefully nasty. This isn’t a restrained, art-house horror film — it’s a Valentine’s Day massacre with a Hallmark filter. We get murder at a winery, a spa killing, a cabbie stabbed mid-ride, and a drive-in slaughter that doubles as the film’s midpoint bloodbath and its most visually striking set piece.
But the movie really hits its gory stride in the last 30 minutes, when it drops the dating metaphors and goes full bonkers. We get stabbings, impalements, and a Saint Valentine statue that delivers one of the most delightfully over-the-top decapitations I’ve seen in a while. If you’re coming to Heart Eyes for the carnage, you won’t leave disappointed.
That said, the tonal balancing act doesn’t always work. Sometimes the film swings too hard from romantic sincerity to splatter-comedy, and not every transition lands. There are stretches where you can feel the script trying to justify why it wants to be both 10 Things I Hate About You and My Bloody Valentine, and occasionally it stumbles.
So, Who’s Killing the Vibe?
The twist — and I won’t spoil the specifics — takes what starts as a simple masked-killer scenario and complicates it with motivations that are… honestly a little silly, but in a way that fits the film’s go-for-broke attitude. The killers’ rationale feels like something out of an R-rated Criminal Minds episode, and it gets extra points for being bizarrely kinky.
And yet, even with its absurdity, the climax works because the characters have earned it. Ally and Jay don’t just survive — they fight back with some surprisingly creative final blows. Metal straws and sword statues have never been put to better use.
The epilogue leans a little too sweet for my taste, but then again, if you’ve just gone through a serial killing spree with someone and managed to not only survive but kill the killers together, you’ve probably earned a little sappy couple time.
Final Thoughts
Heart Eyes is messy. Tonally weird. Occasionally too clever for its own good. But it’s also one of the more enjoyable horror-comedy hybrids I’ve seen in a while. It plays with genre expectations without losing its grip on either the romance or the slasher elements, and that’s not easy.
At the very least, it’s a bloody good time — and in a genre that often serves up cardboard characters and recycled plots, Heart Eyes brings a little charm, a little chaos, and just enough heart to stand out.