‘Heart Eyes’ Is A Surprisingly Fun Union Of Romcom and Horror

Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt) is the perfect romcom protagonist – having recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend, she’s naturally feeling pretty down on love, despite the fact she works in marketing for a jewelry company. Then, she has a suitably awkward meet-cute with a charming, attractive man named Jay (Mason Gooding); only to find out he’s become a co-worker at her firm. Worse yet, it all happens on Valentine’s Day!

However, Ally isn’t a romcom; at least, that’s the only genre she’s experiencing on this dreadful day. Heart Eyes, directed by comedian and actor Josh Ruben, is a highly entertaining mixture of horror and romance that’ll get your heart throbbing in more ways than one. 

The premise of Heart Eyes is undeniably solid – ‘what if a romcom was a slasher movie’ is such a great premise that it’s hard not to ponder why this is the first movie to use it. The results are actually quite strong, owing to the fact that it strikes a good balance between these seemingly opposed styles of filmmaking. 

Heart Eyes plays many of the beats you’d expect of both romcoms and horror films, but does so with a tongue firmly in its cheek. I mean, the serial killer of the movie, called the Heart Eyes Killer (or HEK), wears an emoji mask to hide his face and only kills couples on Valentine’s Day – this won’t even be your first clue that this is a movie having fun with its genre interplay, rather than taking it seriously. 

That interplay is host to some of the movie’s funniest moments, too. It’s particularly entertaining when Ally and Jy have to insist that they’re not actually a couple and are simply co-workers to your horror movie serial killer, who is naturally rocking murder gear with a bunch of hearts on it. 

Heart Eyes is delightful fun

It’s really great fun when the movie fully leans all the way in on its gonzo premise, and its clear reverence for both romcom and horror history means both aspects of the film are genuinely well-made, too. It’s honestly surprising just how well these two genres mash, with the highs and lows matching up in a surprisingly cohesive way.

This is really helped by two really great performances from leads Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, who manage to have genuine chemistry with one another while playing both the romantic and terrifying parts of their characters in a balanced way. Frankly, it’s a movie that doesn’t work without either of their performances. 

I do think that the movie could’ve gone further with its premise, and like many horror movies, its final twenty minutes do leave a bit to be desired. The actual horror in the Heart Eyes is pretty solid, creating a number of tense scenes and creative kills, it’s hardly re-inventing the wheel if you have even passing familiarity with horror films. 

But I think it’s perhaps a bit unfair to expect total originality from Heart Eyes – after all, its pitch isn’t to be a new take on either horror or romcom. Instead, it asks what happens when these two radically different genres come together to form a new kind of relationship. As it turns out, opposites attract.

★★★½

Heart Eyes is in cinemas now.