Director: Josh Ruben
Cast: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Devon Sawa, Jordana Brewster
Rating: (R16)
★★★+
REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL
Heart Eyes (Reading) is the first date movie of 2024; a competent convergence of ’90s and 2000s-inspired romantic comedies with the contemporary slasher revival of the past decade.
An entry into the canon of Scream knockoffs, the movie is an innovative low-budget thrill that outdoes the genre tropes of the films it pulls from for a gross-out ordeal that lands in the higher echelon of "popcorn flick".
Sweet and sickening, the gory and murderous characteristics give the impression of a much darker film, constantly interrupted by almost parody-level rom-com cliches.
For each of the past two years, on February 14 (Valentine’s Day), a loveless, homicidal serial killer known as "Heart Eyes" has carried out violent sprees, targeting couples who show public displays of affection on the ill-omened date.
On Valentine’s Day of year three, Ally (Olivia Holt), a marketer on the verge of losing her job at a jewellery company, butts heads (literally, ending in a bloody nose for him) with the apparently perfect Jay (Mason Gooding), a tall and handsome man, who she doesn’t know is the emergency hire her company has brought in to fix her disastrous promotional campaign.
Despite having only met on Valentine’s morning, their chemistry is undeniable (although one of the brilliant comic elements of the film relies on the two insisting that they are just work colleagues and not a real couple), and a revenge-fuelled kiss between the pair upsets the leather-masked, heart-eyed, cupid arrow shooting villain into an all-night, murderous pursuit of the pair.
The film is made by its two lead performances — Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding (who, perhaps coincidentally, appeared in the latest two Scream films). Both are lesser-seen actors who do a fantastic job building chemistry, elevating the material higher and higher throughout the film.
Two immaculate set pieces further distinguish the playful ingenuity of Heart Eyes from its cheap and cheesy peers: a night-vision, video game-esque first-person POV sequence from Heart Eyes’ perspective at the police station and a Terrifier 2-style car-horror slasher sequence at a drive-in screening of His Girl Friday.
Unfortunately, for all its clever innovation, the final set piece of the film is fairly unremarkable — in the style of the low-effort Scream knockoff without transforming the material in any way.
The ham-fisting of a certain plot point is so bewildering that you’re left chuckling and reminded of the unseriousness of the entire affair. The Barbarian-style presentation of the film — "guy who coincidentally falls into my life corresponds with the bad things happening around me" — is unconvincing, especially considering the Scream-ness of it all (it might have been more interesting to have double-bluffed the film and ended up this way).
But Heart Eyes is a perfectly serviceable addition to the holiday horror canon.
