Review
Heart Eyes (Romance, Comedy, Horror) (2025)
Director: Josh Ruben
Writer: Phillip Murphy, Michael Kennedy, Christopher Landon
Stars: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Jordana Brewster
Chased by the Heart Eyes Killer, the strained flirtation between two coworkers leads to a late-night fight to survive — and love after all.
Prominent alumni for Dropout (Formerly known as CollegeHumor), Josh Ruben transitioned into horror/comedy features, such as ‘’Scare Me’’, and ‘’Werewolves Within’’. Teaming with the experienced genre writer Christopher Landon and others, they completed filming ‘’Heart Eyes’’ in New Zealand in 2024. It was produced by Spyglass Media Group and Divide/Conquer while being distributed by Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Releasing, Republic Pictures and Paramount Pictures internationally.
Each Valentine’s Day, a masked murderer known as the Heart Eyes Killer (Shortened to HEK) prowls the streets of a city seemingly chosen at random. Always resulting in a killing spree on couples and anyone who stands in the way. This year, he lands in Seattle as Ally (Olivia Holt), and Jay (Mason Gooding) find themselves in a petty situationship, a prime target for the HEK, who hunts them in a night-long chase. Their conflict stretches through the city, as anyone in his way becomes a target towards his murderous intent — and our misread pair might be more than they bargained for.
In a deliberately hare-brained genre-mash-up — inspired by other slashers such as ‘’Scream’’, Ruben approaches his film as a fluidly progressing rom-com first, with the serial killer coming in as just another unfortunate obstacle on the path towards finding love.
Refusing to compromise on its humorous stylings, foreshadowing arrives as a shadow of the sub-genre, functioning less as a genuine suspense-builder and more like an inevitability. Even so, the HEK’s motives are clarified by subtraction, stripping away any pre-conceived expectations rather than glorifying a mythos. Police Investigators, wittingly named Hobbs and Shaw, embody further archetypes of obliviousness and poor survival instincts. Most akin to the ‘’Friday the 13th’’ franchise slasher Jason Voorhees, Heart Eyes carries a constant forward momentum — a machine-like figure built for the destruction of others.
Carrying us through various locales, this impetus is sustained through fluid pacing — reinforcing the threat as a constant pursuit of our would-be couple without fault. Holt and Gooding match convincingly, serving the feature’s direct purpose and resonance, which provides a coherent mishmash of romance and horror—a fine alternative to the typical romantic comedy. An expansive pre-finale, complete with a smooth director cameo, crowns the film’s positively ludicrous screenplay with what feels like a fitting endpoint — one it unfortunately continues beyond.
Utterly surprising in its non-pretentious attitude, this modern slasher-rom-com succeeds in calibre alone. In the closing section, the honest-to-goodness end sequence comes across as less confident, an attempt to ensure the audience has absorbed past clues. Given that a sequel is already in the works, this material might’ve served more effectively as a reintroduction or continuation for that film, without needing to re-invent an already established villain.
Verdict
Head Over Heels — Heart First.
7,5
