Heart Eyes Review: It's Nasty (Genius of Love)
A brilliant mix for the fans of Scream and Hallmark movies, which I gather is most of you
Somehow, the target demographic for the Scream movies has grown up to be the biggest advocates for Hallmark rom-coms, especially of the Christmas/holiday-themed variety. Heart Eyes makes a play for both sides of that coin at once, and what may come as surprise to casual ticket-buyers is just how much it is a full-on holiday rom-com, one in which the conceit that keeps the perfectly matched lead characters from getting together until the end just happens to be a violent, masked killer.
The holiday in this case is Valentine's Day, so of course the beautiful, Julia Stiles-ish blonde Ally (Olivia Holt) has personal reasons for absolutely hating the holiday, which are particularly unfortunate given that her job in advertising is to sell jewelry. With her latest commercial campaign rejected for being insanely, absurdly depressing and morbid – especially with a masked killer on the loose – she has to work the holiday to come up with a better one, and be subordinate to new-in-town handsome guy Jay (Mason Gooding) with whom she's already had a coincidental meet-cute at the coffee shop. He, of course, is a hopeless (and hopelessly nice) romantic, and so perfect-looking that even his slightly crooked lower teeth are like Cindy Crawford's mole – a slight imperfection that both humanizes and calls attention to the flawlessness in every other feature.
Before all of this, though, we're treated to a taste of H.E.K., the Heart-Eyes Killer (Alex McColl), so named because he wears a mask that looks like a smiley-face emoji with heart eyes. An over-the-top-level stupid couple engage in a ridiculous proposal at a vineyard (She: “This place is just so gorge!” He: “You make me think!”), and the killer, using a crossbow, throwing knives, kukri, and of course the wine press available to hand, dispatches them violently. A montage of news reports reveals he's been doing this for two years now, so the movie doesn't have to waste a lot of time setting that aspect up. H.E.K. kills couples every Valentine's Day, but the cynical kids interviewed about it don't care, commenting, “I hope Cupid shoots you in the dick!”
Initially, this feels like one of those Saturday Night Live sketches wherein a movie-like crisis situation is suddenly populated by characters who are realistically stupid. Ally is not one – she went to medical school but couldn't stand the sight of blood and had to quit. Her boss (Michaela Watkins), however, is comically evil, full of kidding-not-kidding death threats; her best friend (Gigi Zumbado) is, as mandated in rom-coms, full of encouragement and wacky humor (she's dating a caricature of a rich old guy, whom we never see).
When Ally and Jay meet for a dinner non-date to talk business, the wrong idea is had by all, including the Heart Eyes Killer, who promptly targets them. While awkwardly escaping, Jay and Ally both help and hinder one another in the way screwball comedy does, all as gruesomely yucky kills pile up.
Color me glad that Screen Gems didn't opt to go PG-13 for this. H.E.K. is a lot more violent than Ghostface, probably in the realization that Art the Clown has upped the gore game; and the comedy part of the rom-com involves plenty of profanity. Unusually for modern theatrical rom-coms – but not for Hallmark – the principals don't have sex halfway through. It's in keeping, perhaps, with the current generation's perceived lack of interest in movie intercourse, as is the fact that H.E.K. is more easily triggered than Jason Voorhees: it only takes a kiss to put him in stalking mode. This also makes the screwball structure more classic – the leopards in Bringing up Baby didn't actually violently kill anyone onscreen, but the threat that one could have created important tension.
At a certain point, Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster show up as an over-the-top pair of cops pointedly named Hobbs and Shaw: he's super angry, she's super horny, and together they could be stars of a different movie, perhaps one significantly better than the actual Hobbs and Shaw. Here, they simply add to the stew of actual characters on display – writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy have done their best to ensure there are no small parts in this, and even the bit players feel like they have full backstories we don't yet know. Considering the way franchises work these days, those who survive may yet appear again to show us more.
My biggest nitpick with the film, in as broadly spoiler-free terms as I can put it, is that it comes to a perfectly respectable ending that feels satisfying, and then tacks on an entire extra sequence. It might be because said extra-sequence feels more blatantly cribbed from the Scream series, or because I was so into the rom-com element that I wanted the rom-com ending, and the movie needed its horror-franchise ending too. That said, as much as the movie trades in broad comedy, usually as a result of people being plausibly stupid, the ending-ending takes a step precariously close to preposterous in its reveals. If it doesn't quite break its own rules, it bends them with a fury.
Up until then I was cheering with everyone else – when H.E.K. flicked on his light-up eyes, the guy next to me audibly said, with no sense of obvious irony, “Night vision! This guy's a genius!” I didn't even mind the talking, as it was exactly the sort of thing a character onscreen could have said in that moment. And who knows – maybe on rewatch, the final ending will fit better when it isn't thwarting my immediate expectations. When a movie walks the genre tightrope so well, I hate to see so much as a minor slip.
Any potential sequels have thus been forewarned.
(...that I will do nothing more than complain for about a minute that nobody listened to me.)
Heart Eyes opens in theaters Feb. 7. Images courtesy of Screen Gems/Sony.