REVIEW: Heart Eyes [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: February 7th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Screen Gems / Sony Pictures Releasing
Director(s): Josh Ruben
Writer(s): Phillip Murphy and Christopher Landon & Michael Kennedy

I hope Cupid shoots you in the dick.

It’s an inspired move to give your horror film Dante “I’m not even supposed to be here” Hicks energy. It’s even more so to let your characters actually vocalize it. Because that’s what happens when the “Heart Eyes Killer” (HEK) first attacks Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding). Sure, they scream and run and try to incapacitate their serial killer pursuer, but they also pause, turn in his direction, and incredulously exclaim, “We’re not even a couple!” It doesn’t matter that the opening prologue shows us that HEK will kill anyone regardless of their romantic status as long as they’re close enough to him or in his way. These two really just hope he’ll apologize and search for a different, on-brand target.

That sort of irreverent tone runs throughout Heart Eyes thanks to the comedy-horror minds behind its making (including Josh Ruben as director and Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy as screenwriters alongside the more comedy-action leaning Phillip Murphy). One of the most dramatic moments in the entire film takes place while two people are audibly having sex behind Ally and Jay’s dialogue, so know that every instance of earnest sincerity will eventually be waylaid by a punch line. This isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. Because this isn’t a slasher built for body count. It’s a high-adrenaline situation meant to prevent Ally from ignoring the fact that her “romance is a lie” ethos might be flawed.

Not that she won’t still default to overthinking and self-sabotage anyway. It only takes one lull in a conversation or the bloody action for her to pull her defenses back up and shut down the possibility of love yet again. Ally does this so many times that being pursued by a murderer becomes the sole reason she even gets a second, third, and fourth chance at falling for Jay. She might as well put on pilot wings and fly him out of state herself considering the lengths she goes to kill his buzz, call him a sap, and kick him to the curb. In many ways, HEK becomes their unwitting Cupid by doing everything but hitting his mark. Rather than get impaled, their narrow escapes bring them closer.

It’s a smart script as a result—always subverting expectations and genre tropes. Whether it’s reversing the usual slasher modus operandi by having the killer go after the two people not having sex in the film or a great anti-“Scooby Doo” reveal culminating in a “Who the hell is that guy?”, the joke is always about progressing the plot, creating more uncertainty, or revealing exactly why Ally and Jay are single. She comes on too strong with her jaded vibes while he comes on even stronger with his Hallmark schmaltz. When he pulls away, she becomes apologetic and full of regret. When she pushes him away, he becomes sarcastic and adopts a martyr complex. Their back and forth is “married couple” coded in the funniest, pettiest ways.

Every love topic you can think about is included too. There are the detectives on HEK’s trail: Jeanine (Jordana Brewster) swiping on the apps to find a nice guy while her partner Zeke (Devon Sawa) exudes alpha male toxicity. Ally’s BFF Monica (Gigi Zumbado) is in a relationship with an older, rich man she calls her “sponsor.” There’s a wedding proposal gone wrong. Instagram stalking of an ex. Kink play. And the illest-timed date proposition possible courtesy of a friendly IT guy shooting his shot (Yoson An). Add a sold out Valentine’s Day drive-in, some date night fine dining, a coffee shop meet-cute, and an upscale wardrobe montage and you could play rom-com Bingo a few times over before the credits roll.

You could do the same with the number of horror earmarks too, but that part of Heart Eyes is definitely the filter through which the romantic comedy is playing. HEK is the distraction trying to keep the love birds apart who only ends up giving them the opportunity to realize they’re exactly who the other needs. His is a fun costume with its glowing red night vision eyes (which, despite the publicity materials, is only briefly used once) and Cupid crossbow (although a machete does most of the damage) to make this baddie different from the other lumbering mask-wearers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, but the similarity to those icons is also intentional to ensure we don’t turn our focus exclusively onto him.

We’re meant to care about Ally and Jay surviving—not to be the film’s “final girls,” but to be a heartwarming, unlikely happy ending to the love-won’t-be-denied narrative. HEK is merely the personification of their opposing trauma responses to love. The obstacle they must overcome to finally see their fairy tale dreams come true. Both Holt and Gooding understand the assignment in that regard as well as the awkward and abrasive attitudes that make their characters so entertainingly dumb when it comes to their penchant to self-destruct along the way. If HEK’s goal is truly to stop love in its tracks, he should have just left these two alone because their precision at killing the mood is unparalleled.