HEART EYES movie poster | ©2025 Sony Pictures/Screen Gems

Rating: R
Stars: Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Gigi Zumbado, Michaela Watkins, Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa
Writers: Phillip Murphy and Christopher Landon & Michael Kennedy
Director: Josh Ruben
Distributor: Sony/Screen Gems
Release Date: February 7, 2025

As masked slasher horror/Hallmark-type romantic comedies go, it’s hard to imagine a more perfect example than HEART EYES. Writers Phillip Murphy and Christopher Landon & Michael Kennedy and director Josh Ruben demonstrate keen knowledge of both genres, plus the ability to affectionately and cleverly poke fun at both. Simultaneously and miraculously, HEART EYES manages to faithfully replicate the look and feel of more sober offerings, while spinning round the tropes.

We’re in Seattle, where workaholic Ally (Olivia Holt) worries about her job status to best friend Monica (Gigi Zumbado). Ally has good reason for concern. She’s in marketing at a jewelry company, and she’s created what is surely one of the engagement/wedding ring ads ever (we see the video). Among other things, this demonstrates Ally’s reflexive fear of commitment.

Ally is therefore resistant to the charms of new hire Jay (Mason Gooding). Mason is handsome, sensitive, polite, and even shares some of Ally’s idiosyncrasies. Their steel magnolia boss Crystal (Michaela Watkins) dictates that Ally and Jay will work together to salvage the ad campaign in time for Valentine’s Day.

This causes them to run afoul of the Heart Eyes Killer (HEK for short), a masked maniac who, yes, has light-up hearts in the mask eyes. HEK goes after couples on and around Valentine’s Day. Previous stomping/slashing grounds have included Philadelphia and Boston. Now HEK is active in Seattle, and mistakes Ally and Jay for a bonded pair.

HEART EYES is a remarkable cinematic sleight of hand. It is set in the present, but has a slightly retro look, recalling the heyday of slashers. There’s even an important sequence set at that yesteryear horror/romance staple, the drive-in movie theatre.

This kind of effort can be unendurable when not funny, but HEART EYES is in fact hilarious. This reviewer’s screening companion confessed that he’d missed some of the dialogue, because he was laughing too hard to hear it.

There are visual gags, there are verbal punchlines, there are colossal gross-outs. Some of the best jokes aren’t even genre-related, they’re just moments that we never see coming, but are extraordinarily on target.

Holt excels at being a final girl whose determination grows incrementally and with the diffident neuroses besetting young women in her position from the dawn of time. Gooding makes Jay the sort of gentleman who would be at home centering a season of THE BACHELOR, although we’re more ready to accept Jay’s bona fides.

This may be the one snag in HEART EYES. While Holt and Gooding are individually terrific and have crack timing together, we never really observe the chemistry between them that everyone else discusses. It’s not a major problem, since everything is zooming along so fast and furiously that we’re caught up in the film’s momentum. (Additionally, some of the romcoms referenced here have had the same issue; since those don’t have horror to fall back on, it’s more noticeable there.)

The supporting cast is tops, especially those tasked with providing the inevitable exposition.

HEART EYES is just about everything we could hope for in this kind of mashup. Horror purists may get impatient, and romance fans who don’t like horror will likely find it too gory and jumpy, but for everyone else, it’s a heart-shaped holiday treat.

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