Streaming Review: HEART EYES (2025)

Heart Eyes (2025) makes me want to yell at a cloud.

I rarely watch a movie in one go these days. It happened last night, however. I felt a bit under-the-weather. Stark, Boba Phil, DrunkenYoda and Hawkzino asked me for feedback on their initial attempts at OnlyFans videos. That was…unnerving. At least some good came from it. Stark made an appointment with his doctor because…

Well, you’ll know it when you see it.

Let’s move on to Heart Eyes so I can put all that behind me. On second thought, I don’t want it behind me either. I mostly want a head injury juuuuust bad enough to make me forget it all ever happened.

Major spoilers for Heart Eyes ahead…

 

Heart Eyes

Heart Eyes has gotten some love lately. Positive recommendations for it pop up on my feeds. It is about a slasher who targets couples on Valentine’s Day. In this case, the killer targets a couple who aren’t really a couple. Violence ensues. Jokes happen. Lessons are learned. It very much feels like a Blumhouse movie in the tone of something like Happy Death Day.

Let’s take a long view for a moment. I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of slasher films. I’m aware that obscure entries exist but not enough to avoid painting with a broad brush here. If I’m way off, an Outposter can correct me.

Let’s float the idea that John Carpenter’s Halloween essentially said all there is to say with a slasher film. In a similar manner, Dan O’Bannon famously said Alien was played out after the first film, and he was correct. That’s why Cameron made Aliens a war film.

This is not to say embellishments have not been made along the way within the slasher genre. The Friday the 13th franchise started to make the slasher film about inventive kills. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise added an overt supernatural element.

 

Heart Eyes Scream

Eventually, slasher films started spinning their wheels until Scream came along and made hay on being “meta.” I am a fan of the first Scream. Being meta is simply icing on the cake. Ultimately, Scream works because it is built on the solid foundation of a whodunit. Plus, its casting director, Lisa Beach, operated at elite levels.

Yet, this did not come without a cost. Scream was such a benchmark for slashers that it seems like no one has any other idea what to do with the genre since. The last 30 years have been one Scream clone after another.

Heart Eyes is no different. Like a copy of a copy of a copy, it is a threadbare imitation of the original. I did not heart Heart Eyes. I want to have a messy breakup with it where I empty the bank account and write it a letter stating I had chlamydia the whole time. Then I want to tell it that I’m in love with its best friend. And I want to finish by stating that I lied every time I said it looked pretty in its favorite dress, and that it actually looked like a grub with psoriasis.

Bear in mind, this declaration comes from a man who once simp’ed at a pro level. I am not ashamed to admit my shortcomings. It’s how we grow. Hopefully, Heart Eyes is mature enough to do the same.

 

Egad, My Heart Eyes! They Burn!

Virtually every character in Heart Eyes is insufferable. Even a character as simple as a paramedic checking our heroes can’t be normal. The movie must show how the paramedic is funny in their own odd way, which amounts to standing awkwardly and stopping the movie dead in its tracks.

Likewise, the first victims can’t be people the viewer might like. They have to be a douchebag and a douchehag. Because…it’s funny, I guess. Look at them say the F word for no reason. Haha. So edgy. People are the worst, aren’t they?

Blame must be laid at the feet of director Josh Ruben. He must have asked for performances like this. Ruben also directed Werewolves Within. In Ruben’s defense, I enjoyed Werewolves Within. Maybe that film inspired him more. As for Heart Eyes, he seems to direct it with all the vim and vigor of malaria victim self-medicating with valium.

In addition, Heart Eyes has zero cinematic value. It has that “Netflix” look, which is like a movie squeezed into an a sitcom-like box with the green color balance turned up. Meanwhile, the killer does that walk that every slasher does since Kane Hodder brought it to Jason. Stuff like this inspires me to channel Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Ah, Heart Eyes, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…

Heart Eyes was written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy. They have recognizable credits among them: The Expendables 4, the aforementioned Happy Death Day and Freaky.

No doubt exists this trio put words on a page with Heart Eyes. Yes, words. But, honestly, what more can they do? Scream clones are so played out they are essentially recipe cards rather than screenplays at this point.

 

Heart Eyes The Cast

Olivia Holt (Totally Killer) plays the female lead. She’s a spunky character who has been hurt to the point she doesn’t believe in love, but she is willing to drop the steel curtain of her manhood for the right guy. Yet, in real life, no one should date this type of girl. She would give up all she has to offer by the second date and reveal a core built on complaints. Plus, never trust a woman with a two-pronged sex toy. She doesn’t know whether she is coming or going.

Cuba Gooding Junior’s son, Mason, is the male lead. His character has also been hurt to the point where he doesn’t believe in love. Women just don’t understand his “muscles are made for cuddling.” Yet, he is willing to drop the steel curtain of his womanhood for the right girl.

Together, they have all the chemistry of Charles Nelson Reilly and Margaret Thatcher.

Devon Sawa (Final Destination) and Jordana Brewster (The Faculty) are also in the film as policemen. I did not use the wrong word there either. Brewster plays the role very masculine, so policemen is the correct term.

Heart Eyes is not afraid to remind us it’s an open-minded world. As another example, two lesbians are momentarily featured as being threatened by the killer as he stalks through a drive-in movie theater. Absolutely zero reason exists for the movie to do this narratively, other than so we can maybe try to identify which lesbian is the abusive one in the relationship.

 

Heart Eyes The Ending

For a so-called “comedy” horror film, I did not laugh during Heart Eyes. Comedy can be a subjective term. For example, I am not a fan of George Carlin, but I have no problem admitting he has talent in the realm of comedy.

Heart Eyes has no talent in the realm of comedy. After the Michael-Cera levels of awkwardness Stark, Boba Phil, DrunkenYoda and Hawkzino subjected me to, I needed the release of laugher. That did not happen. For that, I’m going to ruin the Heart Eyes ending. I don’t care. Brace yourselves for this fresh twist:

There isn’t one killer! There aren’t even two! There are three!

The killers are Jordana Brewster, her husband, played by Yoson An (The Meg), and some guy, who doesn’t matter at all. They kill because it’s their kink, man. We know this because the exposition of their motive seems to last roughly 10 minutes.

Olivia Holt’s character then says some really badass lines that will hardly make you groan at all, and the movie is, blessedly, over. Until the sequel, of course. Welcome to the next slasher franchise, kids. The genius of it all hits one right in the forehead like a diamond bullet. You see, the killer is called Heart Eyes because his mask has hearts…for eyes!

Thirty years ago, this concept would have been a parody movie trailer in a Naked Gun movie. Now the unironic Rotten Tomatoes consensus is:

“A mixture of a gory slasher and a sweet rom-com that ingeniously nails both formulas, Heart Eyes serves up a bloody valentine that’ll make the heart skip a beat.”

Who cares about my heart skipping a beat? I should have just skipped Heart Eyes.

I hate clouds…

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