HEART EYES
**
Directed by Josh Ruben.
Starring Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding, Jordana Brewster, Devon Sawa.
Horror comedy, US, 97 minutes, Certificate 18.
Released in cinemas in the UK on February 14th by Paramount Pictures.
Slashers and rom-coms: two seemingly disparate genres that on a surface level could not be more different. Scratch that surface with whatever sharp edged instrument is at hand and you will find certain similarities. There is a reliance on cliches that reveal the structural set-ups and pay-offs that turn fans in both camps into repeat customers, happy to wallow in the familiarity of it all, like a cosy blanket. Whether it is yet another meet-cute between a seemingly mismatched couple or the triumphant rise and revenge of a bloodied Final Girl, a well-earned romantic kiss or an expertly executed gory kill scene, it could be argued that the two seemingly mismatched genres were actually made for each other.
While there have been romantic horror-comedies before, with both LISA FRANKENSTEIN and YOUR MONSTER popping up in the last year as well as the similarly inflected COMPANION still fresh in our minds, director Josh Ruben, along with co-writers Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, jams them together in such an obvious fashion that makes you wonder why no-one has ever attempted it before. Events certainly kick off in high style, or not as the case may be with a dire country rock soundtrack and a pink inflected sheen smeared across the screen, as a young couple go through a proposal that seems to be more important to mark down on social media in just the right way than a case of true love. What a relief then to see a masked maniac firing off his own particular brand of Cupid’s Arrows, which have infinitely gorier results.
Known as the Hearts Eyes Killer, or HEK as the media like to call him, this homicidal heartbreaker has been terrorising the country by dispatching amorous couples. Not a good time then for pitch designer Ally to meet the hunky Jay, who has been brought into her firm to fix Ally's disastrous campaign featuring some of the most tragic romances of pop culture, a campaign that is seen online as in poor taste due to Heart Eyes Killers’s murderous rampage and ripe for cancelling. As Ally and Jay come to realise they may have more in common than they realise, a certain serial killer literally catches them in his sights and decides to add them to his kill list.
On one hand, this is your basic Netflix/Hallmark programme filler mixed with your run of the mill seasonal slasher. Bringing the two together should result in an entertaining riff that highlights the differences and cliches, bringing the two styles together in a fun fashion but Ruben misses the mark numerous times here, instead settling for the easy and lazy laughs every time. Nothing new or fresh is brought to the table, resulting in a film that seems content to trot out the usual plotlines in the usual fashion that reduces the two genres to their most basic elements. Despite the effective styling of HEK and his nifty night vision goggles and a smattering of some decent gore gags, already spoiled in the trailers, there is very little on offer here to shock and amuse.
Despite its near high-concept, this is a very empty film with nothing memorable to say. The pop culture-saturated jokes are already dated, marking the film out as something with a very short shelf-life. At the same time, the bland coupling of Ally and Jay, played by Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, may be seen as a cutting commentary on rom-com couples. Still, it only highlights the obviousness of the scant humour on offer here. Even when all is revealed about HEK, it only feels that Ruben has a slight grasp on this aspect also, as nothing memorable is even offered here. What could have been a smart slice of counterprogramming for Valentine's season will only go down as something more disposable that will soon pop up on streaming and be quickly swiped left in favour of a rewatch of MY BLOODY VALENTINE or LOVE, ACTUALLY.
Iain MacLeod