REVIEW: ‘Heart Eyes’ Is For The Lovers And The Haters

The thought of Valentine’s Day conjures a fuzzy warmth or a vitriolic disdain. It’s one of those contentious holidays, reduced to a commercial gimmick or embraced as a singular occasion to celebrate that special someone. The films that typically accompany the so-called Hallmark holiday almost always fall into one of these two fervent camps— as complementary or counterprogramming. Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes (2025) is the rare antidote to those opposing sentiments, packing in the lovey-dovey schmaltz of a Lifetime romance and the over-the-top gore of a satisfying slasher.

Whether moviegoers seek a warm embrace or a cold bludgeoning, Heart Eyes (2025) offers both as a loveable mashup that consistently fuses its two genres with a complimentary sleight of hand. Ruben’s film works as both a romantic comedy and a horror experience, armed with laugh-out-loud gags and tense sequences that are both cynical and thoroughly romantic. Above all else, it’s a film that knows how to keep love in the air while splattering heaps of blood on the ground.

After beginning with a marriage proposal that quickly transforms into a gruesome opening right at home in the Scream films, Heart Eyes (2025) shifts its focus to Ally (Olivia Holt), who works in advertising for a jewelry brand. Her latest Valentine’s campaign centered around the famous adage “Till death do us part,” leaves a sour taste in the wake of a series of brutal killings by the infamous “Heart Eyes” killer—a masked murderer who targets couples on Valentine’s Day—resulting in her company bringing on skilled freelancer Jay (Mason Gooding), a practical walking Adonis.

Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding have great chemistry in Heart Eyes (2025).

Jay has an obvious crush on the crestfallen Ally, whose feelings of professional and romantic anguish are exacerbated by her ex’s social media posts with his new beau. Armed with an aura that radiates charisma, confidence, and impossibly good sex, he struggles to break through Ally’s hardened and disillusioned outlook.

For her, love is a cheap trick, guaranteed to end in sorrow or, worse yet, death. Yet, when the two bump into Ally’s ex, an impromptu kiss makes them the perfect targets for a Valentine’s Day killing spree; as they attempt to evade the clutches of the killer, their budding, innate chemistry makes it difficult to prove to their assailant they are, in fact, not together.

Deftly alternating from fashion montages to painfully slow decapitations, Heart Eyes (2025) perfectly tows the line between its two conflicting genres, weaponizing their tropes, gimmicks, and cliches in a manner that’s both winkingly self-aware and loveably stupid. For all its bloodletting, Ruben’s film is an incredibly giving experience, knowing when to lean into its campy, corny rom-com dialogue (“These muscles are not for violence, they’re for cuddling!”) and when to commence the gnarly butchery.

From vibrators making their way into jump scares to two smooching lovers being made one with a tire iron, the film becomes a comical playground for connoisseurs and detractors of its dual genres. Ruben cements a cutesy rom-com that slyly teeters on the edge of gore, transforming even the most tired motifs into endearing qualities, rendering trite dialogue like “I didn’t know murder was a love language” into a cheesy thing of beauty.

The camerawork evokes the flat, overlit filmmaking of the Hallmark channel.

This quality would be negative in any other film but is reworked into a purposeful choice, allowing the romance to bask in its ardent corniness and the sudden bouts of violence to be made much more visceral. This dichotomy allows Heart Eyes (2025) to repeatedly tap into a perverse sense of pleasure, relishing its clean, crisp, and idyllic version of romance and its guttural, graphic takedown. The film is acutely made for all the lovers and the haters.

Yet, Heart Eyes (2025) has its share of witticisms. Using its self-aware clichés as a springboard, Holt and Gooding’s chemistry brims with great will-they-won’t-they energy, as their clashing romantic outlooks relish the opportunity for some great one-liners (“Prince Charming? You’d probably find him f***ing your sister”) and a few rounds of charming and sexually suggestive hijinks

At the heart of the film lies its memorable masked maniac. Armed with neon-red heart eyes, a jet-black coat, and slick leather gloves, the slasher villain leaves a fashionable, bloodstained impression, especially when the time comes to dispatch a group of starstruck lovers.

As sickly sweet as Ruben’s film can be, it offers a whole serving of ridiculous, pulpy, and ingeniously designed kills—the greatest of which cleverly uses the myth of St. Valentine himself. Be it the humble knife or an electric grape crusher, the film always ensures another resourceful, gloriously ghastly death around the corner. Stitched together from the best parts of its various influences, Heart Eyes (2025) is a complete genre vehicle that abounds in resounding laughter and slaughter.

Heart Eyes (2025) is in theaters on February 7, 2025.