Heart Eyes

Every horror film needs a good boogeyman, and the monstrous maniac at the centre of Heart Eyes is a great one. Striking every Valentine’s Day, the Heart Eyes Killer (the police and media dub him HEK) kills only couples, his huge, heart-shaped peepers doubling as night vision goggles (cue Silence Of The Lambs-y pov shots but bathed in red) and his weapon of choice a crossbow that fires deadly cupid’s arrows (if that fails, there’s always a butcher’s knife). He provides a fantastic nemesis in Josh Ruben’s (Werewolves Within) tremendously knowing, fun romp that mashes up romcoms and horror slasher movies and playfully decides the two genres have more in common than you think.

The set-up is pure romcom fluff, featuring every trope in the book (with a pink cover); good looking people in high-end jobs, meet-cutes over mixed up coffee orders, knocking their heads together bending down, speaking over each other (“no you go first”), a comedy best friend and an initial hatred that will ultimately thaw — it’s real crazy-stupid-love-actually territory. Jewellery advertising exec Ally (Olivia Holt) is forced to team up with freelance marketing guru Jay (Mason Gooding) by her boss (Michaela Watkins, doing a Southern take on The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestley) to collaborate on a new ad campaign. Via a plot contrivance you only get in bad Netflicks, Ally kisses Jay outside a restaurant to make her now loved-up English ex-boyfriend jealous, unknowingly under the evil gaze of the Heart Eyes Killer. Believing Ally and Jay are a couple, they become HEK’s latest prey.

The one-liners hit like a spear through an eyeball.

Once the horror takes over — save for a slow section in a police station — the action rarely lets up. Written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, whose collective credits include Freaky, It’s A Wonderful Knife and the Happy Death Day brace, there are lots of inventive kills (a prologue sees a death in a winery’s grape crusher) and tense chases (on a merry-go-round, at an outdoor screening of His Girl Friday) while the one-liners hit like a spear through an eyeball. On the case of HEK are two cops Hobbs (Final Destination’s Devon Sawa) and Shaw (The Faculty’s Jordana Brewster) — they’ve never seen the movie — which is indicative of the film’s gleeful Scream-like self-referentiality.

But it’s not so nudge-nudge wink-wink that you don’t care about the central couple. Holt and Gooding make for a winning pairing, and Holt in particular has a couple of affecting speeches delivered in between being a resourceful scream queen. Happily, a mid-credits sting suggests that love — and of course blood — may still be in the air come next February 14th.