Heart Eyes (2025) - Movie Review
What if I told you there was a big-budget slasher film that is also an homage to the golden age of the Romantic Comedy genre—That’s also directed by one of my favorite indie actor/directors?
Sexy right?
Let’s discuss.
Heart Eyes is a 2025 horror/comedy brought to us by director and Filthy Horrors favorite, Josh Ruben, and writers Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy. I don’t think I need to gush about Josh Ruben again, but I will anyway. In brief, he’s an outstanding actor, and he’s one of the most underrated genre directors working today. Watch Movie of the Year nominee, 2021’s Werewolves Within, or 2020’s Scare Me, for example.
And yes, while having more than two writers on a horror movie is normally the kiss of death, it only negatively impacts the last 25 minutes of the film. Outside of the final reveal, the script is tight, witty, and incredibly clever.
The movie focuses on a heartbroken girl boss, Claire, as she experiences two of the biggest failures in her life simultaneously. Her long-term relationship with the love of her life ended recently, which led her to make an advertising campaign so offensive to the general public that she may never work again. To say she’s stressed would be an understatement, and things only get worse when the infamous Valentine’s Day-themed serial killer, Heart Eyes, comes to town and immediately begins massacring loving couples city-wide. Forced to have dinner with a handsome colleague, things go from bad to worse when the killer mistakes the two young professionals for lovers and begins its hunt. Will the two colleagues find a way to come together to overcome this sadistic mass murderer, or will they be cut up into heart-shaped pieces? Find out in tonight’s feature, Heart Eyes.
This movie is Into the Night (1985) meets Ready or Not (2019).
It’s high praise, I know, but so much went right with this production that I’m more upset about the ending.
That being said, this movie works for one reason: the acting. The cast gathered here is a who’s who of character acting gold. We’re talking names like Jordanna Brewster, Devon Sara, and Michaela Watkins, but the two leads are the main focus, and they both perform flawlessly.
Mason Gooding is fairly new to me. With his looks, he’s made a good living off of romantic comedies and television shows, but I did see him in the terrible Scream 5, and while I hated the film, his performance was solid. He’s also the son of Cuba Gooding Jr. He is the strongest character in this entire movie. He’s written flawlessly, but the performance is so genuine and heartfelt, it elevates the script.
Mason Gooding’s comedic timing is flawless, and he is asked to do a lot of physical comedy here.
Then we get to the woman, the myth, the Disney Channel legend: Olivia Holt. I thought I loved her performance in the underrated cult classic, Girl Vs. Monster (2012), but she raised the bar here. Holt is a cute woman. She’s an actress you could imagine having a pleasant conversation with while in line at the Coffee shop. It’s a rare quality in modern Hollywood, between skinny girls using Ozempic to transform into skeletal monsters, and young women who ruin their faces with plastic surgery. Holt makes the girl boss character three-dimensional and likable. She’s not perfect, fighting the patriarchy, or any of that lazy, stereotypical bullshit. She’s a flawed woman, unsure of what she wants in life, and she lashes out at the closest targets.
Then how is she likable?
She sincerely admits that she was and is in the wrong. Not only does the script make a feminist character actually act human, but it also makes her a hero, and Holt embodied this from beginning to end. If you can’t relate to what she’s going through, you may not be a human working in corporate America today.
This film walks a thin line between romantic comedy and a brutal slasher film.
I laughed out loud at multiple gags, but the gore was on par with the kings of the slasher genre. This film features kills inspired by the great sequences that were cut by the MPAA, made by folks like the great Tom Savini. Make no mistake, this is a brutal film. The kills are gory and in your face. Yes, most are hilarious, but still—it’s a lot of gore for the casual audience.
I loved it.
But then there’s the one glaring flaw that turns this home run into a double, and that’s the aforementioned last twenty-five minutes. It felt like the writers couldn’t decide what they wanted to do. They knew they didn’t want to make a franchise, but at the same time, they wanted to have a big, mystery-revealed ending. Unfortunately, what they decided turned out to be a lame homage, and their reveal was telegraphed before the film’s climax.
My viewing partners and I called out the twist halfway through the movie, and we were 100% accurate.
I was hoping they were going to surprise us, do something new and exciting, but no. It’s a letdown, but it didn’t ruin the film. This is a must-watch for any horror fan or any fan of the early 2000s Romantic Comedy boom. There are so many easter eggs throughout the movie that it’s a multi-watch affair to catch them all.
Check this one out.
As of this writing, it’s streaming on Netlix in the US.
