If you are of a certain age you might remember the TV ads for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in which one person with a bar of chocolate bumps into someone with a jar of peanut butter. They taste the results and it’s amazing!
That scenerio could be applied to Heart Eyes in a cinematic way: can a rom-com and slasher be as good if they are combined? The answer is hell yes!
Heart Eyes opened in theaters this past Friday and it is certain to become a holiday classic for year to come. Hopefully it starts a trend of holiday slashers that were poplar in the 70s and 80s. It might be time we revisit that trope in the future. But maybe leave out a “reveal” at the end and just make it a bona fide slasher; we don’t need another masked mystery series, Scream has that market covered.
In Heart Eyes a serial killer is on the loose (in Seattle! Get it?) and has a personal vendetta against couples on Valentine’s Day, slaughtering them in gruesome ways. Meanwhile Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) have a meet-cute in a coffee shop and don’t think they will ever see each other again. It’s a boilerplate moment which plays by the rom-com numbers through the entirety of the film. But there is a twist, both Ally and Jay decide to meet at a restaurant for Valentine’s Day platonically, but they share a kiss which Heart Eyes sees and assumes they are a couple making them the next target. That is the slasher element.
That’s it. That’s the setup. From there the beats go as follows: a budding romance—kill scene—-romance—kill scene, etc. Each chapter carried out and blended out perfectly within their respective genres. It’s a great ride and will satisfy the peanut butter/chocolate paradigm whether you like one or the other, or both.
It may take some cognitive dissonance to see brutal kills mixed in with your cute love story. It only feels slightly jarring when Ally and Jay bond at weird times, but it’s not long after those scenes we get some gore.
Heart Eyes is a unique kind of setup which, and with the help of the beautiful chemistry between our leads works, leading some to wonder: “Why has no one ever done this before?”
That’s not to say it’s perfect. A drive-in scene almost pulls the reins on film’s momentum, and it suffers from some logic issues—do the cars not work? Also, the ending is streched so far it becomes convoluted and nearly impossible to understand. But that might be the joke.
Overall Heart Eyes is kind of like the emoji: it’s a perfectly fun and satisfying way to convey an idea that says everything it needs to without coming off too seriously.
