Heart Eyes

It’s one thing to make a movie that skewers clichés. It’s another to actually draw blood. For all the dangerously serrated objects on display in “Heart Eyes,” its humour doesn’t cut particularly deep.

Heart Eyes has something for everyone in this season of love and beyond.

It's popcorn stuff.

Heart Eyes is a like a Hinge date from hell. Smart, funny, intense; swipe right.

There’s enough of a spark between them for the film to work as an adorable odd-couple romance, in between all the impaling, decapitation and eye-socket trauma.

Heart Eyes works because it commits to being a fun rom-com (despite the slasher mechanics at work). It also speaks to how, in this theatrical economy, the rom-com is under attack and fighting for it's survival.

The kind of meta-commentary, snappy dialogue and gory violence that made that Wes Craven film a hit was replicated to some degree in [Christopher] Landon's 2017 film, so Landon brings that same kind of energy here without missing much of a beat.

The characters are so poorly written that one begs for Ruben to at least give us a form of connection or emotional heft to the stakes. Sadly, it never happens, resulting in a movie that’s best left to be ditched rather than given a chance.

In an era of elevated horror, Heart Eyes is pleasingly traditional, focusing on the horror element over heavy themes. And it’s really good fun.

It’s a smart script—always subverting expectations and genre tropes. HEK is merely the personification of their opposing trauma responses to love. The obstacle they must overcome to finally see their fairy tale dreams come true.