Heart Eyes | Film Review

 

When the Valentine's Day killer appears again to slaughter unsuspecting couples, new colleagues Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) are mistaken for a couple, and must work together to escape the killer's crosshairs.

I loved the idea of this film. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun and that it would have a fresh take on the usual slasher movie, so I was really looking forward to seeing it.

Unfortunately it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but there were some things that I really liked about it.

The opening scene set the tone of the movie really well. This is a horror comedy, and that scene does a great job of being both funny and thrilling (though I wouldn't say the film is ever actually scary).

I think my fundamental problem with the film, and what ultimately clouded both my positive and negative thoughts about it was that, because the characters are described as colleagues who are mistaken as a couple, I thought that's what they would be. I didn't expect this to be a romance so early on, and while they are technically 'mistaken' for a couple, for me this isn't accurate because they were on a date when the events of the film really got going. I wanted some awkward 'we don't even like each other' chemistry, rather than the chemistry of two people who already knew they liked each other.

Speaking of chemistry, the actors had good enough chemistry for the original premise, but the chemistry didn't work for me once this turned into a more romantic story.

That said, the actors did a great job with their roles and created some really likeable characters - even if we didn't actually have much time to get to know them.

The comedy is the best thing about the film, and sadly it loses that as time goes on. Without that, the film just isn't entertaining enough to keep the audience truly invested.

The romance felt a bit forced, especially towards the end. Which is a shame because it wasn't really needed to make the story good in the first place. It actually would have been a lot more unique to keep the characters distant, as co-workers only.

The reveal also doesn't really work because we don't know the characters that well. It's predictable because everyone is a suspect and we aren't given enough information about any one character to make the reveal an exciting surprise.

The soundtrack was great though - that's one thing it had going for it!

Overall, I was disappointed with this film because I thought the premise was great, but it wasn't executed very well. It needed to keep the comedy and potentially lose the romance in favour of character development. And that's not to say that it was a completely terrible film because it started strong, it just didn't continue well.

4.5/10