If the Scream franchise hadn’t been revived a few years ago, perhaps Heart Eyes would land better. As it stands, this Valentine’s Day-themed genre slasher feels like flat-out plagiarism.
This is yet another Scooby-Doo-like murder mystery where Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox would feel right at home. And the killer itself, a hodgepodge of Friday the 13th’s Jason and the creepy clown from the Terrifier series, is a mere copycat.
However, the film is nearly saved by the central performances from Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding as two wisecracking, competing members of an ad agency who find themselves mistaken as a couple by the Heart Eyes killer. They spend much of the film running away from the serial killer, who has chosen the city of Seattle as the latest target. Both, especially Holt, make the proceedings fun enough that I almost could have gotten away with a mild recommendation. Almost.
I can tell you that Heart Eyes fell flat in my half-filled theater. Reactions to the onscreen carnage were timid, at best. I was among those yawning.
Director Josh Ruben attempts something a little tonally different by heavily leaning into the comic ridiculousness of the plot at times. But the film also falls into common scare tropes and sometimes feels like a subpar slasher taking itself too seriously, with no new ideas to offer. While I enjoyed some of the comedy elements, the film still felt very uneven and in search of a true genre identity.
I would pay to see Holt and Gooding (who has, in fact, co-starred in the last two Scream movies and is in the upcoming one) pair up in another movie—as long as it’s not another Heart Eyes adventure.
This is just a below-average Friday the 13th reboot masquerading as something new.