Holiday rom-com lovers who are also slasher film completists: That’s the coterie that might go for Josh Ruben’s “Heart Eyes,” a romantic comedy feebly masquerading as a horror movie.
The hallmarks of a Hallmark Channel meet-cute are baked into the setup: Ally (Olivia Holt), a young marketer for a jewelry company, at first resists the charms of a handsome freelancer, Jay (Mason Gooding), when they’re paired on a project.
But as romance blossoms between the two, horror kicks in as they become the target of the Heart Eyes killer, a hulking maniac who travels the country slaughtering lovers, disguised behind a mask with heart-shaped eye holes that glow red.
Ruben tries to keep the action moving. But he’s hampered by a disheveled and directionless script — credited to Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy — that repeatedly strands its characters in idle dialogue scenes, including a tedious episode at the world’s emptiest police station. Holt and Gooding have the chemistry of strangers whose speed date is speed tanking.
It’s hard to discern who the film is for when it feels as if it’s been passed around genre writing classes in search of an identity. It’s Valentine’s Day-themed, but the rom-com crowd probably won’t last long with a monster who gruesomely plunges machetes into bodies. Horror fans have seen the film’s many slasher conventions employed before with far more novelty and purpose. The comedy is Nebraska: broad and flat.
A horror rom-com can be delightful — “Lisa Frankenstein” nailed it — but this film would put even Cupid in a bad mood.
Heart Eyes
Rated R for prodigious violence, gore and literal heartbreak. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.
