New Zealand has played the Pacific Northwest twice this month. Once in Wolf Man, as Oregon, and now in Heart Eyes, as Seattle. We’ve had other bigger hitters set here: Malignant (2021) and M3gan (2022) stand out. But we haven’t had Seattle and the greater Pacific Northwest playing themselves quite as often. It’s time to push for more films to be made in the area that is so clearly at the pulse of American storytelling. Let’s make it happen. Create more tax incentives for filmmakers to film here. They’re going to set it here anyway, can’t we get anything out them doing it?
Local interests aside (did you know there’s a drive-in movie theater near the Space Needle?), Heart Eyes plays into the Seattle of it all. There’s a meet cute at a coffee shop, everyone works in advertising, the main character often brandishes a metal straw, saving the environment one scene at a time. So Seattlite? Or something.
The holiday-themed horror movie has a storied tradition. You have your hard cold classics: Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978) but the holiday horror sub-genre is largely filled with fluff, moderately interesting spins on important days of the calendar.
Heart Eyes does for Valentine’s Day what Scream (1996) did for horror movies — well, they made a Scream movie but it’s a rom-com. It’s from the same studio, Spyglass Media Group, who need a placeholder for Scream because they fired Melissa Barrera for being pro-Palestine, so they didn’t get one of those as soon as they planned. Heart Eyes basically does fill the gap. It’s not approximating anything like Wes Craven’s Scream but it fits with the modern ones.
The Heart Eyes Killer is on the loose. He picks his prey carefully: couples who are in love. Ally (Olivia Holt) is struggling with an ad campaign when a handsome man (Mason Gooding) comes to town and they have a meet cute at a coffee shop, end up working on the advertising project together, and have enough chemistry to catch the ire of the Couples Killer. Heart Eyes plays it cute. It has all the earmarks of modern romance literature mixed with basic teenage horror fare.
The formula is a formula because it works. There are not any authentically noteworthy horror moments in Heart Eyes. There are probably more moments that make it a good date movie. It has a pretty cast and they have fine enough chemistry. There aren’t really new ideas for kills — the hook is that it does what it says on the package: it’s a teen date horror movie themed around Valentine’s Day.
The result is sort of flat. Some of the characters overplay their hand. There isn’t really any cleverness or need for it. There are light attempts at jokes but like the horror, nothing much gets substantially built into it. It’s fine! It feels like it’ll play fine on streamers. And probably for its designed purpose as a date movie. No singles!
Heart Eyes does just enough to necessitate making it. It fulfills what it sets out to do. That’s fine. It’s a fine horror movie. It will not blow your socks off. It will not fill you with romantic wanderlust either. It will fill your time on Valentine’s Day with your partner. Another thing horror can be is the Good Enough genre. Heart Eyes is Good Enough. There’s just enough there you’ll want to see it with your own eyes.