Tag: Heart Eyes

Caution: Spoilers

BLEH! Fucking Heart Eyes.

I don’t even know where to begin with my disappointment from this supposed “horror” movie. From the very few trailers I peeped leading up to Saturday, all I saw were raving reviews and ratings (which are probably bullshit anyway), BUT I was pretty excited when I went to see it with my fellow horror pal...

We’re walking in thinking it’s going to be a good, ole fashioned slasher, like Halloween or Friday the 13th. Dude, this was more of a rom com than a slasher. There were even some points where they referenced murders that had taken place and they DIDN’T EVEN SHOW THE SCENES.

I’m personally not a huge rom com girlie, especially if I’m expecting to see a HORROR FILM. Ultimately, it just wasn’t what I was expecting in any capacity. And even when I realized they were going to rely heavily on the rom com angle, they didn’t even balance it out with violence (Alexa, play Violence by Blink-182). Anyway…

I wouldn’t say the movie started out strong, but the first scene was pretty funny and got me locked in. I really love when a horror movie pops off immediately. It sets the tone and suspense for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, this movie had quite a few lulls where that suspense was completely lost, and it was more of an anticipation of like… when the fuck is our killer getting their screen time?

In the beginning after the first murder scene, they had different types of news reports calling the killer “H.E.K”, or Heart Eyes Killer, which I thought was silly, but like, in a good way. Very easy to compare it to Scream (and I’m going to mention that often, but don’t get it twisted. It was pretty poorly executed compared to Scream).

I’d say it was pretty decent up until the first rom-com-esque montage of our MC and her best friend, Monica, picking out an outfit for her first date with this guy, Jay. (I don’t even remember the MC’s name because she was so unlikable, and no, I will not look it up because that’s how little I care.) Jay takes our MC out on a date, and she’s just a total bitch. I didn’t really have beef with her until this scene. I’m not sure if they made her unlikable on purpose, but there was no redeeming her character after this in my humble opinion. Especially later when she has the opportunity to kill Heart Eyes and fails. Miserably.

We’re also introduced to two detectives who are inspecting the first murder scene, and they’re also incredibly unlikable. They could have made the duo a little more interesting perhaps, but it’s like they were too heavy handed with laying on the crazy vibes. The guy is simply overly creepy and weird. As for the woman, they obviously tried real hard to emanate a ‘Courtney Cox in Scream’ vibe… but a bit more psychotic. She had a look on her face that just gave psycho as soon as she popped up on screen. I guess maybe this was supposed to give the viewers a hint or something, but it kind of felt forced. I think if they slowly revealed that she was nuts, it would have made for better character development.

When Heart Eyes finds our MC and Jay in her apartment, I was thinking, “Okay, we’re finally getting somewhere.” Things were progressing and it was looking hopeful. Right before things pop off in this scene, there’s a funny moment that doesn’t take away from the horror aspect which I appreciated.

“I don’t mind the comedic effect, Scream is hilarious. I just don’t think it was done as well.”

Joey nailed it. It kept feeling like a parody of Scream or something. Honestly there wasn’t really a long-lasting serious moment geared toward the horror aspect of the film. When there was a more serious moment, it was more focused on the romance side of things instead of, I don’t know, the killer that the movie is literally named after???

Like, at least with Scream, Ghostface kind of has a personality / style of torment that is reflected by whoever is masquerading as him. I just wish we got that from this movie because Heart Eyes literally felt like a background character. There wasn’t much development on him at all. It’s like they didn’t give him any uniqueness and he was starting to feel like a mediocre Michael Meyers without any lore.

In one of the better scenes, Heart Eyes is chasing our MC and she finds herself hiding on a carousel that’s set up for the town’s Valentine’s Day event. He turns on the carousel and uses it to disorientate her and jumps on it and attacks her while it’s moving. It was actually really cool!! I WISH THERE WERE MORE SCENES LIKE THIS!

There’s another pretty dope moment when they’re at the police station and the lights go out. We’re lost in the dark for a moment, then you hear the high-pitched whirring of something activating. Heart Eyes turns on the masks’ night vision and the hearts of his mask glow a bright red. It’s SO sick. Like they could have did soooo much more for this killer and they just wanted to shove rom-com down everyone’s throats. UGH!!!

Another reason to dislike the MC so much – there’s a point where she literally has the opportunity to kill Heart Eyes, or at LEAST wound him. BUT NO. Home girl breaks the two-way mirror in the interrogation room and says, “Die.” SO COOL RIGHT? She fucking proceeds to miss every single shot and he gets out of the room unscathed. Dawg, I was raging. (Still am, clearly.)

After this, there’s a drive-in movie scene that’s pretty metal, too. That town’s Valentine’s Day event I mentioned? Yeah, these dorks lead H.E.K directly there, ya know, where a shit ton of couples would be gathering to celebrate the holiday. When our killer enters the event, for some reason, no one even acknowledges him. This dude has been on the news for years (we’re lead to believe from the opening) and for whatever reason, not a single person appears to care that he’s there. So, naturally as a killer who kills on Valentine’s Day would do, he starts walking past people and brutally, but casually, slicing through them and it was fucking awesome.

Honestly, any time Heart Eyes was on the screen, I was locked in. I just craved so much more from this killer and this film, and every time I thought we’d get a litttttle bit more, we skipped over to a different scene. Just so lackluster.

Eventually, our MCs have a little fight scene with Heart Eyes, and it’s honestly pretty brief, which was disappointing in itself… but then they pull the mask off him to reveal someone WE HAVEN’T EVEN FUCKING MET. With the amount of times I rolled my eyes during this movie, I’m surprised they even stayed in my head.

The reveal that Heart Eyes was a trouple and killing was their kink was pretty dope, not gonna lie. I wouldn’t say I was impressed, but it was a nice full circle moment from when the detective inspecting the crime scene in the beginning said something along the lines of, “maybe this is a kink or something..” I just think it was poor execution. They could have done so much better with the suspense leading up to that, but they were too invested in the romance story line and forcing mediocre comedy relief every time something “horror-like” happened.

We stayed for the after credits, and they were kind of eluding to a sequel, then we realize it’s just Monica messing with the MC, who, btw was my favorite character. For as little screen time that Monica had, she was a better actress than our MC and the detectives combined, truthfully. I hope I see her in future horrors, just not another Heart Eyes sequel. A sequel is the LAST THING this movie would need. (If there is a sequel, of course I’m going to have to see it because I wrote this review, but I’ll be waiting for it to come to a streaming platform before feeding the ticket box.)

I’ll say, too, that my friend Brittany saw Heart Eyes that same night with her boyfriend and she had the same opinion we did. It just wasn’t what was expected. Granted, apparently Rotten Tomatoes’ critic AND audience scores were really good. I didn’t realize I had to make sure a movie being advertised as a HORROR was actually going to be focused on horror, and not intertwined with a try-hard rom-com moment. But whatever. Clearly people liked it. I’m not saying it was absolutely terrible, rather, maybe a bit misleading.

That was my first not-so-thrilled movie review. I do actually have one on The Hills Have Eyes brewing… Although, I wasn’t going to even write it because it was kind of negative. Now, idgaf.

Let me know if you saw Heart Eyes, if you were bamboozled also, or if you were smarter than us and did some research before going to see it.

Until the next horror…!

Love you lots + lots!
Meg