They call him the “Heart Eyes” killer.
He’s a hooded dude who’s been stalking loving couples on Valentine’s Day for the last few years. Then he butchers them (mid-hug, kiss or proposal) in the most brutally “romantic” ways: He might carve out their loving hearts with a machete. Or pin the lovebirds together with a razor-sharp cupid’s arrow. Or some other bloody atrocity.
That’s terrible and all. But frankly, Ally couldn’t care less.
While others are quivering on this hearts-and-flowers holiday, Ally has no fear of the killer in the least. You see, she just broke up with her ex-boyfriend. Then that louse instantly ran out and found someone else he could cuddle up with and plastered it all over his social media for crying out loud!
So, let’s just say that Ally is currently as stone-cold averse to all things lovey-dovey as she can be. If anything, she’s kinda thinking about the benefits of putting on a mask with cartoon hearts for eyes and doing a little beat-down on a few people herself.
Oh, and to top all that off, she just met this walking embodiment of a Hallmark card named Jay. He was brought in by her boss to prop up a failing advertising campaign that Ally had come up with. (Which kinda ticked Ally off, truth be told.)
Anyway, this guy just oozes “handsome” and “romantically sincere.” In fact, everything about Jay seems completely geared for some meet-cute rom-com scene. (Which makes Ally all the more angry.) And while she’s more than happy to turn her back on this gorgeous-looking lug, she has to meet him for a meal and discussions about the campaign. Argh!
But here’s the real issue.
From the outside-looking-in, the very pretty Ally and the strikingly handsome Jay make for a really adorbs couple. If you were an insane killer out scoping out a Valentine’s Day symbol to slaughter, this gorgeous couple might seem to be wearing the perfect heart-shaped bulls-eye.
Yup, I think it’s safe to say that Ally is having … a really bad Valentine’s Day!
Oddly enough, Heart Eyes ultimately has some nice things to say about the virtues of marriage and working through difficult stretches in a committed relationship. In fact, Jay professes that his eternally positive attitude about love and marriage is thanks to the example that his parent set. And Ally and Jay both strive to protect innocents from the murderous desires of a killer.
One bloody scene takes place in an abandoned chapel.
Ally and her friend, Monica, talk about the fact that Monica has an older sugar daddy who spends a lot of money on her. But Monica simply considers him a “sponsor.” After meeting Jay, Monica coos over his good looks and finds shirtless pics of him on his social media page.
In the hope of keeping her job, Ally decides to kiss Jay and make up for her rotten attitude. She also hopes the kiss will make her ex-boyfriend jealous. Ally and Jay then go back to her place for some casual, nonromantic sex and begin to remove their clothing, before being interrupted. While they talk and begin to disrobe, Ally spots a sex toy on her bedstand and quickly moves to hide it.
A female police detective leans over purposely to expose her cleavage to a suspect. While running from the killer in a nearby drive-in, Ally and Jay end up in the front seat of someone’s car. Meanwhile the vehicle owners are in the back having loud sex.
Ally steps out of a shower wrapped in a towel. A woman says she has a sexual kink that involves murdering people. She licks the face of a killer and seductively caresses a potential victim to illustrate her point.
The film opens with a bloody scene that sets up the ongoing flesh-rending gruesomeness of Heart Eyes as a whole.
A couple on a deserted hillside is working through a staged proposal that they hope to post on social media. The hidden killer jams a large knife through a camera lens and into the eye of a photographer (we see the blade puncture the eye.) He hits the potential groom in the face with a razor-sharp crossbow arrow. Then he shoots an arrow into the running wife-to-be’s foot. He tracks her bloody footprints to a winery where he drives a machete into a guard’s mouth. And then he traps the terrified woman in a wine press. We watch as she is slowly crushed to a bloody mulch that splashes the press window. (Police later examine the gore-covered scene picking up chunks of the woman’s flesh and scalp.)
From there we see people by the score slashed with large blades and hit with arrows and bullets. They’re shot in the forehead, temple, shoulder and torso to goopy results. In one case, for instance, a hunting arrow is jammed down through someone’s forehead and out the bridge of that person’s nose.
In another grisly case, someone is pushed back and impaled on a statue holding a sword. We watch as the struggling and dying individual’s bodyweight causes the impaled tissue to rip and separate, eventually decapitating the victim. Similarly, someone gets hit in the crotch by a machete. The blade then slices upward, rending his clothes open and spilling gore to the floor.
Elsewhere, an officer gets impaled and hoisted up on a flagpole. A metal object is jammed forcefully into the mouth of a naked man having sex. (We see him on his back from the waist up.) Then his female partner’s face is slammed down on the other end of the object. The results are predictably grisly.
People are thumped and battered about. A man breaks a window with his fist, lodging chunks of glass between his knuckles (which are then pulled back out). Skulls are crushed by heavy weights.
The movie’s dialogue is replete with profanity, interspersed by screams and gags. We hear some 35 f-words and a dozen s-words. And there are also two or three uses each of “b–ch,” “d–n,” “a–,” “a–hole,” “h—,” “pr–k” and “d–k.” Jesus’ name is misused a couple of times as well.
A couple drinks champagne and mixed drinks with dinner. An office party features glasses of champagne.
A murder takes place in a winery.
Ally grows nauseous whenever she sees or is splashed by blood, which, of course, happens a lot here. In one case, after she’s covered in a murdered man’s spewing gore, she vomits profusely.
Heart Eyes is a great example of what people might mean when they refer to a film as … “unique.”
I mean, I’ve eye-rolled my way through quite a few messy horror-movie spoofs in the past. And I’ve reviewed zany romantic comedy send-ups by the score. But director Josh Ruben’s blending of a truly gnarly slasher film with a goofy Hallmark-style rom-com is a first for me.
On that front, I will say that the moviemakers’ choice to stitch those two disparate genres’ together in the same bloody body bag is sometimes darkly creative. And the cast members definitely, ahem, throw their hearts (and other bodily organs) into the effort.
But, please, please, please don’t take that faint praise as a recommendation to run out to the theater. Heart Eyes is eardrum-scorchingly foul, and its flesh-hacking is gruesome and brutal (even when it’s trying to elicit a smile).
OK, maybe if someone stripped out all the disgusting and nasty stuff here the idea behind it might evoke a winking grin. But in that mopped-up case, the little bit of film that remained would be more like a TikTok video than a movie.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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