Reviews
‘Heart Eyes’ Review – A Crowd-Pleasing Blend of Savage Slasher and Romantic Comedy
The time honored tradition of holiday-themed slashers is alive and well in 2025, with Heart Eyes carving up a new Valentine’s Day favorite for horror fans and romance lovers alike. Director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within, Scare Me) gives romance and horror equal weight in this seamless fusion of slasher and romcom, ensuring that the gore hits just as hard as the sizzling hot chemistry between leads Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding. It’s the rare crowd-pleasing slasher movie with broad appeal without sacrificing the gore.
Ruben, working from a script by Phillip Murphy (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) & Michael Kennedy (Freaky), sets the charming, funny, and suspenseful tone straightaway with a cold open that introduces the Heart Eyes Killer and his rather gnarly modus operandi of savagely slaughtering lovers in punny, elaborately gory form. This killer, sporting a memorable mask destined for merchandising, targets couples every Valentine’s Day from across the country.
That Ally (Holt) is single should mark her safe, but a bitter breakup has put her career on the line and prompted her boss to pair her with suave fixer Jay (Gooding) to salvage a botched campaign. A business dinner on Valentine’s Day puts the pair directly in the Heart Eyes Killer’s crosshairs, and sparks fly as Ally and Jay fight to survive the night.
Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding star in Screen Gems and Spyglass Media Group’s HEART EYES. photo by: Christopher Moss
It’s not the steadfast commitment to intense thrills and suspenseful set pieces that earns easy rooting interest in Heart Eyes, though that certainly helps, but rather its magnetic cast. Gooding and Holt impress for their natural chemistry and playful banter, but Holt’s Ally, in particular, has an extremely tough needle to thread as the awkward romcom heroine who’s prone to clumsiness yet proves herself capable of thinking on her feet when the horror comes in earnest. Gooding establishes himself as a generous and charismatic scene partner, supporting Holt’s rise from timid love interest to clever final girl. Gigi Zumbado also shines as Ally’s fiery best friend, with horror stalwarts Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster complicating matters as Hobbs and Shaw (because, of course), the detectives tracking the serial killer.
Heart Eyes moves at a rapid clip, building steady momentum as Ally and Jay are forced to flee all over the city. It yields no shortage of exciting set pieces that often end in inspired bloodshed, culminating in a thrilling climax that lets its cast cut loose in a go-for-broke showdown. Ruben doles out enough foreshadowing that makes it seem easy to surmise the killer’s identity, but luckily, Heart Eyes isn’t so straightforward in this department and retains a few tricks up its sleeves to keep the savvy slasher fan on their toes.
The Heart Eyes killer from Screen Gems and Spyglass Media Group’s HEART EYES. photo by: Christopher Moss
While Heart Eyes will likely earn easy comparisons to similar themed slashers like My Bloody Valentine, Ruben instead draws from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives both in the killer’s physicality and in the perfect blend of fun and horror. Heart Eyes, simply put, is a blast. There’s no winking attempt to reinvent the subgenre- either of them- or go meta. Instead, Ruben pairs this genre hybrid down to the basics and ensures each component stands on its own. As a romcom, Heart Eyes is sexy and endlessly charming. As a slasher, the typically comedic Ruben finally gets to cut loose and demonstrate his chops for crafting intense slasher scares and suspense. The director also refreshingly keeps any callbacks or easter eggs relegated solely to romcoms, acting as a tongue-in-cheek primer for the horror fan.
Heart Eyes walks the fine line between a ’90s slasher with a modern savage edge and a romcom with rare, white-hot chemistry without ever feeling novel or gimmicky. It’s simply a breathlessly entertaining ride that leaves you cheering for love and creative kills in equal measure. Heart Eyes doesn’t shake up the slasher or romcom formulas but seamlessly marries the two and puts its characters first. It’s arguably the best mashup of two seemingly disparate genres yet, and this charming, violent, and romantic slasher feels all but destined for sequel status.
Heart Eyes releases in theaters on February 7, 2025.
Editor’s Note: This review was originally published on January 31, 2025.
Reviews
‘Her Private Hell’ Review: Nicolas Winding Refn Returns With a Hypnotic, Inscrutable Neon Fever Dream
Nicolas Winding Refn considers his first feature film in ten years, Her Private Hell, a resurrection. At the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the filmmaker revealed that his return was inspired, in large part, by his own mortality. His need to create art kicked into overdrive after beating death in 2023, when his heart stopped for 25 minutes.
Her Private Hell is pure art, too, bearing the filmmaker’s neon and synth signatures, as well as a deep disinterest in scrutable storytelling. Much like The Neon Demon, Refn’s latest demands you bend to its wavelength: an expressionistic vision more interested in the artistic process than the narrative.
That’s not to say that Her Private Hell lacks plot; this sci-fi horror noir features two central overlapping plots. At the forefront is actress Elle (Sophie Thatcher), who lives in the penthouse suite overlooking a hazy neon metropolis with her father, Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), and young stepmom Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), who happens to be Elle’s former best friend before marriage got in the way.
To say that Elle has daddy issues would be an understatement, made worse by insecurities, the arrival of a new acting ingenue (Kristine Froseth), and a vicious killer prowling the city: the Leather Man.
The secondary plot follows the enigmatic Private K (Charles Melton), an American soldier in Japan with resolute vengeance on his mind. Whereas Elle’s world exists in a space of glamour and opulence, Private K pummels his way bare-knuckled through the sweaty backstreets ruled by local crime syndicates down below.
Refn, who co-writes with Esti Giordani, manages to corral a variety of seemingly disparate genres and influences into a clinically cold and cryptic whole. The filmmaker infuses his signature style with everything from ’60s sci-fi to Golden Age Hollywood melodrama to Japanese folklore, hung on the framework of a Dario Argento-style Giallo. There’s a prominent psychosexual edge to both Elle and Private K’s separate journeys, one that dials up to zany excess when it comes to the former character.
There’s an overarching sense of mystic mythmaking to Her Private Hell, with elusive seamstresses, played by Shioli Kutsuna and Aoi Yamada, dipping in and out like folkloric, omnipotent kitsune as they seemingly preside over the increasing chaos that entails brutal knife fights, Freudian melodrama, and a supernatural killer that brutally rips his victims apart. All of it told with Refn’s detached, sterile style.
It’s less a conventional movie and more a stream of consciousness, a collection of inspirations and personal thoughts and themes. Nothing is really explained in this nonsensical fairy tale fever dream. Thatcher gives herself fully to the spoiled Elle, whose affluent privilege makes her a bundle of raw, primal emotions that erodes her sense of identity and reality. It makes her the tonal and visual opposite of the elusive Private K., and much credit goes to Refn, Melton, and Thatcher for wringing compelling performances out of such nebulous, vague characters.
As with most of Refn’s work, you’re either on his frequency or not. Her Private Hell is wholly uninterested in explanation or convention. It’s also heavily disjointed and unhurried in its eclectic, sparse amalgamation of genre inspirations. Still, it’s tough not to fall sway to the magnetic allure of its exquisite, pulse-pounding sights and sounds, complete with an incredible score by legendary composer Pino Donaggio.
While it never fully pulls you into its tangled web of artistic musings, there’s a lot to admire in a technically stunning feature this fearless in its incomprehensibility and ambition.
Her Private Hell releases in theaters on July 24.
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