The Horror Comedy Is the Genre of Our Moment

No genre feels more suited to the current national mood than violent comedy, so it’s thoughtful of Hollywood to have arranged ahead of time for a bunch of bloodsoaked burlesques to hit theaters in quick succession. Last week we got Companion, Drew Hancock’s cathartically mean thriller about an unaware sexbot and the guy she thinks is her boyfriend, and in two weeks we’ll have The Monkey, a mix of hilariously brutal Final Destination kills and autobiographical family trauma from Oz Perkins, the director of Longlegs. In the meantime, there’s Heart Eyes, a slasher romantic comedy that’s significantly better than fellow R-rated new release Love Hurts, which is an action romantic comedy. (Both, weirdly, have running gags about the use of a straw as a weapon.) Heart Eyes is strong enough that the shortcomings that keep it in the realm of the passable instead of the actually good are maddening. If only it were a little sharper in its skewering of rom-com traditions, and a little more competent in how it stages the chase scenes featuring the killer of the title, a hulking figure whose mask features glowing eyes like the emoji! Still, it’s clever enough to provide 97 minutes of not thinking about our ongoing speedrun toward doom.

The unlucky-in-love heroine of Heart Eyes is a marketing exec named Ally (Olivia Holt), who’s fresh off a breakup that she initiated but nevertheless feels resentful about, obsessing over Instagram pics of her ex with his new girlfriend. Ally’s trouble is that she turns tail whenever she feels herself getting too invested, something she traces back to her mother, who was never the same after the death of Ally’s dad. This is a classic movie problem, the kind of too-neat hangup that has to be vaulted over on the way toward happily ever after — so, naturally, Ally has a classic meet-cute at a coffee shop with a handsome stranger named Jay (Mason Gooding) whose issue line up perfectly with hers. Jay has a tendency to get too invested too quickly, putting his lovers on a pedestal — and he’s also just been brought on to consult at the jewelry company where Ally works. Normally, this would be when a rom-com manufactures some reason why these two attractive people can’t be together, but Heart Eyes has the advantage of also being a horror story about a serial killer who’s decided to make Seattle their latest hunting ground for couples. The chemistry between Ally and Jay is such that they become the Heart Eyes Killer’s new targets, despite their protests that they’re not even together (yet).

Heart Eyes was directed by Josh Ruben, whose 2020 debut, Scare Me, and 2021 follow-up, Werewolves Within, were also both horror comedies. But the more illuminating name in the credits is that of producer and co-writer Christopher Landon, who went from scripting Paranormal Activity sequels to clever Scream-indebted riffs on the slasher genre like Happy Death Day and Freaky. Heart Eyes is a continuation of that self-aware trend, though I don’t feel like anyone involved has watched enough romantic comedies to really know how to make fun of them. To really satirize those tropes, you have to be fond of them. When a character is dispatched to make a dash to the airport late in the movie, it’s a fizzled joke that doesn’t indicate the filmmakers have any idea what those sorts of climaxes even look like. Ally and Jay are played by two likable actors, and they sometimes come across as actual people before the movie snaps them back into types, as though it’s a betrayal for them to seem real. The best parts of their romance involve the tension between their moments of attraction and bits of flirty banter and the fact that these exchanges unfold while they’re running for their lives.

They’re wise to flee. The Heart Eyes Killer’s shtick isn’t always clear, but the inventiveness of its slaughter streak is. The movie kicks off with the uproarious massacre of an insufferable couple who are getting engaged at a vineyard, a process that involves a speaker playing Lonestar’s “Amazed,” a ring in a strawberry, and a second runthrough once it turns out the photographer missed the big moment. Heart Eyes is more likely to go for the joke than for the scare, and the scenes of its glowing-eyed boogieman stalking characters through botanical gardens, police station hallways, and drive-through movie theaters are never spatially coherent enough to build any sense of dread. But when the gore does fly, it’s enthusiastic, creative, and gnarly enough to at least temporarily serve as a minor outlet for any rage and despair that might be simmering inside. And that’s good enough for government work, if we’re even going to have one of those anymore.