Holiday-themed slasher villains have been getting a bigger spotlight over the last few years. Along with Michael Myers’ return in the Halloween reboot trilogy, we’ve had Thanksgiving, Terrifier, and now Valentine’s Day is getting in on the murderous fun with Sony’s new movie, Heart Eyes.
Directed by Werewolves Within’s Josh Ruben, the film sees Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding as a pair of Seattle coworkers working overtime on Valentine’s Day. Sounds potentially romantic, except there’s a masked murderer in the city known as the Heart Eyes Killer that’s targeting romantic couples. After the duo witness the killer pull off a gruesome double murder, Heart Eyes figures they must be paramours and decides to turn their attention (and knife) on them. They’re not a couple, but maybe sparks will fly as they go on the run and try to survive the night.
Heart Eyes has some Scream DNA in it, and not just with Gooding’s casting; it was co-written and produced by Christopher Landon, the original director for Scream 7 who exited the project last year after Paramount and Spyglass (a production company on the film) fired Melissa Barrera over her pro-Palestinian comments referencing the Israel-Hamas conflict. At the film’s announcement in June, Ruben promised the film would deliver on being “a brutal slasher in a nostalgic rom-com universe.” The tagline promises “no couple is safe,” and if you’ve seen the recent Scream movies, a lot of those kills can be mean, so watching it happen to lovers might be fun in a twisted kind of way?
Also starring Devon Sawa, Jordana Brewster, and Michaela Watkins, Heart Eyes kills with love (and whatever else is around) on February 7, 2025.
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