Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie Review

"I didn't know that murder was a love language..."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown April 29, 2025

Ah, horror comedies. The genre mix that dares to not only thread one needle but two. Yet there are so many paths to success. You can be hilarious and not all that scary and still come out on top (Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil). You can be terrifying and campy and deliver a classic (Evil Dead 2). Light on laughs but heavy on horror? Win. Easy on the frights but jam the gas on the weirdness? Win. There's really only one way to smother a horror comedy in its crib: fumble the funny and bungle the terror. Poor Heart Eyes doesn't seem to know what to do, what it wants to be, or how to get there. It wants to bounce effortlessly between high-concept low-brow farce and gore-heavy frightfest, but its incessant silliness undermines its horror and its sloppy wet kisses of blood and guts never quite find symmetry or balance with its comedy. What's a poorly paced slasher to do?

For the past several years, the “Heart Eyes Killer” has wreaked havoc on Valentine’s Day by stalking and murdering romantic couples. This Valentine’s Day, no couple is safe… duh duh duuuummm. Do the police have a clue? Nope, the killer is always one step ahead. Do couples take precautions? Not particularly, they just make "what if" references until our emoji-faced slasher makes them a part of his reality. So enters innocent Ally (Olivia Holt) and good-dude Jay (Mason Gooding), co-workers who flirt their way into the danger of a first kiss that catches the attention of a glowing eyed monster. A night of couplings also draw the attention of tough-cookie detectives Hobbs and Shaw (sigh), played by Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster. Will the Heart Eyes Killer do away with Ally and Jay before Hobbs and Shaw find them? Will love triumph over evil? Will any of it make sense? Most of all, will we even care? Creative kills and bloody violence ensues no matter the outcome.

Slasher unmaskings are tried-and-true keys to slashers and ever one of their subgenres, horror comedies included. Surprise, it's me! (The debt Heart Eyes owes the Scream franchise by film's end is enormous.) But with random, nationwide killings, how are we supposed to be invested in the whodunit? How could the identity of the killer possibly matter? Everyone give a nice warm welcome to one of the most overly contrived, heavily plotted, undeniably convoluted reveals (perhaps) in slasher history. Holt and Gooding's admittedly sweet pairing and chemistry are soon bowled over by contrivances and conveniences, expository monologuing and supposedly shocking reveals; answers that are only "shocking" because you'll have a hard time believing any screenwriter committed them to paper. It all amounts to a string of savage silliness that you'll either laugh your way through and enjoy or roll your eyes, tug at your hair, and curse the horror gods for taking so long to unspool. From my score, you can tell which side of the theater I was on. Along the way a decent rom-com takes on all the elements of a horror-comedy in an effort to win over the faithful crowds and jump-start sequels with stickier means and gorier ends.

Heart Eyes hails from director Josh Ruben, whose Werewolves Within was an out-of-left-field delight that landed in my 2021 Top Ten, so my expectations were high and my good will for Ruben's latest was even higher. But Michael Kennedy's screenplay is far less clever that it fancies itself, and the film's producers are 2022 and 2023 Scream franchise vets that no doubt pushed Kennedy, also a Scream producer, to beg, borrow and steal, all in an effort to align Heart Eyes with proven box office material rather than forging something all its own. You can almost feel the movie's originality draining out of its body as the story plods forward, valuing cutesy comedy bits and ample film references over anything smarter, darker or wildly funnier. Considering how much audiences have responded to the practical queasiness of The Terrifier films, it's a surprise Heart Eyes doesn't share an artery or two with things far sicker; that's how much it seems to be a Frankensteinian creation, stitched together from the corpses of far too many other films (none of them all that particularly special). Instead, it follows the polished spray-n-spatter route, offering some amusing splashes of this or that here or there, but never escaping the fact that its kills are especially dull.

Does Valentine's Day deserve better? Not really. An overly commercialized holiday built on romantic tropes and materialism deserves a manipulative horror-comedy built on cliches and dreams of box office dominance. But kudos to Ruben for trying to add a genre staple to a holiday other than Halloween for once. Heart Eyes at least seems to have some ambition, regardless of how unoriginal it is, and the cast share good chemistry, which is more than I can say for most of the recent Scream outings. Had it slowed down, picked its moments more carefully, and elevated its comedy to more satirical heights, it might have gotten somewhere. And maybe glowing, heart-shaped eyes are enough to elicit the giggles from a certain audience. I need more, though. I was bored early and often, glancing at the time on my phone too eagerly (for a 97-minute flick), in the hopes it would all be over soon. By the time the "reveals" started rolling out, I was shaking my head and looking to the exit, happy to move on to something more memorable and less grating.

Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

What begins with the bright and colorful promise of a rom-com soon descends into the pits of hell, with all the requisite splashy red blood and impenetrable shadows you could hope for. Large portions of the third act are bathed in darkness, with only the occasional burst of light offered as illumination. It's suitable horror stuff that begs for revelation, especially since the film looks quite good, all things considered. Still, pitch-slathered horror is nothing new, and certainly isn't anything to get up in arms about. Sony's 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer handles it all in stride, with very little in the way of crush that isn't inherent to the cinematography. Primaries are vibrant when they're allowed to creep in, contrast is striking, flesh tones are relatively lifelike (despite a police station that's far too dark for its own good), and black levels are nice and inky. Moreover, I didn't catch any sight of blocking, banding or other unsightly business, although a touch of red crush sneaks into roses and the killer's glowing night-vision eyes (which surprisingly aren't engaged very often). All told, the high-definition image offers an excellent representation of the film's theatrical presentation.

Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The same is true of Heart Eyes' DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track, which doesn't miss a beat or butchering. Dialogue is clean and intelligible at all times, screams pierce through the soundscape brilliantly, prioritization is spot on, and the film's music holds its own without overwhelming anything of importance. The soundfield itself is a playground of activity too, with a nice spread of rear speaker fun upping the horror ante with each attack and kill. Directionality is primed for jump scares, pans are eerie and smooth, and dynamics are great, bolstered by LFE output that lends weight and presence to every schunk and thunk.

Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary - With director Josh Ruben.

• Murders & Meet Cutes (HD, 8 minutes) - A short behind-the-scenes featurette.

• Deleted Scenes (HD, 5 minutes) - Five scenes in all.

• Gag Reel (HD, 3 minutes) - Fairly standard outtake montage.

Heart Eyes Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Heart Eyes is a Scream clone that suffers from a helluva lot of been-there, jumped-at-that, without anything as funny or frightening as it hopes to generate. Its rom-com elements are surprisingly well-crafted but its horror fails to curdle the blood or offer enough hilarity to really shine. Worse, it all culminates in a convoluted ending with an eye-roll of a reveal that, again, we've seen (and groaned at) before. Ah well, at least Sony's BD does its job. I'm not sure why we aren't getting a 4K release, although I suspect this will follow the release strategy of Thanksgiving, with a 4K edition arriving at a later date. But the standard Blu-ray still boasts excellent audio and video. Extras are rather slight but so it goes.