The Final Couple | Heart Eyes Review
Check out my review of genre-mashing Valentines horror film, Heart Eyes.
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Below is my review of Heart Eyes.
One of horror’s most tried and true tropes is the Final Girl. First exemplified by Laura Strode (Halloween) and Sally Screams’a’Lot (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the trope refers to the final girl to confront the killer, hopefully surviving to tell the tale.
Final Girls have since evolved to keep up with the times, or simply subvert expectations, like in You’re Next where Final Girl Erin turns out to be a trained survivalist much to the misfortune of her attackers, or Here for Blood where the Final Girl is Final Guy, pro-wrestler Tim O’Bannon as the prototypical babysitter fending off a murderous cult (Not a popular or well known movie, but one I had to take the opportunity to shout out because it’s awesome). Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes adds a new twist on the Final Girl trope: the Final Couple.
Heart Eyes follows an oil and vinegar pair of young, hot 20-somethings as they fight for survival against the Heart Eyes Killer, a perennial serial killer who strikes couples on Valentine’s Day. While it’s not uncommon for horror movies to culminate in a romantically-charged two-some fighting for survival, Heart Eyes’ charm lies in its unlikely genre pairing. While it’s heavy in horror gore and scares, structure-wise, it’s a rom-com.
We follow Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) as they meet-cute, learn to hate each other, are forced to work together, reluctantly grow closer, and eventually fall in love just as major obstacles hit their relationship. Typical rom-com story beats. Only in Heart Eyes, the major obstacles they face are literally life and death.
But does the genre pairing work? The fun of horror films comes in its danger, scares, and gore, AKA the kills. Is there any horror-coded fun in watching two gorgeous people’s inevitable happy ending?
The fun in following a Final Girl like Halloween’s Laurie Strode is straightforward but effective. Will this innocent girl survive against a ruthless killer? There’s one kill that really matters.
Fast forward to decades later to Scream’s ensemble whodunnit. Not only do we follow the Final Girl, Sydney Prescott, but also watch as her friends who we’ve come to know and love are picked off one by one, all while pondering the killer’s identity. The fun lies in the fear of who in the ensemble will die next and how.
As for Heart Eyes, we know that neither lead will die before the end of the movie, if at all. It’s a rom-com, after all. The couple always ends up together in the end. Even its horror DNA can’t change that. This forces Heart Eyes to have fun with its peripheral kills. How brutally and creatively can the randos be slaughtered? For a horror movie with comedy at its heart, those are exactly the kind of kills we want. Uber drivers, deputies, horny burnouts. We can laugh in glee at their gory deaths because we don’t care about them. While maybe still too dark for horror detractors, it was a match made in heaven for me.
Joe gives it 4 out of 5 stars.
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