Review: Heart Eyes

Let’s see what happens when you smash together two of the most formulaic movie genres into the same film. Did I end up with hearts in my eyes, or ‘X’s?

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All styles of film have their conventions and tropes. They are actually really helpful for storytelling, because they grant creators a form of shorthand so they don’t have to expend as much energy establishing the rules and boundaries of their worlds. They also establish expectations, which are a prerequisite if you want to get some narrative juice out of subverting them. Sometimes, the conventions and tropes become so restrictive in a particular genre that they operate more as formulas. We examine the "slasher formula" in this space from time to time, and it is indeed one of the most specific and proscriptive. Even when it evolves, the new norms are quickly absorbed and propagated. For example, I’ve joked before that ever since Scream in 1996, it has been practically mandated that our slashers feature multiple killers. If there is one genre across the cinematic landscape which has even a more constrictive and immutable formula than the humble slasher, it is the Romantic Comedy. With Heart Eyes, these two formulas are woven together in a way that I'm kind of surprised we’ve never seen before (barring this SNL skit from a few years ago).

What’s remarkable to me is the way that these two formulas bolt together. The movie starts with the masked killer establishing the pattern of their kills on characters that we’ll never see again, which is a slasher staple. Then, we are introduced to our unlucky-at-love female protagonist and her sassy best friend, before a coffee shop meet-cute with a man who turns out to be a potential professional rival. Naturally, that is classic RomCom. As the film goes on, the tropes from both genres stack up and intrude on each other as if they were puzzle pieces designed to fit together. Is the male protagonist superficially cocky and presumptuous, only to reveal a true nature that is compassionate and genuine? Of course. Does a masked, knife-wielding murderer wait in someone's closet for two characters to deliver dialogue necessary to the plot before trying to kill them, rather than leaping out to strike the moment they enter the room? Yes they do. It is all quite fun, and quite familiar, and I enjoyed the novelty that the premise injects into a couple of very well-established story types. I can’t help but wonder if there could have been more to mine from the idea than just a good time, however.

What I don’t get from Heart Eyes is any kind of rumination on the nature of formulaic entertainment. Really, there's not even a subversion of either of the formulas, just the unusual juxtaposition of them. Now, it really isn't fair for me to go into a movie with zero expectations, watch and enjoy it, and retroactively apply expectations for what I think it should have been instead. So acknowledged, this isn't fair. Yet, I do wish that once the filmmakers realized how fluidly the mash-up came together that they had set their sights on figuring out why we gravitate towards movies with the most predictable story beats and injecting a little commentary on that, or some other related idea of substance. I know that's not how movie making works -or scratch that, I don't know because I've never made a movie, but I recognize that the logistics of retroactively inserting thematic heft into your popcorn RomSlashCom movie is probably not a logistical possibility. Still the heart wants what it wants, so I have to bring it up here. Ultimately, you will probably enjoy Heart Eyes if you are reading this, and maybe you will have a better chance of holding your expectations in line with reality.