“Heart Eyes” is another typical hybrid between horror and comedy. This time, we get a mix between slasher horror and romantic comedy, and the resulting mix is often enjoyable mainly thanks to the good chemistry between its two lead performers, though it is also often a bit too predictable to overcome many genre clichés and conventions popping up here and there in the story.

Like any other slasher horror films, the movie starts with a strikingly bloody and violent opening sequence, which shows another unfortunate couple killed by a mysterious serial killer aptly nicknamed “Heart Eye Killer” (HEK). Whenever Valentine’s Day comes, this killer brutally murders a number of young couples in one city after another, and the local police in Seattle, Washington certainly gets alerted when it is quite apparent that HEK comes to their town in this time.

However, that is just a trivial matter to Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt) now, a young woman working as a pitch designer for some prestigious jewelry company in Seattle. While she still does not recover that much from the recent breakup with her ex-boyfriend, she has to face the disastrous public reactions to her company advertisement which is clearly influenced by the current status of her private life, and she must take care of this mess within one day along with a handsome consulting advertiser named Jay Simmons (Mason Gooding).

Needless to say, Ally does not welcome Jay much, though they already had a Meet Cute moment between them before officially introduced to each other. Simply for discussing more about their work, Jay suggests that they should have a dinner together at some posh local restaurant, but she and Jay only come to see more of how much they are different from each other. While he is your average romantic, she is your typical realist, but it goes without saying that there is something being sparked between them as they argue more and more with each other across the table.

Eventually, they decide that they cannot work along with each other that well, but there comes an unexpected moment between them when they are about to leave the restaurant. They come across Ally’s ex-boyfriend and his recent girlfriend who are about to have a date night at the same restaurant, and, to show that she is fine and all right, Ally and Jay end up kissing each other right in front of Ally’s ex-boyfriend and his girlfriend.

While this looks like a simple act of pretension to both of them, this moment is unfortunately caught by the eyes of HEK, who happens to be lurking somewhere around the restaurant. Not long after when Jay kindly takes Ally to her house, HEK suddenly appears in front of them, and Jay and Ally soon find themselves running for their life.

As HEK goes all the way for another bloody rampage while pursuing Ally and Jay, the movie has a lot of nasty fun decorated with a lot of violence and blood. Just like those killer figures of those countless slasher horror flicks out there, HEK seems quite invincible to say the least, and the movie also toys with a certain possibility which has been mainly associated with “Scream” (1996) and its several sequels.

Meanwhile, as cornered more and more by their murderous opponent, Ally and Jay get to know more about each other as helping each other more, and, not so surprisingly, they come to care a lot more about each other than expected. Despite their contrasting view on love and relationship, both of them actually turn out to have yearned for the same things, and there is a little sweet moment when they get a chance to open themselves a little more to each other while a certain famous classic screwball comedy film is being shown in the background.

During the last act where everything is revealed and then explained, the screenplay by Phillip Murphy, Michael Kennedy, and Christopher Landon (He previous directed and wrote “Happy Death Day” (2017) and the 2019 sequel, and he also wrote the screenplay for “Freaky” (2020) with Kennedy, by the way) comes to lose some of its comic momentum. In case of the true identity of HEK, this is too contrived in my humble opinion (You can easily guess it to some degree if you consider the law of the economy of characters, for instance), and the same thing can be said about the obligatory climax sequence.

At least, the movie is often buoyed by the likable presence of its two lead performers. While Olivia Holt brings some charm and pluck to her character, Mason Gooding, who is hunky enough for his role even though he may not be as perky as his Oscar winner father, clicks well with his co-star during several key scenes of theirs in the film, and that is the main reason we come to root more for their characters. In case of several supporting performers in the movie, they are sadly under-utilized in comparison, but Michaela Watkins gleefully chews every moment of her rather brief appearance, and Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster bring a bit of extra humor to the story as the two local cops assigned to the case.

Overall, “Heart Eyes”, directed by Josh Ruben, is a fairly nice comic variation on slasher horror film, but it does not go further than the standards set by “Happy Death Day” and many other recent similar horror comedy films. Because its several entertaining moments are not enough to compensate for its weak aspects, I cannot recommend it, but I will not stop you if you simply want to kill your spare time on anything watchable.