Dating in the current technological moment is its own gruelling circle of hell. It's not just courtesy of the motley web of apps manipulating our eager hopes in order to keep us desperately addicted for long enough we eventually pay for a "profile boost." It's also what these apps have turned the act of dating into and, crucially, how we consider other people: perfect experiences or objects that can be bought.
Josh Ruben's Heart Eyes understands this Sisyphean landscape. While this film offers a fun and breezy good time, maniacally twirling at the crossroads of slasher and rom-com, it's also intuitively intelligent. A goofy delight that never becomes overwrought and cringey, Heart Eyes brilliantly skewers the absurd obstacle course internet dating has set before us, ultimately bringing us out of our screens and back into the real world.
The film begins with a picture-perfect proposal, literally. A couple stands in an embrace framed by what looks like the entirety of the Valentine's section at Michaels. The boy gets on one knee, the girl accepts the ring, only for the boy to swiftly turn and call the photographer hiding in the bushes to make sure he got the money shot; he didn't. And so the couple enacts the proposal again, running through the script the girl wrote for them, only to be very unceremoniously interrupted and hunted by the Heart Eyes Killer, or HEK for short. HEK has been working in various states for the past several years, murdering couples very obviously in love on Valentine's Day. This year, he's set his sights on Seattle, specifically on Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding).
Ally works in advertising for a jewellery company; her latest campaign, for diamonds, is a bust, and her boss brings in freelance advertiser Jay to clean up Ally's work. Ally's resentful of Jay, feeling insecure that he will take her job, but Jay only wants to help. The film takes the two on a traditional rom-com journey, from enemies to lovers, all while hounded by the Heart Eyes Killer.
The killer hunts people he observes putting on a show of being in love. This type of couple is in abundant supply, especially on Valentine's Day. Hell, one lives in Ally's phone: her ex Simon is very demonstrative on social media of his love for his new girlfriend, posting an endless stream of selfies with cutesy filters. Ally obsessively watches all of Simon's posts until Jay comes in and pulls her back into the real world.
When they accidentally run into Simon and his girlfriend, Ally intends to make him jealous by sharing a kiss with Jay. The HEK hones in on Ally and Jay like a moth to a flame, and selects them as his target. As Ally and Jay work to survive the gruesome killer's clutches, they find a love blooming between the two of them that no app could ever manufacture.
As the film plays around with tropes introduced by films like His Girl Friday, My Best Friend's Wedding and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it becomes abundantly clear that it holds tremendous respect for these films and the love that courses through them. This respect is evident not just in the film's hilarious and pitch-perfect references to these classics, but also in its meaningful embrace of their belief in organic love that takes time and a devilish sense of humour to blossom.
While Ally and Jay share an immediate attraction, it takes them a lot of heated banter and sarcasm, not to mention tender moments of exposition, to come to terms with their cerebral attraction for one another. As Jay and Ally grow to respect each other, we see that the film, in turn, respects them and their filmic ancestors. It's all too easy to make fun of the rom-com; doing it justice is a far more impressive task. Ruben and screenwriters Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, don't play up their references to the genre's history for mocking laughs — the rom-com isn't otherized here; it's ranks are eagerly joined by Heart Eyes.
One of the film's greatest achievements is its juxtaposition of the artificial image of love against the real thing. How a couple ought to be against how a couple is. That the HEK, who goes after the obvious love that oftentimes is hollow or lacking in meaning, lands upon the real deal with our heroes is a delicious turn. Ally and Jay are not in love but should be; they have undeniable chemistry, and their banter is on point. They have something golden, something others work so hard to telegraph, but their connection proves just as, if not more, easily apparent and compelling. What's more, their love grows organically, it lacks the control dating apps engender. They seem like the picture a dating app would sell us, but without an architect, at least diegetically. Their love is accidental, hard-won and pure, grounded in friendship — and if Ally and Jay can achieve this without apps, maybe we can, too. Just like the best rom-coms, Heart Eyes points us in the direction of hope for a good, fulfilling love.
Compelling performances aside, it is the film as the sum of its parts that triumphs. A genuine belief in love makes Heart Eyes work thematically and comedically. As a critique of modern-day dating, the film could easily have become a tired stream of jokes at millennials and Gen Z's expense, using slang and jargon to an annoying extent. But this film's sense of humour never becomes irritating, embarrassing or belaboured in the way a film like Founders Day was. Rather, it feels as though Ruben et al. see themselves within the ranks of the generation they depict; they are working within the mighty tradition of the rom-com, not above it. They use social media, understand its power, and are sympathetic toward those looking for love. The jokes are sweet and land with softly, never sear or sting, and therefore remain fun.
And because of this self-deprecating earnestness, the lesson at the core of Heart Eyes becomes all the more easier to swallow. Online, people become flat, commodities we flick through. If we meet them and hit it off, there's always the nagging thought in the back of our minds, lodged there by the act of using these apps, that there's probably somebody better out there to help us better achieve the perfect image of love the apps themselves, and other social media platforms in turn, peddle. There's always another kill.
And so we return to the screen: the apps. We make people dispensable. We lie awake in bed every night swiping, sending "likes," making the same witty banter, over and over and over again — trying to strike perfection. Even as pictures of love may be hollow in this film, they still lead to death, at least the love that isn't labelled as such, not yet anyway. If we're all marching toward death, might as well shoot for the real deal, Heart Eyes says jubilantly.