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Time of India
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Heart Eyes OTT Release Date: When and where to watch Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding's rom-com horror film online
Heart Eyes OTT Release Date: Love, laughter… and murder? That's the twist this film brings to the screen - a Valentine's Day-themed rom-com with a sharp, slasher edge. After a theatrical release in February 2025 and a digital rollout in March, this quirky horror-romance is finally heading to a mega screening. Mark your calendars, Heart Eyes will be available to stream on Netflix starting May 8, 2025. A killer twist on love Directed by Josh Ruben (Scare Me, Werewolves Within), Heart Eyes turns the typical romantic comedy on its head by adding a serial killer into the mix. Set around Valentine's Day, the story follows the rise of a masked murderer known as the Heart Eyes Killer, who has been haunting the holiday for years by stalking and killing romantic couples. This year, the horror continues… but not without a dose of romance and charm. At the centre of the chaos are Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding, who play an unlikely couple thrown together by fate and fear. What starts as a chance romantic spark quickly turns into a wild survival ride as they try to stay alive and, maybe, fall in love in the process. This film brings together a solid cast including Olivia Holt (Cruel Summer, Kickin' It), Mason Gooding (Scream VI, Love, Victor), Gigi Zumbado, Jordana Brewster, and Devon Sawa, among others. Some reports suggest that Netflix streaming will be available only in the US, and if that happens, regions in Asia will get the film around May/June 2025, while other countries may have to wait up to a year or more. Box office and reception While Heart Eyes didn't break records at the box office, it did quite well considering its $18 million budget, earning $33 million worldwide. What really helped the movie shine was word of mouth and strong critical reception. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a critic score of 81% and an audience score of 77%—a clear sign that both horror fans and rom-com lovers found something to enjoy. Over on IMDb, it sits at a 6.1/10, reflecting mixed but mostly positive reactions. Critics appreciated how the film embraced both genres without taking itself too seriously. As one reviewer put it: 'It's a rom-com that knows it's fighting for attention—and it wins by having fun with itself.'
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Heart Eyes' Review: Josh Ruben's Rom-Com Slasher Is the Best Emoji Movie Ever
Well, shut my mouth. Just a few hours — I repeat, hours — after writing that Hollywood never releases a classic romantic movie on Valentine's Day, I see a film that proves me wrong. It just happens to also be an ultraviolent slasher. Touché, Hollywood. You win this round. Then again with a film as good as Josh Ruben's 'Heart Eyes,' everyone's a winner. Ruben is the director of the brilliant 2021 horror comedy Werewolves Within, hands down the best movie ever adapted from a video game. It comes as no surprise that his follow-up would do the same thing for another underwhelming subgenre. 'Heart Eyes' raises the bar for emoji movies, which sounds like faint praise since 'The Emoji Movie' forgot to install a bar, but it's still true. For the last two years a serial killer in a mask that looks like the 'heart eyes' emoji has gone on a Valentine's Day killing spree, brutally slaughtering adorable couples across the country. This year, Heart Eyes has set their sights on Seattle, where an adorably clumsy advertising executive named Ally (Olivia Holt, 'Totally Killer') has just met cute with her hunky and emotionally available new workplace rival, Jay (Mason Gooding, 'Scream VI'). Ally is still getting over her ex-boyfriend and has a randy comic relief best friend, Monica (Gigi Zumbado), who takes her for old-fashioned shopping montages to cheer her up. Oh, but Ally and Jay have the world's worst first date, culminating in the sudden appearance of her ex. To make him jealous she kisses Jay, who kisses her back, which attracts the attention of Heart Eyes, who proceeds to chase them across the city and try to kill them in romantic locales like a botanical garden, a merry-go-round, and a drive-in movie theater playing 'His Girl Friday.' Fans of Ruben's earlier work know two things: He loves horror movies, and he loves love. 'Werewolves Within' and 'Heart Eyes' are both horror movies that interrupt a heartwarming love story, where the leads absolutely have to end up together or I swear to god I will scream. Some genre mash-ups fall into the trap of favoring one genre more than the other, sometimes a lot more, but 'Heart Eyes' is an engrossing and genuinely funny romantic comedy with and without all the murders. That it's a formulaic rom-com is all part of the charm. Romantic comedies, just like slashers, are in the business of giving the audience exactly the same thing, over and over again, but different. The screenplay for 'Heart Eyes' — credited to Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy — adheres to the conventions of the rom-com genre in every conceivable way, but it knows what makes those tropes popular and how to make them sing. If you go to 'Heart Eyes' hoping for a good old-fashioned rom-com, you'll get one. With a scene where someone's face gets viscerally squished by a machine press. If you go to 'Heart Eyes' hoping for a good old-fashioned slasher, you'll mostly get that too. The formulas don't match up perfectly, and 'Heart Eyes' largely skips the part where the killer usually slaughters their way through the supporting cast for two whole acts, until the actual heroes figure out what kind of movie they're in. But in a rom-com the heroes/love interests are always our anchor, so once Heart Eyes starts to attack Ally and Jay, it's like the film moves straight to the pulse-pounding climax, then backtracks a bit and ramps back up again. And then one more time for good measure. Of course no slasher movie is complete without memorable murders, and 'Heart Eyes' murders many, memorably. And yet Ruben miraculously manages to take those brutal slayings and make them feel part-and-parcel with the film's otherwise heightened, chintzy comedy vibe. It's truly gross to watch someone stabbed through the mouth with a tire-iron. It's somehow cute to watch two mismatched rom-com leads bicker about removing it, all while the corpse's wide-open maw and dead, piercing eyes take up the whole silver screen. Priorities, people! Priorities! Speaking of priorities: 'Heart Eyes' co-stars Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster as Detectives Hobbs and Shaw, and yes, they make that joke, and yes, Jordana Brewster is in the 'Fast and Furious' movies. So according to the 'Last Action Hero' rules, this means in the 'Heart Eyes' universe somebody else plays Vin Diesel's sister in that franchise. It was probably another 'As the World Turns' alumni. Presumably Emmy Rossum. But maybe no one cares about that but me. Anyway, I digress. 'Heart Eyes' seems destined to become a Valentine's Day favorite, that rare horror movie with a great and charming love story, and that even rarer romantic comedy with a great and savage serial killer. So once again, I admit it. I was wrong. Sometimes Hollywood does release a classic Valentine's Day movie in February. Just not usually. The post 'Heart Eyes' Review: Josh Ruben's Rom-Com Slasher Is the Best Emoji Movie Ever appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Heart Eyes' Review: A Been-There-Slashed-That Rom-Com Horror Flick
Ever since the genre was created, the 'meet cute' has been a staple of romantic comedies. So it makes sense that in the new 'romantic comedy horror film' from director Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within), couples should die cute. Well, not cute exactly, unless you think of spears going through eyeballs or heads being crushed into bloody pulp as cute. Of course, for the target audience of Heart Eyes, that's exactly what they are. They relish the gruesome deaths, the more graphic the better, the way audiences used to relish spectacular production numbers in musicals. If movie musicals had their heyday in the 1930s and '40s, the equivalent for slasher movies was the 1980s. Like the Scream franchise, which it closely resembles, Heart Eyes both pays homage to and parodies its inspirations, which, considering that it's set on Valentine's Day, must include My Bloody Valentine (the 1981 original, of course, not the remake). More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Scream 7' Sets Mason Gooding to Return for Horror Sequel Rachel Zegler Battles Evil Machines in Trailer for A24 Horror-Comedy 'Y2K' Olivia Holt, Mason Gooding Join 'Heart Eyes' Horror Rom-Com The story revolves around an annual murder spree conducted on the holiday in different cities by a killer wearing a mask featuring, you guessed it, heart-shaped eyes. Not only do they send the right anti-social message, they also have a utilitarian value, capable of night vision while glowing red in the dark. The 'Heart Eyes Killer,' or 'HEK' as the media has dubbed him, only attacks romantic couples, suggesting that things have gone badly for him in the dating department. So pretty much everyone should be considered a suspect. The central characters in the film, Ally (an appealing Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding), aren't a romantic couple. At least yet. They're thrown together when forced by their tyrannical boss (Michaela Watkins, doing a send-up of Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada) to collaborate on an ad campaign. After dinner, Ally makes the mistake of passionately kissing Jay after she spots her ex with his new girlfriend. It makes them Heart Eyes' new target. The killer proves pretty resourceful, even managing to show up inside Ally's closet just a few minutes later. In the ensuing battle that spills outside, Ally flees, and when the police arrive, Jay is arrested as a suspect. The detectives investigating the murders, played by Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster, are named Hobbs and Shaw, which is an example of the general level of wit in the screenplay penned by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, whose collective credits include such horror films as Freaky, It's a Wonderful Knife, and Happy Death Day and its sequel. The creatives' obvious affinity for the genre comes through in every frame of the film, and to their credit Heart Eyes includes many clever touches, such as the would-be victims declaring 'We're not together!' in a vain effort to dissuade the romance-obsessed killer. And there's no shortage of inventive carnage on display, enough to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty gore hounds, presented with the sort of practical effects they relish. But despite the slavish genre trappings, or rather because of them, Heart Eyes feels too familiar to prove very interesting, unless you think that a potential victim throwing up on the killer is a novel twist. It's no spoiler to reveal that the killer seems to have been definitively dispatched at one point, since it takes place with 30 minutes to go and everyone knows that he'll soon reappear in one way or another. The method that the screenwriters have devised, in which his identity is revealed, proves both overplotted and underwhelming, although it does provide the opportunity for one of the cast members to vigorously chew the scenery. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
