Valentine's Day lends itself well to a horror movie plot, especially when you consider the violent origins of the holiday itself. The most well known V-Day horror is probably My Bloody Valentine, though my personal fave is a batshit crazy 1982 movie known as both Hospital Massacre and X-Ray.
This year's entry into the Valentine's horror genre is Heart Eyes, which attempts to blend horror with romantic comedy but only partially succeeds at either. Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding star as Ally and Jay, two young professionals who meet cute but end up together on a platonic work date on Valentine's Day while Heart Eyes, a serial killer who targets couples is on the loose. When the killer sets his sights on Ally and Jay, they try to convince him they aren't actually a couple, to no avail.
Too much of the movie feels like a first draft, with jokes that fall flat more often than they hit, a weirdly paced plot with scenes that go one forever, all leading to an ending that's both obvious and dumb. Heart Eyes wants to be Scream so bad, but it isn't nearly as clever; it's a waste of a genuinely good concept for a slasher killer's mask, even if those heart eyes don't make a lot of sense when you think about it.
Before his return to acting and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All At Once, Ke Huy Quan had been working behind the scenes choreographing fight sequences for a number of action films. Now he's the one doing the fighting in Love Hurts, this week's second Valentine's Day-themed film. And while not a horror movie, it definitely has as much, if not more, blood and violence as most of the V-Day horror movies out there.
Quan stars as Marvin, a seemingly mild-mannered real estate agent who finds himself called back into the crime world he left behind when Rose (Ariana DeBose), the woman he loves but was also supposed to kill years ago, returns to town.
Aside from that, the film really doesn't have much of a plot, and is instead scene after scene of fighting and shootouts, shootouts and fighting. As good as some of these sequences are - director Jonathan Eusebio does his best to place the camera in some unexpected places - it gets very repetitive very quickly, to the point of exhaustion. I fought the good fight and kept my eyes open, but I promise it wasn't an easy battle to win.