A Rom-Com Slasher That Means It: Josh Ruben and Chris Landon on ‘Heart Eyes’

Valentine’s Day has never fully belonged to horror. Despite George Mihalka’s My Bloody Valentine becoming a cult staple, even earning a 3D remake in 2009, and the early-aughts slasher Valentine (2001), the holiday remains oddly underrepresented in the genre. Perhaps it is too kitschy in its pageantry to comfortably sustain terror. Heart Eyes found a way to truly blend horror and romantic comedy in a way that hadn’t been done before.

Director Josh Ruben admitted he was initially intimidated by the idea of merging the two. “I was like, I don’t know that this can be done. How can it possibly be done?” His concern wasn’t about whether the gore gags would work or if the jokes would land, but about mastering tone. From the start, Heart Eyes presented a challenge: how do you fully commit to two genres without turning either into parody?

“What if it could be as gruesome and fun a slasher as, you know… Friday the 13th: Jason Lives,” Ruben says, “but how can you also make it Nora Ephron?” The solution, Ruben and writer-producer Chris Landon realized, was refusing to treat either genre as a joke. Romantic scenes weren’t heightened for comedy, and horror sequences weren’t softened for laughs.

“You don’t want to scream funny,” Ruben explains. “You want to play horror for real. You don’t want to get caught trying to be funny.” The distinction sounds simple, but many horror films falter when humor undercuts the stakes.

Like most scary movies that want to stand out, Heart Eyes depends on well-written, three-dimensional characters to elevate it beyond spectacle. However, given the passion to make this movie part Garry Marshall and part Wes Craven, it couldn’t rely solely on inventive kills or gratuitous body counts. A romantic comedy has no buffer of blood. Its characters must be loved, or at least deeply understood, by the audience. Without that investment, nothing else matters. 

“I think the key ingredient here was making sure that these two people were really struggling with their own personal stuff,” Ruben says. “That they both were seeking but also afraid of love. That’s a really classic rom-com layer. If you can create two characters that the audience connects to and is endeared to, they’ll go anywhere with you.”