Heart Eyes Does The Slasher Killer Reveal Right

The new movie Heart Eyes is a horror comedy that’s also a romance—or at least a parody of rom-coms. As if that weren’t already a lot of genres at once, like most slashers, Heart Eyes is also a bit of a mystery movie. With the exception of horror flicks featuring icons like Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, or Jason, slasher movies tend to have a “whodunit” aspect to them as the protagonists and audience try to figure out the identity of the killer underneath their mask. A good killer reveal can’t be totally out of left field, but it can’t be too obvious, either. The reveal also shouldn’t be a twist audiences have seen before. That makes Heart Eyes’ ending all the better, because the just-released slasher finds ways to be fresh in a crowded, bloody space.

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In Heart Eyes, directed by Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within), Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding play Ally and Jay, two co-workers who are mistaken for a couple on Valentine’s Day. This is a problem, because a masked killer known as the Heat Eyes Killer, or HEK, has slaughtered couples (and anybody else who gets in their way) in various cities across the United States for the past two Valentine’s Days. This year, HEK is killing in Seattle, where Ally and Jay are, and the two spend most of the movie trying to avoid getting slaughtered until the end when the Heart Eyes Killer is finally bested—and unmasked. 

Warning: The rest of this story spoils the ending of Heart Eyes

Turns out there are actually three people wearing the Heart Eyes mask and murdering lovebirds. Slasher movies have pulled this trick before, most famously in Scream with the reveal that there are two Ghostface killers, Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard) and Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich). However, Heart Eyes takes things a step further by having a fake-out reveal, an intentionally underwhelming reveal, and then finally the reveal that savvy audiences probably saw coming—although the movie deserves praise for pulling a subtly sneaky trick to throw viewers off the scent.

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The first reveal comes when Ally and Jay decide to fight Heart Eyes rather than flee when the masked murderer is killing people left and right at a drive-in movie theater. They manage to kill HEK but when they unmask him it’s… some random guy they don’t recognize—and neither does anybody watching. Given that this reveal is intentionally unsatisfying, not to mention the fact that there are still 20 minutes or so left in the movie, most audience members probably assumed there was another reveal coming.

Detective Shaw (Jordana Brewster) insists on giving Jay a ride to the airport, but that’s not what happens. Ally—who by this point has realized she actually does have feelings for Jay—gets a call from the Heart Eyes Killer instructing her to come to St. Valentine’s Church if she wants Jay to live. At this point, audience members who have been trying to guess who the killer really is probably assume it’s Brewster’s detective Shaw. That’s who Jay was last seen with, and when Heart Eyes attacked a Seattle Police Station when Jay and Ally were inside, Shaw just kind of disappeared. In a horror movie, if you don’t see a body, it’s probably safe to assume a character isn’t dead, and for her to show up again without explanation is a pretty strong signal that maybe there’s something fishy going on here. 

But, when Heart Eyes unmasks before Ally, it’s not Detective Shaw but somebody else that Ally doesn’t recognize—and the viewers also might not at first because he’s an extremely minor character. It’s the I.T. guy that Ally briefly spoke with at the police station! He’s quite miffed that Ally doesn’t remember who he is. It’s a funny subversion, but if this were the final reveal of HEK’s identity, it would be underwhelming. The paradox of a good slasher reveal is that they need to be unexpected, but also familiar. Heart Eyes checks the box on the former with the I.T. guy, then delivers on the latter when Detective Shaw steps out of the shadows, revealing that she’s also a killer. The two are married and they get off on the murder of other happy couples. (The first HEK, the rando, was part of their throuple, but they don’t seem too upset about his death.)

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This twisty succession of unmaskings isn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it more than does its job by keeping the climax of a slasher movie exciting thanks to unpredictable reveals. Heart Eyes uses familiar tricks, but it uses a lot of them and it uses them well, mixing red herrings, fake-outs, and telegraphed clues that all click into place at the right moments. A slasher movie can’t have its killer reveal feel like a routine Scooby-Doo unmasking, and Heart Eyes kills it on that front—horror pun very much intended. The audience enjoys getting surprised by unexpected reveals and they get to pat themselves on the back for having cracked the case. 

They might have cracked it earlier had Heart Eyes not done one additional clever thing that helped delay the point at which audiences figured out HEK’s identity. Early on in the movie, the police find a wedding ring that the killer accidentally left at one of the early murders with the initials “J.S.” inscribed inside. This should instantly have any wannabee Sherlock looking for characters whose names could match the initials, and indeed the cops suspect Jay, whose last name is Simmons, to be the killer. This is a red herring, though it should’ve been an early clue that Detective Shaw might be a suspect, given that her surname starts with “S.” (Her first name, Jeanine, is revealed during the climax.)

However, when she’s first introduced, it’s along with her partner, Detective Hobbs (Devon Sawa), prompting a joke about how their names are Hobbs and Shaw, like the Fast & Furious spin-off. It’s not an especially great joke—one review of Heart Eyes even singles it out, dismissively, as an “example of the general level of wit in the screenplay.” But perhaps the quality of the joke as comedy isn’t the point. It’s a smokescreen, obscuring a major clue in plain sight because you’re focused on the joke rather than the fact that one of the only other named characters has an initial that matches that of the killer’s wedding ring. It’s a small but important touch that helps Heart Eyes’ final reveal feel earned.

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