Love Kills

Director Josh Ruben returns to the horror genre with the Valentine's Day bloodletting Heart Eyes.

- TARA BENNETT

JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINE'S Day comes a cinematic mash-up that aims to please both romcom and horror fans. Impossible, you say? Director Josh Ruben most ardently disagrees and presents Heart Eyes, his latest film, as proof of concept.

In just five years, Ruben has carved out a unique horror space for himself making funny, thought-provoking and scary films like Scare Me (2020) and Werewolves Within (2021). His latest is based on an original premise by Phillip Murphy and co-written by successful modern horror screenwriters Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy (Happy Death Day). Ruben was approached by Kennedy to give his spin on their tale of a masked serial killer (featuring literal heart eyes carved into his mask) targeting happy couples.

Ruben tells Red Alert that as soon as he finished the script, he couldn't get it out of his head because it gave him an opportunity to tap into a piece of himself that he hasn't been able to exploit yet on screen: his love of romcoms.

"This was an opportunity to make a Nora Ephron-esque romcom in earnest, that also slashes into Wes Craven horror," Ruben says of the script.