Movies are a love language. When you stop to think about it, it’s a grand gesture for hundreds of people to put years of effort, time, and sacrifice into making something for you. On a tangential level, to crib from Roger Ebert’s wise words, movies are an “empathy machine.” We’re allowed to feel some sense of, if not love, then at least compassionate understanding. I’d argue this ability to feel empathy is not limited by genre or subgenre. This is not to say that every movie invites empathy, but rather that it can be found regardless of the aspects that make up the genre.
And yes, that even includes what Ebert called “Dead Teenager Movies,” more commonly known as the slasher film. As recent entries in the subgenre have proven, there’s plenty of compassion to be squeezed from the slasher genre as well. You may just have to wipe away some of the blood.
Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes, written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy is the latest slasher to hit theaters — and is now on VOD after earning $32.5 million globally. The film centers on co-workers Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding) who are mistaken as a couple by the Valentine’s Day-themed serial killer, Heart Eyes. But this isn’t just any slasher film. It’s a slasher by way of a rom-com, making it distinct from the notably small collection of Valentine’s Day set horror films that include My Bloody Valentine (1981), Hospital Massacre (1982), Valentine (2001) and My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009). While joining such a small group of films inevitably leads to comparisons, Landon didn’t find the task daunting. “I felt like we were all approaching this in a pretty unique way that felt fresh, and I think that was, at least what really drew me to the project, was knowing that in many ways, this is a rom-com that keeps getting invaded by a slasher,” Landon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So that felt like it automatically separated us from some of those previous films, but also allowed us to unpack some of the tropes from those movies as well.”
Unpacking tropes has become what Landon and Kennedy, who respectively directed and wrote, Freaky (2020) have become known for. Outside of Freaky, Landon directed slashers, Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2U (2019). And Kennedy wrote slasher, It’s a Wonderful Knife (2023). Collectively all of these films have been genre mashups, borrowing from concepts made popular by Freaky Friday (1976), Groundhog Day (1993), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and merging them with the slasher formula. Beyond the mash-up aspect, there is something distinct about these slasher movies, which have had a significant effect on studio-released slasher films. Films like Totally Killer (2023), The Blackening (2022), the Fear Street trilogy (2021), There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021), and Black Christmas (2019) aren’t anti-death but have more investment in their characters than a desire to fill body bags. These films aren’t simply about a body count or crafting a masked killer who the audience roots for, like Michael, Jason and Freddy. These are movies focused on lead characters with complexities, desires, and lives that exist outside of the barrage of horror they find themselves in.
Ebert’s dismissal of the majority of ’80s slasher movies, and the moralization attached to that, has been a sticking point among fans of the genre. We horror fans are undoubtedly a sensitive bunch, and Ebert certainly wasn’t one to pull his punches. Of Friday the 13th Part 2, he said, “This movie is a cross between the Mad Slasher and Dead teenager genres; about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk, and they’re all about as bad as this one.” There was also the moral hand wringing he and Gene Siskel shared over Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) which became national news. There was a certain point in time when I found Ebert’s criticisms of slashers irrelevant.
But I was wrong. It’s not that I agree with assessments regarding them or think that enjoying them is a moral failure, but rather I failed to account for the slashers he did appreciate, notably Halloween (1978), Scream (1996) and Scream 2 (1997) and what separated them from the rest of the subgenre and made them compelling even to audiences who aren’t horror diehards. If filmmakers give us characters to love we’ll be more invested in them than the killer and that opens up a pathway to empathy that not all slashers, not matter how much fun they may be, offer.
Neither Heart Eyes nor any of the slasher films the writing team has worked on before are dismissive of what’s come before. There’s a genuine love of not only the big, entry-point slasher films from previous decades but the deep cuts as well. “I love Friday the 13th Part VI,” says Murphy, who wrote the initial draft of Heart Eyes. “It’s my favorite one to talk about. I think Jason’s the most tenacious in that movie. He’s just like a killing machine and there’s obviously a lot of humor also, but I think I was thinking of that particular Jason in terms of the ferocity that the Heart Eyes Killer brings.” But along with that love comes a desire to give an audience something more, and it’s no surprise that all three of the writers cited Wes Craven’s Scream as not only a major influence on Heart Eyes but also their careers.
Craven’s career was driven by compassion. Even his earlier films that get lumped in with exploitation movies, like The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) confront America’s policies and role in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation. By the time he got to Scream, he was not only operating within a meta-slasher framework but also the idea that characters are worth more than their ability to die, and that’s something that has held the franchise together through its most recent installment, Scream VI (2023). There is more to the stakes of a horror than a death toll. Characters being able to live and survive in the aftermath of horror offers its own unique stakes as well.
Kennedy, who didn’t fall in love with the genre until his later teenage years, credits Kevin Williamson’s writing on Scream and Scream 2 as instrumental to his take on the slasher genre, along with the hands-on experience he got from working with Landon on Freaky. For him, as impressive as the Heart Eyes Killer is, it was the two leads that were a priority. “I think on the page, [Ally and Jay] really pop as people and not things. They’re not props,” he says. Landon shares similar insights, noting “I wanted to bring more layers to these characters and make them kind of broken and flawed and conflicted and lovable. I think that is way more reflective of the world I live in and the people that I know.”
I think this perspective is necessary. Even in a genre known for scares and bloodshed, recognizing individuals as people rather than things feels welcome, especially in this moment where it feels like so many with power, and those desperate for power, are invested in dehumanizing people. Younger audiences finding their way into the horror genre have different desires from those of Gen X, and I think among all the anxieties the modern world offers, something is comforting about the idea that people can experience their worst nightmares and still walk away, sometimes even walk away better than they were before.
As horror grows increasingly varied in terms of what we see onscreen, it’s essential that, even within the most explicit journeys through the dark, that there is a place set aside for explicit empathy within it. It only gives audiences more to love.
