Josh Ruben
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
The horror here, very much of the Scream variety, including lengthy villain-sourced exposition packed into the climax…
…this isn’t your regular post-Scream slasher…
La película no logra decidir si quiere ser Scream o 10 Things I Hate About You, y en ese vaivén tonal se diluye la identidad de la película.
“What’s your favorite scary movie set on Valentine’s Day?” the ghostfaced killer of Scream might croak into a voice modulator if he was feeling a little romantic as well as homicidal.
Any audience member who has seen a “Scream” film knows to look out for unusual characters that could potentially be involved, but “Heart Eyes” doesn’t seem particularly interested in masking its twist.
…whipped up a tasty cocktail of “Scream” and “10 Things I Hate About You.”
Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced Heart Eyes (2025)
Visuals Themes Characters Plot
Ruben's direction clearly draws inspiration from classic slashers like Psycho and Halloween…
Between the tried-and-true Halloween classics (Halloween, Trick ‘r Treat)…
Ruben’s direction effortlessly channels the haunting tension of classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th…
We already have Jason and Michael Myers delivering their stoney silence…
Michael Myers of “Halloween,”…
Ruben blends the blood and gore of a slasher film, such as Psycho and Halloween, with the comedic elements of the Scream series and Happy Death Day.
My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Directed by George Mihalka
influenced Heart Eyes (2025)
Themes Visuals Characters
…an idea that's obviously already been played with before in movies like "My Bloody Valentine" and "Valentine,"…
…while it’s designed to match the looks of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and the foe from My Bloody Valentine…
…you can likely count the number of Valentine’s Day-specific slasher movies on your hand (this includes 1981’s My Bloody Valentine and 2001’s Valentine)…
…a new contender arrives to steal the holiday mantle from My Bloody Valentine…
I will undoubtedly be double-featuring it with My Bloody Valentine during Cupid’s annual hunting season.
We’ve seen the Valentine’s Day killer before in My Bloody Valentine (MBV) and with the exception of glowing red hearts for eyes, Heart Eyes emulates the same sinister archetype as MBV’s Harry Warden.
It isn’t until recently that the genre began to rely more on horror elements, as seen in Ready or Not (2019). Heart Eyes does the same, cementing itself in the rom-com sphere but emphasizing the thrills, with the comedy being hit or miss.
Ready or Not is now looking at one of the more influential, if not easily imitatable films of the last decade or so; a super-violent, super-hip comedy-thriller that took the gory shocks from 80’s slasher movies and repositioned them around a clever narrative that was far more than just a group of bland teenagers being massacred.
…not to mention other accomplished horror comedies like HAPPY DEATH DAY, READY OR NOT, and THE HUNT…
Similarly, Heart Eyes’ structure and pacing resemble the horror/comedy bounce found in the Scream franchise and Ready or Not, with self-aware jokes, eye-popping jump scares, paired with grounded, mostly sensible sequences where the victims are not total dinguses.
La película no logra decidir si quiere ser Scream o 10 Things I Hate About You, y en ese vaivén tonal se diluye la identidad de la película.
…whipped up a tasty cocktail of “Scream” and “10 Things I Hate About You.”
It's a bit like Scream meets 10 Things I Hate About You, as the dueling protagonists slowly fall in love when they are tossed headfirst into a high-stakes horror movie neither one of them asked to be in.
…an idea that's obviously already been played with before in movies like "My Bloody Valentine" and "Valentine,"…
Think of it closer to 2009’s My Bloody Valentine 3D as opposed to 2001’s Valentine.
…you can likely count the number of Valentine’s Day-specific slasher movies on your hand (this includes 1981’s My Bloody Valentine and 2001’s Valentine)…
As one of four films released in February in honor of Valentine’s Day—“Companion” (2025), “Heart Eyes” (2025) and “Love Me” (2025)—and aim to celebrate the holiday with unexpected genre mashups that lead to heightened tension, “Love Hurts” just does not feel compelling since the stakes are virtually nonexistent.
My friend Vince just reviewed the slasher horror rom-com Heart Eyes and this time we’ve got a Valentine-themed thriller comedy Love Hurts.
It’s refreshing to see a sleek, canny, well-shot genre mashup now in theatres that’s predicated on Valentine’s Day violence, the surprising utility of a straw as a weapon and the climactic use of the dialogue “Love hurts.”
Too bad those complimentary descriptions above apply only to Heart Eyes and not to Love Hurts.
If you’re taking your sweetheart out on the 14th and you’ve seen this movie (or “Heart Eyes”) together, you might want to consider an upscale place where the drinks don’t invite their use, lest your date get the wrong idea.
…when she admits to liking His Girl Friday, interwoven into the movie at one point for meta rom-com reference…
(It certainly doesn’t help either of them that in a sequence at a drive-in, we’re shown clips of Rosalind Russell in “His Girl Friday,” and the comparison is devastating.)
A massacre sequence set at a drive-in cinema screening Howard Hawks’ screwball romance His Girl Friday (1940) nails the film’s status as a reflexive hall of mirrors…
…a crazed drive-in movie theater (that is ironically showing the classic rom-com “His Girl Friday,” which may have been an influence on Ruben).
There are also some nice touches, including references to His Girl Friday…
There is also a lovely reference to a classic remarriage comedy, “His Girl Friday” (1940), which will hopefully inspire young moviegoers to check out an old movie.
Eli Roth’s 2023 horror movie, Thanksgiving, was a surprise success, both as a contemporary slasher and satisfying grindhouse callback…
In 2023 we received the Pilgrim in the form of the long awaited Thanksgiving feature…
Hot on the heels of Eli Roth’s blood-soaked “Thanksgiving,” another holiday-themed slasher makes its way onto the scene with the aptly timed “Heart Eyes”…
Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving (now poised to become a franchise)…
…classic rom-coms that trend lean, like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally…
Sleepless in Seattle would be a fitting title for this film as well, as it finds the city’s citizens on high alert for the Heart Eyes Killer, who creeps up every Valentine’s Day to terrorize couples in a new spot on the United States map.
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
influenced by Heart Eyes (2025)
Themes
Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving and even 2025’s Heart Eyes have worked as movies spiritually guided by Wes Craven and Ghostface…
Recent slashers like “Heart Eyes” and “Thanksgiving” have had fun in the genre sandbox, leaning into their themes and carving out identities.
…creating new iconic monsters like the titular killers of M3GAN and Heart Eyes…
…while injecting the ironic charm of Scream and Happy Death Day…
…not to mention other accomplished horror comedies like HAPPY DEATH DAY, READY OR NOT, and THE HUNT…
Ruben blends the blood and gore of a slasher film, such as Psycho and Halloween, with the comedic elements of the Scream series and Happy Death Day.
Still, as with Happy Death Day and Freaky, there’s fun to be found in the gory fusion at play.
…but also written such witty parodies as Freaky and Happy Death Day…
Christopher Landon is the filmmaker behind Happy Death Day.
Ruben's direction clearly draws inspiration from classic slashers like Psycho and Halloween…
Ruben blends the blood and gore of a slasher film, such as Psycho and Halloween, with the comedic elements of the Scream series and Happy Death Day.
But what this quaint little “Hot Fuzz” homage lacks in scale, it nearly makes up for with a stacked cast of delightful comic actors who all deliver the goods.
The films of Edgar Wright ("Hot Fuzz" in particular) are clearly an influence here, and Ruben uses some of Wright's sharpest tools for instant, economical world-building: playful soundtrack choices (like the soda pop ditties that introduce us to Beaverton, juxtaposed with Anna Drubich's straight-up horror strings); whooshes in the sound design that ramp up one scene to a sudden cut; characters that suddenly pop into the camera's frame for comedic effect.
It’s safe to say Art the Clown with the Terrifier franchise has influenced the horror genre, pushing more filmmakers to lean on practical gore and effects.
Art the Clown offers a sick mime humour…
Cita a sus “ancestros” —desde Romeo y Julieta hasta Titanic— sin ironía ni reflexión.
…connecting romantic couples with death; Jack and Rose in Titanic, Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde…
While not quite as clever as SCREAM or M3GAN…
…each hoping to replicate the Blumhouse success of M3GAN…
…a little bit The Lady Eve, a little bit The Shop Around the Corner…
…a little bit The Lady Eve, a little bit The Shop Around the Corner…
…only a handful of films, in my opinion, have been successful, such as Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), House (1977), Scream (1996), American Psycho (2000), One Cut of the Dead (2017), and Beau is Afraid (2023).