ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Josh Ruben about directing the new romantic horror slasher movie Heart Eyes. Ruben discussed what kills were the most challenging to create in the movie, whether or not he’d be open to doing a sequel, and more.
“For the past several years, the ‘Heart Eyes Killer’ has wreaked havoc on Valentine’s Day by stalking and murdering romantic couples,” the synopsis for the movie reads. “This Valentine’s Day, no couple is safe…”
Heart Eyes opens in United States theaters on February 7, 2025.
Brandon Schreur: I’m wondering if you can just tell me a little bit about how Heart Eyes came to fruition. Like, how long ago you first had the idea for the movie, how long you’ve been working on it, and what that whole pre-production looked like for you?
Josh Ruben: From the moment I pitched on it to win the job, or really to get the job, to its release on February 7th, it will be one week shy of a year. I pitched on it on Valentine’s Day, to the studio. And it’s coming out a week shy of Valentine’s Day, a year later, which is wild. Michael Kennedy slipped it to me, he said, ‘Chris Landon and I are working on this script, we think you’d be great for it.’ I had a little bit of anxiety about helming something that’s not only scary but also romantic because you have to commit to both genres. I wanted to do something darker, bloodier, and scarier compared to what I’d done previously. I didn’t want it to be another horror comedy or something necessarily perceived to be; I wanted to do something far more horror-leaning.
Once I realized this was an opportunity to cast two actors to play characters you really care about, I realized the romantic stuff is really how we lull the audience into a sense of complacency before Heart Eyes scares the shit out of us.
And that works so well. In the back of your mind, you’re like, ‘This is a murder mystery, I don’t know who the killer is’ but, then, their chemistry is so good and the romance has an impact, you kind of forget about the killer for a minute. I loved that. Josh, I’m also such a huge of your previous work. I love Scare Me so much, I watch that every Halloween since it has come out.
Aw, man!
Werewolves Within is also so much fun. I’m just kind of curious how working on something like Heart Eyes compares to Scare Me. Scare Me is such an intimate film where it’s just you, Aya Cash, and Chris Redd hanging out in a cabin for 90 minutes. Heart Eyes, it’s bigger, but is harder to put it together? Is it more collaborative with more people involved?
There are definitely more people involved by nature of the size of the thing and the amount of creators on it. You really have to be collaborative; it’s a different form of collaboration. There’s no way I prefer to work other than to be collaborative with every department and to have everyone just kind of ‘best idea wins’ it to make the best thing possible.
Scare Me was a true example of ‘no one cares more than you,’ which is what they constantly tell the director. No one is going to care more than you about the sound design, the performances, the poster, this, and that. So much kind of feel on me and Brendan Banks, who was my co-producer and my DP. Essentially, my appendage on that film.
Here, you have so many departments that are so dedicated, and so talented. It’s the same thing with more resources. The fact that everyone was so down, so on the same page, and willing to bring what was on the page and what was in my imagination to life — it was wild. I’d just never had these kinds of resources before. I’m an independent filmmaker.
Sure. I’m sure that was a big step up but, again, it all turned out so well, you crushed it. Heart Eyes is part of the holiday horror sub-genre, which is a great little niché to be in. But I just kind of have a chicken-or-the-egg question for you. When you were coming up with the idea for Heart Eyes, was it more of ‘I want to do a slasher movie’ or was it more of ‘I want to do something based around Valentine’s Day’ and then worked backward from there?
Well, I didn’t come up with the idea. It was actually Phillip Murphy who wrote the original iteration of the script, the true slasher. And then Michael Kennedy and Chris Landon came aboard to kind of put their stamp on it and make it a bit more fun, a bit more commercial, and a bit more of the kind of film you want to bring ten buddies to. It still maintained the gore and slasher-ness while pushing it even further.
When I got it, I’ve always kind of been like, ‘Man, if only I can take my swing at Scream or a slasher.’ Just because I grew up loving films like Jason Lives and Scream, as one or two of my favorite examples. I don’t know, this was an opportunity to tap into a piece of myself that just adores those genres and kind of floor it.
Sure, totally. Sticking with the holiday horror thing, there have obviously been some classics like Halloween or Black Christmas. Having said that, it also feels like there’s kind of been a recent rise in popularity for these movies, too. I’m thinking of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, Terrifier 3, or It’s a Wonderful Knife. I mean, holiday horror movies have been around for a long time, but do you think there’s been a rise in interest in this specific sub-genre? And do you think there’s a reason for that?
I think there’s always going to be an interest, a love, and an adoration for the genre because people love the experience of watching ordinary folks survive extraordinary circumstances. That’s like a tale as old as time, it’s why we love going to the movies. And the world is so filled with horrors at every turn, every moment, every time you even think about turning on the news. So that’s why there’s a desire for genre, in general. That’s why there’s a place for things like Terrifier, which I’m too much of a chicken to see. And stuff like Heart Eyes.
Which, I’m in the business of making escapism. I love true, escapist, fun horror — or fun genre, really — that you want to bring ten friends to; maybe your older friends will enjoy it just as much as, like, a younger niece or nephew who is super into horror, as I was as a kid.
Yeah, that makes total sense. And it’s a great slumber-party movie, too.
Yes! That’s what you want. We continually laud these horror icons every Halloween: Candyman, Freddy, Pinhead, Michael Myers, and Jason. Any kind of opportunity, any risk the studio is willing to take to make a new icon or take a swing at a new face in the genre is massive because we need it and we love it. Folks love new stuff, and that’s why this whole process has been such a privilege. I hope to high heaven that it works.
Totally and that’s what I was going to ask you about next, too. Heart Eyes immediately, in my mind, becomes a new kind of slasher icon. He has kind of a Jason tone to him, but the look of it is so distinct. I’m curious what it was like bringing that to life. It’s simple, but the actual heart eyes are so effective. How did that process work from your end?
It was honestly Chris Landon roping in Tony Gardner, the legendary make-up effects artist, from the beginning. He and his partner, Bryan Christensen at Alterian, they started presenting renders of their interpretations of the most wicked, twisted heart eyes emoji, essentially. Which was the furthest thing we wanted to present on screen. So we had just about every iteration that you can imagine. They do these brilliant 3-D renders with anatomical dimensions that are accurate to the shape and size of a stunt person. They do little 3-D models and molds.
I mean, we had every different possible iteration you can imagine, from something that was, like, essentially the Heart Eyes version of a Jason mask to a miner homage from 1981’s My Bloody Valentine. Once we landed on this face and we added the kind of aging factor to it — the fact that it doesn’t look new, it looks older and it’s potentially seen things before and gets your blood chilled to that prospect — that’s when we knew we were onto something.
Working with Tony and Bryan was amazing. I mean, Tony Gardner worked on Dark Man, which is, like, the be-all, end-all for me.
Awesome movie. That’s great. Regarding the gore and the death scenes, I wanted to ask you about that, too, because I thought you hit just the right level — again, it’s not Terrifier, I’m not vomiting while watching this, but you have some really good kills in there. I especially really liked the very first one, that whole sequence was so fun and so funny, too. Out of all the kills in the movie, was there one that was the most challenging to film, shoot, and create?
I think the most challenging to surmount was the drive-in. It originally was not a drive-in massacre. Heart Eyes was very focused on Ally and Jay and just chasing that couple. We realized that Heart Eyes just landed at this drive-in on Valentine’s Day, it’s probably a smorgasbord or buffet of couples. It’s the most appealing kill landscape.
It was an addition, it was kind of an addition on the fly to go, ‘What if he killed a bunch of people instead of just this one hippie couple in the can and then just going after Jay and Ally?’ It was kind of wild and my crew was definitely nervous at the prospect of the director going, ‘Who else can we kill? What else can we do?’ That’s just a testament to Steve McQuillan, my stunt coordinator who just finished up work on Wolf Man and did Borderlands. He’s a master in his own right and he was kind of willing and down, his whole crew was willing and down, to get creative and just kind of blow the sequence out.
It was tough. We had several meetings about it, we did models with cars, and many, many discussions. Once we were there and knew we had four or five days to do the whole sequence, plus the kind of bookending scenes with some wrap-around stuff in the studio, it became, I don’t know, I don’t want to say easier, but it became more manageable once you chip away at it like you would anything.
I’m sure. Watching it all kind of come together helps it become more practical, I’m sure. I’ve got to say, the cast you’ve assembled for Heart Eyes is pretty incredible. I’ve been a fan of Mason Gooding’s over the past couple of years just seeing him in the Scream movies and Booksmart. He’s great, Olivia Holt is also a lot of fun. Tell me a little bit about exploring those characters and working with those actors in regard to their romantic chemistry. Were you working with them a lot to figure out how they should interact with each other or did they immediately get it?
I want to say they immediately got it, but, really, what they immediately had was chemistry. They were instant friends — which you don’t always have. The chemistry, like, leaps off the screen. And they’re both just great people who are both very willing and down to make the best thing they could. These are two of their — not their first leading roles, but this is a big deal for them. Leading roles in a studio film isn’t an opportunity that comes quite often. We met frequently.
We’d usually meet on the weekends just to talk, mainly to talk about the anchor scene of the two characters kind of butting heads in this restaurant. We would just talk. We’d talk about our own relationships. We’d very casually read that one scene. We had a couple of other rehearsals where we’d read through other scenes with other actors, but that was the main one we kept coming back to. If they just kind of did their thing, followed their instincts, and branched out from that scene, we were golden. But their scene in the restaurant was certainly the most complex and offered the most about the psychology of their characters, next to the one in the van.
It’s a fun scene, too. So many twists and turns and watching it all play out, it’s so fun. Another person I love is Devon Sawa in this movie. He’s created such a name for himself in horror, just seeing him in Chucky and Hunter Hunter. Here, he gets to be funny. Like, really funny. Which was great to see. What was it like working with him on this?
Phenomenal. I’ve wanted to work with him since he and I were just kind of fanning over each other on Instagram. I knew he was a great dude. I knew he was committed. It also certainly didn’t hurt that I grew up watching him and loved everything that he was in. We had the pleasure of having the Hollywood Avondale, this brilliant theater down in Auckland, host us for a Q+A and a screening of Final Destination, which he hadn’t seen in several years. He doesn’t particularly, so he says, love watching his stuff and revisiting his work from his younger years, but he was down not only to watch it with this brilliant, warm crowd but also just to answer questions about his performance and what his experience was like.
And the movie rips. His performance is really a tour de force, legitimately. It’s one of the best genre films of the past 20 years. It really slaps. There’s a reason why there’s, whatever it is, part six coming out.
Yeah, it makes sense. But that’s awesome. So, I don’t want to spoil anything, but Heart Eyes does have a murder mystery aspect of it regarding who is behind the mask. And I think it’s cool how you went from Werewolves Within to this; Werewolves Within also has the murder mystery aspect. I’m wondering if there is one you kind of prefer working on, just because Werewolves Within is set in a small town. It’s got a tone where, whenever someone dies, you immediately feel it because there are only so many characters. Heart Eyes is set in all of Seattle, so the killer can kill as many people as they want throughout this whole city. Do you like playing more in a big, open space like in Heart Eyes, or do you prefer the quiet, more subdued murder mystery of Werewolves Within?
I don’t know, I really enjoyed shooting this city, shooting Auckland for Seattle. And I love, I desperately love, small-town imagery. I’m probably more drawn to the small-town imagery because my first two films took place in upstate New York. I’m from there, I understand it, I played in those woods, and I scared myself with stories of monsters in those shadows and such. I’ve got a real nostalgic affinity for it. I’m now watching Severance — I re-watched Season 1 and am into Season 2 now, which is great. And to see the Hudson Valley filmed like that, through the lens of genre, I’m aching for it. I’d love to go back. I think the dream would be to take a genre TV show up there and just employ the wonderful crew members who live up there and do something kind of fun back home. But, I don’t know, I love it all and I’m open to it all, I’d do stuff on a submarine or a spaceship. As long as the story is good.
That leads to what I was going to ask you next, too. Again, murder mystery in the same vein as Scream — you eventually learn who is behind the mask, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be another killer at some point in the future. So, is continuing Heart Eyes with a potential sequel something you’d be interested in, or is this kind of a one-and-done for you?
I would love to do a part two. There’s always more you can do. There’s certainly more I pitched for Heart Eyes to do and to be. There are plenty more places for the characters’ arcs and for the characters to go. So, yeah. If it’s ever on the table, I will be there. I’d love to.
Thanks to Josh Ruben for discussing Heart Eyes.
