Heart Eyes (2025)

Christopher Landon has made a name for himself in the past few years by figuring out fun ways to blend slasher movie tropes with other sub-genres (e.g. timeloop movies, bodyswap films). He has written with Michael Kennedy before, and this time around both are joined by Phillip Murphy to deliver a film that places some bloody kill scenes in the middle of what is essentially a standard rom-com. Josh Ruben is in the director's chair, which means it's up to him to ensure that the dialogue and set-pieces are couched in something that comes close enough to that rom-com style, but can he manage to do that?

A killer is on the loose, the Heart Eyes Killer, and they're targeting couples. This has been happening for a couple of years now, every Valentine's Day, which makes it a big problem for those in a relationship. Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt) isn't in a relationship though, so she should be safe from the killer. Her biggest worry concerns trying to keep her job. In need of major guidance, and a way to overhaul her latest ad campaign that disastrously uses romantic tragedy at the heart of it, Ally ends up forced to work with Jay Simmons (Mason Gooding), a bit of a whizz drafted in to save the day. Ally and Jay need to spend some time together to brainstorm and plan, which leads to the Heart Eyes Killer viewing them as a couple, which leads to them being pursued, even as they try to explain to those around them that they really aren't a couple.

Heart Eyes works fairly well as a slasher. The pacing is decent for most of the runtime, aside from a third act that just has one or two scenes more than necessary, the kills are entertaining and bloody, and Holt and Gooding are very appealing leads. The most pleasant surprise, however, is just how well some of the rom-com moments work. There's a great meet-cute, a fun sense of external factors ensuring that our leads are destined to pair up, and stay paired up, some very fun cute klutziness that adds some non-lethal injuries to the onscreen catalogue of pain, and even the scenes of attempted murder often show a romance blossoming under unusually difficult circumstances. There are times when it tries to be too cute though, particularly when name-checking other movies and painfully winking at viewers, but nothing is bad enough to unbalance the whole thing.

Aside from Holt and Gooding, who are absolutely as enjoyable and likeable as they need to be in their roles, the cast also includes Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster as a pair of cops named . . . Hobbs and Shaw, Gigi Zumbado as the standard protective bestie, and Michaela Watkins as a demanding boss, as well as a number of people who make enough of an impression in their first few moments to make them plausible suspects as the killing spree starts to feel a bit more personal.

Despite the lighter touch, this is still a film aimed mainly at slasher movie fans. As long as you can enjoy the strange clash of sub-genres then you will be rewarded with some laughs, some entertaining bloodshed, and a killer working with some nicely-personalised deadly accessories.

7/10

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The Fanatic (2019)

I'd heard a hell of a lot about The Fanatic before finally getting the chance to check it out for myself, and most of it wasn't good. Some people were talking about it as if it was one of the worst films ever made, and mocking the central performance from John Travolta as being akin to that of the character playing "Simple Jack" in Tropic Thunder (you know the phrase, I know the phrase, I'm just not going to use it here in the main text of my review).

The Fanatic is quite bad, I don't think anyone is really going to stand up and make a case for it being a misunderstood modern classic, but it's nowhere near as bad as many have tried to make out. I'd also have to say that it has real moments where it tries to do something unexpected and interesting, especially when you think of the movies it seems to be following, films that have the same initial idea but take the characters down a much different road.

Travolta is Moose, a huge film fan who also has some clear mental health issues. If you encountered him in any social setting then you'd immediately be able to guess that he was somewhere on the autism spectrum that made him unable to pick up on standard social cues and body language. His favourite actor is Hunter Dunbar (Devon Sawa), and it looks like Moose is about to be very happy as he is all set to get Dunbar's autograph on an expensive prop. But events conspire to stop that from happening, which leads to Moose planning some way to encounter Dunbar and take up one minute of his time. Every encounter just ends up making Dunbar angrier, however, and makes Moose look more and more like a stalker, which is exactly what his friend, Leah (Ana Golja), warned him about.

Directed by Fred Durst, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Bekerman (his first feature), The Fanatic is an uneven mix of right and wrong. The weird thing is that sometimes the wrong stuff doesn't seem so wrong as the film plays out in a surprisingly effective third act. Okay, Travolta's performance is a consistently bold one, for better or for worse, and the dialogue throughout can be painfully clunky, but the shading of the two characters who provide the heart of the picture, the ungrateful star and the fan being too invasive, is really well done, and allows for moments in which the film lays bare the problematic paradox at the heart of the relationship. There's usually a divide, and lines should be kept between public personas and their personal lives, but it's impossible to deny that people who become famous are only lifted to, and kept in, their position through fans.

I'm still really trying to decide what I think about Travolta's turn here. It's sometimes terrible, especially in the scenes that show him practicing his street artist routine as a British policeman, but sometimes surprisingly spot on. He has no filter, and no real sense of how others may be feeling as he stomps around and pursues something that he has set as some symbolic pinnacle of his own happiness. Sawa is great, and the fact that his character may seem like a stereotypical asshole who just happens to be a movie star feeds very much into the main points that the film is making. Moose is surrounded by those kinds of characters elsewhere (Todd and Slim, played by Jacob Grodnik and James Paxton), but he doesn't give them any respect because he can see them for what they are when they aren't covered by the dazzling cloak of stardom. And Golja does well as a friend who makes some strange choices, or glaring errors, and then has to simply bide her time elsewhere until she is ever needed again, if ever.

I started this review without my final thoughts being fully formed. That happens sometimes. Writing down my reaction to various elements in the film can help me decide on where I want to place it in any basic rating system. There are things working against this. The score isn't great, the Limp Bizkit song being pointed out as it appears on the soundtrack, and the whole thing is visually flat and messy.

It's got something though. Not enough to make it worth a rewatch, or to rate it as something good (cinematically), but certainly something to save it from being talked about as one of the worst things you could ever watch. For that reason, I end up rating it bang in the middle.

5/10

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Prime Time: Casper (1995)

If you're anywhere near the same age as me, or older, then you'll remember the cartoons featuring Casper, the friendly ghost. A lot of them followed the same template. Casper would float around, trying to make friends, and inevitably scare off almost everyone that he met. There would be cries of " it's a g-g-g-g-ghooooooooost" and everyone would flee. Even campfires would be shown as living entities, picking up their sticks and running away as fast as they could.

This live-action movie, featuring some decent CGI that holds up surprisingly well over two decades later, sees writers Deanna Oliver and Sherri Stoner taking that core idea and managing to nicely frame a whole movie around it. There are a lot of cute gags, plenty of supernatural shenanigans, and a perfect tone throughout that just about keeps the schmaltz palatable, thanks to the darker moments being handled with an impressively light touch.

Bill Pullman plays Dr. Harvey, and Christina Ricci is his daughter, Kat. The two end up in the same house as Casper (voiced by Malachi Pearson, and portrayed by Devon Sawa in one sequence showing him in "non-ghost" form) because the doc has been hired by a woman named Carrigan (Cathy Moriarty) who wants the house cleared of the spirits that live within it. As well as Casper, there are three nuisance ghosts named Stretch, Stinky, and Fatso. Carrigan needs them all gone so she can find the treasure that she knows is hidden somewhere inside the house, which she inherited from a dead relative.

Directed by Brad Silberling, who has a relatively small filmography with one or two gems tucked in there (why am I still the only one who enjoys A Series Of Unfortunate Events so much?), Casper is a pretty perfect way to adapt a cutesy cartoon character into a feature film. It doesn't waste too much time setting things up, with credit again due to Oliver and Stoner, who do a fantastic job in the script department, and it plants the more serious/emotional moments in between numerous gags (with the initial confrontation between Dr. Harvey and the three non-Casper spirits being a highlight).

Pullman and Ricci do very well in their roles, acting opposite the special effects naturally enough and doing a fine job when called upon to deal with the themes of loss and loneliness (both miss their wife and mother, respectively, who died some time ago). Ricci may be the focus of Casper's attention but it's a pleasant surprise to see Pullman get to have more of the outright fun moments, thanks to his interactions with the other ghosts. Moriarty is a good villain, helped in her scheming by Eric Idle (as the sycophantic and selfish Dibs), and both characters are led to a fitting end by their plans. There are also a number of fun cameos, none of which I will spoil by namechecking here.

Having not seen this since I first caught it when it was released on VHS, Casper was a pleasant surprise when I rewatched it recently. It's a great family film, dealing with some big themes that will surely lead to good conversations between kids and their parents, and I hope that others don't allow it to be completely forgotten further down the line.

7/10

Casper can be picked up here.
Americans can pick it up here.