Heart Eyes: Valentine’s Day slasher earns an R rating for strong violence, gore, and more

On Halloween, Sony Pictures unveiled a red band teaser trailer for the Valentine’s Day-set horror romantic comedy Heart Eyes – which is the video embedded above. The film’s director, Josh Ruben (who previously brought us Werewolves Within and Scare Me), has taken to social media to let it be known that the full trailer will be dropping online next week – but while we wait for that to come along, the Motion Picture Association ratings board has revealed that they’ve given Heart Eyes an R rating for strong violence and gore, language and some sexual content.

Heart Eyes has the following synopsis: When the Heart Eyes Killer strikes Seattle, a pair of co-workers pulling overtime on Valentine’s Day are mistaken for a couple by the elusive couple-hunting killer. Now they must spend the most romantic night of the year running for their lives. Ruben previously provided the following statement: “My love of horror is rivaled only by my love of romantic comedies. I’m excited as hell to mount my most challenging genre bender to date: a brutal slasher in a nostalgic rom-com universe.“ Christopher Landon and Michael Kennedy, a duo that had previously worked together on the body swap slasher Freaky and the time travel slasher Time Cut, wrote the screenplay with Phillip Murphy (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard).

Olivia Holt of Totally Killer and Mason Gooding from the two most recent Scream movies star alongside Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious), Devon Sawa (Final Destination), and Gigi Zumbado (The Price We Pay).

Heart Eyes is set up at Spyglass, and Republic Pictures has picked up distribution rights to the film outside of the U.S. and Canada. Landon is producing the film with Divide/Conquer’s Greg Gilreath and Adam Hendricks. Spyglass’ Gary Barber and Chris Stone serve as executive producers with Murphy and Mel Turner.

What do you think of the reasons given for Heart Eyes‘ R rating? Are you looking forward to this slasher movie? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Heart Eyes is set to reach theatres on February 7, 2025. February 14th is a Friday in 2025, so that would seem to be the perfect choice for this movie’s release date, but it was already taken by Disney/Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World, so Sony had to move it to the week before Valentine’s Day. Its competition on that date is the Universal action movie Love Hurts, starring Ke Huy Quan.