SPOILER WARNING: The following article gives away two major moments from Heart Eyes and Love Hurts. So, unless you have already seen both of these new 2025 movies, proceed with caution as you sip on this information.
Couples interested in spending Valentine’s Day weekend at the movies have a few interesting and thematically appropriate options to choose from in the form of a romantic horror movie called Heart Eyes and a romantic action-comedy called Love Hurts. In addition to being violent genre flicks that take place on V-Day, boast classic rom-com movie themes, and even both came out during this year’s Super Bowl weekend, these films also share a strange connection that I certainly did not expect.
Each movie contains a scene in which a character is killed with a drinking straw – a coincidence that I am not even going to bother trying to figure out how it came to be. However, I would like to talk about how Heart Eyes and Love Hurts handle this unique method of murder onscreen and why I believe one tops the other in just about every way imaginable. First, let’s get into what happens in each sequence.
The Drinking Straw Kill In Heart Eyes
Director Josh Ruben’s new horror movie, Heart Eyes, is an old-fashioned slasher movie with a funny, romantic twist. It follows coworkers Ally (Olivia Holt) and Jay (Mason Gooding, who is returning for Scream 7), who are mistaken for lovers by the eponymous masked killer, who is notorious for targeting couples around February 14th.
The Heart Eyes ending sees Ally, having realized she is in love with Jay, going to a St. Valentine’s Day chapel to rescue him from the culprit, who turns out to be two people who are romantically linked and get off on murdering other couples. Their reign ends when Jay shoots the male slayer, David (Yoson An), in the head after Ally fatally defends herself against his partner, Det. Jeanette Shaw (Jordana Brewster), by stabbing her in the neck with a reusable straw she carries with her everywhere.
The Drinking Straw Kill In Love Hurts
Love Hurts also blends violence with comedy and romance but, instead of borrowing from classic horror movies, it borrows elements from great action movies like John Wick. It stars Academy Award winner Ke Huy Quan as real estate agent Marvin Gable, who is struggling to outrun his past as an assassin for his mafia boss brother, Alvin 'Knuckles' Gable (Daniel Wu).
The drinking straw comes into play when Knuckles, who loves to drink boba tea, confronts Marvin’s boss and close friend, Cliff Cussick (Sean Astin, Quan’s co-star from the beloved family movie, The Goonies), about his whereabouts. When Cliff does not give him up, Knuckles removes the straw from his freshly finished boba tea and forcefully lobotomizes him with it.
Why Heart Eyes' Drinking Straw Kill Works Better
Even if I did not believe Heart Eyes is a great horror rom-com or agree with the harsh reviews for Love Hurts, I would still give the slasher’s drinking straw kill scene the edge for multiple reasons. First of all, both films establish the straw as a defining trait for the character who uses it but Heart Eyes does so in a more credible and less awkwardly forced fashion than Knuckles’ over-the-top boba tea fixation.
Secondly, while both scenes have a campy flavor, Heart Eyes’ kill is a tonally consistent punchline to its established reusable straw bit while Love Hurts’ attempt to give the likable Cliff an earnestly tragic death is severely undercut by the ridiculous weapon of choice. Finally, while both kills are unquestionably absurd in concept, Heart Eyes gets points for plausibility, because Ally's straw is made of metal and more believably lethal than Knuckles' plastic straw, even with its pointed end.
You know, I also noticed a funny thing about Heart Eyes that connects it to 2022’s Scream, excluding that it is also a slasher starring Mason Gooding… even though this note does involve the actor. His character in the requel, Chad Meeks-Martin, refers to his biceps as “Hobbs and Shaw,” after Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham’s Fast and Furious series roles, which is also the name of the two detectives in Heart Eyes, played by Jordana Brewster (also a star of said action franchise) and Devon Sawa. On top of its murder via drinking straw connection to Love Hurts, it is coincidences like these that, to me, make being a movie lover even more fun.
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