Cut to the Heart: Brett W. Bachman on Crafting the Bloody Romance of Heart Eyes
Heart Eyes. Photo by Courtesy of Sony Pictures.
For those wishing we had more badass holiday-themed horror movies, you are in luck, as Heart Eyes is the latest Valentine's Day horror flick. Directed by Josh Ruben and written by Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon, and Michael Kennedy, Heart Eyes follows co-workers Ally (played by Olivia Holt) and Jay (played by Mason Gooding), who are mistaken as a couple by “The Heart Eyes Killer,” a serial killer with glowing red eyes, who returns every Valentine's Day to slaughter couples. The two of them decide to fight back and try to put an end to the killer's murderous ways. With delightfully irresistible onscreen chemistry between Gooding and Holt, electrifying set pieces, unforgettable witty one-liners, and dripping with gory mayhem, Heart Eyes is the perfect rom-com to watch this Halloween.
Recently, REVERIE chatted with film editor Brett W. Bachman about Heart Eyes.
Getting the chance to work with Ruben again is what excited Bachman the most about Heart Eyes. They previously worked together on Werewolves Within. “Josh is an ideal collaborator on every front,” says Bachman. “As editors, we work very closely with a director, typically. We spend long hours together. Sometimes the job can be quite stressful. You work intimately with someone. Your job is assessing the pros and cons of a movie, what’s working, what’s not working, and typically those conversations can be, by their nature, inherently difficult because you’re assessing something and trying to improve it, which means assigning or observing potential flaws. With Josh, it is always a fun process. There’s always a sense of this collaborative environment that feels safe, full of energy, and optimism. Things never get too dour in a Josh Ruben editing room.”
From the start, Bachman shares that Ruben, Murphy, Landon, and Kennedy had this idea to make a rom-com that was also a slasher flick. Doing both honestly was important. “You really make a rom-com with two leads that drip in chemistry and have real romantic tension between the two of them. You also don’t pull any punches on the slasher components either. You craft a villain that is legitimately frightening. That can be really tough to oscillate between these two tones… When does it get too silly? When you really linger and hold on to things that we capture on set, maybe it feels like it ventures more into parody? You have these really great practical effects and makeup, and the violence we capture on screen can also be quite harrowing, too. What is the right amount of time to linger on that or showcase that before it feels like the movie becomes more sinister, and where you can never really get back successfully to the rom-com elements?”
Heart Eyes underwent routine testing and had multiple micro-test screenings in the room Bachman was calling in from to do our interview, to try and find the perfect balance of tone and mixture of horror and rom-com elements. He shares that Zelda Williams, director of Lisa Frankenstein, gave them great ideas, especially during the scene where the two hippies are having sex in the back of the van, as Jay and Ally are having a heart-to-heart conversation in the front of the van, while trying to hide from Heart Eyes. “Zelda had the idea of you have these sex sounds at the beginning of the scene, but have you considered putting these sounds throughout the entire scene and make like a Greek chorus of all this stuff happening in the background as you’re having the leads trying to have this sincere conversation,” he shares. “It becomes this scene of a balancing act of selling the threat of Heart Eyes walking around the van, selling the emotional stakes, selling the intimate moments and bonding [between Jay and Ally] and doing that sincerely, and yet you also have this story of the hippies in the background doing God knows what. [By] countering some of the seriousness of the conversation, it keeps the entire tone a little bit heightened but never falling into parody."
Even though the horror elements are wildly thrilling, what Heart Eyes really excels at is the romance elements. Gooding and Holt are adorably charming together and have perfect onscreen chemistry, making viewers instantly fall in love with them. When Bachman starts assembling material and putting footage together, he helps ensure that the romance between the two leads is believable. “It’s asking [questions] like how do you maintain the right amount of flirtation, that chemistry, and lingering looks without it feeling too forced,” shares Bachman. “How do you convey the sense of yearning and propulsion without it feeling like it stays too long and maybe feels disingenuous? Or maybe you haven’t done enough and you’re not feeling the chemistry.”
An example of trying to establish the right amount of chemistry, flirtation, and yearning is the restaurant scene, where Jay and Ally are having their first genuine conversation. Initially, Bachman shares that the first cut of that scene was much longer. “There were some reactions from Mason where he would just stare at Olivia, and he was quite sincere and very intense, and we were like, ‘Maybe that’s a bit too much,’ or Olivia was really letting him have it, not yelling, but she was really forceful. When you look at the material and you're assessing it and you’re like ‘This kind of breaks the spell a bit…’ It’s all about creating a natural ebb and flow of this emotional journey of the scene.”
Since Heart Eyes takes place during Valentine's Day, and is incredibly sweet and romantic, while also being an exciting slasher film, it has the possibility of being a future classic that people watch yearly every Valentine's Day and Halloween. “I would love it to be a thing that people could go back to,” smiles Bachman. “I think it's romantic enough to be showcased on Valentine's Day. Olivia and Mason really brought it. They really sell it. I'm certainly rooting for these two by the end of the movie. Our hope is that most audience members find them charming as hell… If you’re a horror fan… It’s got all the goods. It's got homemade weapons. It's got some ridiculously absurd kills. It's got some great throwbacks.”
In combining comedy, horror, and romance, Heart Eye is very dynamic, superbly shifting between the three. “You can do something like have this banter between these two people that are professing they do not like each other and yet they are inexplicably drawn to one another, giving each other lovey-dovey looks, and yet it’s a chase scene and there is mortal danger,” laughs Bachman. “You’re looking to yank an audience forward with the developments of the film… it can make you laugh and make you scream, and it feels like you’ve gone off a rollercoaster at the end.”
An example of this ‘rollercoaster of emotions’ is when Jay and Ally are at the police station. “Jay is chained to the table, and the door opens, and you expect it to be Ally; turns out it’s Heart Eyes with a machete,” explains Bachman. “There’s a fight scene, and he’s dodging everything left and right. You’re selling the blocking and selling this fight, and then you hear ‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’ The glass shatters, and oh my God, it's Ally. You think she’s saved the day. Then, she unloads an entire clip at Heart Eyes and misses every single bullet, almost hits Jay, bullets are ricocheting everywhere, and he is screaming for her to stop. There is this sense of heightened hilarity of it all with these pivots from good, bad, terrible, exciting.”
Bachman shares that a late addition to the film was giving Heart Eyes more punch during the final showdown, where it is revealed who the true killer is. “I had an idea to grab all of this material, grab all this footage from earlier in the movie, bring it into the finale and re-cut it, and then you have this more traditional style Agatha Christie style pulling off the mask with all these flashbacks from earlier in the movie, building up the villain a bit more for this final showdown… It really pumped you up and jacked you up for this final showdown with the true killer. Before you had a little monologue. Now you have this big bombastic montage showing this person in action, showing how they did it all, pulling all the strings, and being the puppet master of the last 70 minutes of the movie. We had this big giant rock opera type score too… The effect of all this is that we just get really excited for this final battle.”
Throughout his career, Bachman has made a name for himself in the horror genre. Along with Heart Eyes, he has edited countless other horror films, including Cooties, Mandy, Daniel Isn't Real, and the newly-released horror film Shelby Oaks. Editing horror films really intrigues him. “A huge component of the films are creating a very specific tone, having control over the tone, control over tension, and control over creating something that purposefully invites you to be repelled by it at times,” he says. “It’s a bit of a paradox to make something like that where you want to feel uncomfortable watching it and yet it is still escapism. There is still a component where this is meant to be a cathartic process. It’s a way to examine things - our anxieties and fears - and exercise some of these demons. It’s a way to engage with material that we feel anxious about, and we feel like we can empathize with these characters and that they can overcome these obstacles.”
Another reason Bachman loves editing horror movies is getting to experience them in the theatre. “Watching something you’ve made over the course of a year and have people freak out about that, there’s nothing better,” he smiles. “Shelby Oaks had a premiere at Beyond Fest a few weeks ago, and there is a scare in the movie that is a silent scare… You could hear and feel the inhale of breath from every single person in that theatre all at once… I love that feeling. I love the sense that you got them.”
Overall, Bachman had a blast editing all of Heart Eyes, but the drive-in movie theatre sequence really stands out. “It was one of the first times I was working on a scene of that scope with that many extras, that size, and really this cacophony of violence occurring,” he says. “It’s this intersection of all these things: wanting it to be funny, wanting it to be sincere, wanting it to be tense, releasing the tension but also building up all this excitement…. It is the kind of sequence that I have been wanting to do since I was a teenager, and why I wanted to get into movies.”
You can catch Chris Stuckmann's directorial debut, Shelby Oaks in theatres now, which Bachman edited with Patrick Lawrence. “It can be quite harrowing and intense, and is a film that really tightens your sphincter,” comments Bachman. “I'm really excited for Chris… I think it’s going to be a very promising start to his career.”