[Review] ‘Heart Eyes’ Blends Two Genres Into One Fun Movie

Perhaps the most confusing horror movie of 2024 stars one of the country’s most divisive stand up comics; Matt Rife. Was that on your bingo card? 

If it wasn’t, you’re not alone, Trapped Inn dropped on Temu…er digital rental…late last year and it’s a doozy. Rife is hoping you give it a watch because not only does he star in it, his name is on top of the executive producer credits: his first ever that’s not a stand-up special.  

If he is cutting his veneers on producing movies, this isn’t the one, although he deserves credit for at least attempting to make it interesting. It might not all be his fault; bad direction and editing are mostly to blame, his rudimentary acting skills take a back seat. 

Let’s see if I can explain the plot which is all over the place. A group of American cyclists travel to France to compete. They are all staying at the same house. The males like to use “bro” and “dude” as proper nouns instead of using people’s actual names. 

One day one of the bikers suffers a head injury after crashing his bike and instead of going to a hospital to treat the large gash in his skull he decides it’s best to heal on his own. Crazy right? 

Meanwhile Rife is vlogging the whole thing for no apparent reason since this isn’t a found footage film. Literally out of the blue, a strange fog enters the picture, turning people who breathe it into something, or possessing them, or causing them to become sick, or is it a ghost? Any of these plot points would work, the problem is the filmmakers never decide on which.

Trapped Inn concludes on a “twist” which needs a whole IGN page to explain for us dummies. Something about aliens and technology or mass hallucinations or something.

Believe it or not, Rife can act, in the way that Ian Ziering did in Sharknado, but Trapped Inn isn’t billed as a farce. I’m going to recognize actor Rickey Eugene Brown as the stand-out in this film, he delivers some of the best lines.

Trapped Inn never quite builds the suspense it wants to, and you are constantly pulled out of the story when what’s supposed to be the French countryside, looks strangely like Topanga Canyon. There is also a newscaster who has obviously never seen an actual news anchor work, or taken a communications course in her life.

For this movie I would suggest having a reaction party. Get a group of friends together for a night of movie roasting and drink everytime Rife shows his abs, or someone says “bro.” Had they not taken themselves so seriously and let Rife do what he does best—comedy—Trapped Inn might have been liberated to do its own crowd work as a horror/comedy instead of leaving its lead to flop onstage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries