Here Are The Movies To Watch On Valentine’s Day If You Love Violence And Hate Love
Valentine’s Day sucks.
It sucks whether you are happily or unhappily single, and it sucks even if you have a significant other to share it with. After all, if you need an excuse to do nice things for the person that you are spending most of your time with, then something has gone terribly wrong with the way that you have chosen to live your life, and if you’re utterly alone, it feels like the whole world is rubbing their awful soppy nonsense right into your unloveable face.
I accepting direct deposits for Valentine’s Day. DM for my banking info lol.
— Kristofferson Nunes (@PurplecowKris) February 14, 2019
Also, the movies that you’re meant to watch on Valentine’s Day are all bad. Brief Encounter is boring as batshit, all those John Hughes teen romances have stood the test of time about as well as a fish milkshake left in the sun, and Titanic takes like, seven years to get to the good part where everyone starts dying.
But, for those amongst you who are cynical and bloodthirsty, horror movies hold the key, as they do to literally every problem in life. The history of horror movies about love is long and fruitful and provides a perfect means to trick your significant other into watching a film about various different kinds of murder under the pretence that people kiss in it.
To that end, here are five horror movies about love to help you wile away the worst day of the year.
The Fly
The Fly is a movie about a scientist, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum, doing his thing) and the love of his life, Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis, doing her no less affecting thing). It’s about romance and jealousy, and what you’re meant to do when the person who means the most to you starts to change in ways that you don’t understand.
Also, halfway through Brundle gets his DNA mixed up with a housefly and starts to turn into a giant, hideous bug. It’s one of the most moving and well-realised romances ever put to the screen. Oh, and someone gets their hand melted by fly acid, which is a bonus.
High Tension
Listen, if you do manage to convince your partner to watch High Tension, I would strongly advise letting them know that, around all the romance stuff, there is a smidgen of violence. After all, I think showing the French horror film to someone who is unprepared is actually a felony in certain American states.
In the first act someone does something unspeakable with a severed head, and by the end, the whole thing has turned into a saw-strewn bloodbath. But then the famously ludicrous twist happens, and the whole thing snaps into focus: what you’ve actually been watching is a portrait of extreme love and obsession. Brief Encounter can eat High Tension’s shit.
Return of The Living Dead 3
The still very good Shaun of the Dead often gets props as the very first horror-rom-com. But, in actual fact, Brian Yuzna, one of horror’s most underrated craftsmen, was pioneering the genre way back in the ’90s with Return of the Living Dead 3.
An extraordinarily odd zombie-punk-romance that has literally nothing to do with Return of the Living Dead 2, it’s the only movie on this list that features a (sorta) happy ending, so it’s probably the safest route if you don’t want to spend the evening sleeplessly staring at your ceiling, replaying all of the many, many ways your fleshy vessel could be bloodily reassembled.
Audition
Audition starts with a lonely Japanese filmmaker and his producer friend holding auditions to find the former a new wife.
It wouldn’t be fair to hint at literally anything that happens from that point forward, but I’ll just say this — you’ll never think about acupuncture in the same way.
Braindead
Braindead (Americans will know it as Dead Alive, which was the name the film was released under over there) is one of the very first films by all-time great director Peter Jackson, back when he was making gooey little horror movies with prosthetics that he cooked in his mum’s oven.
The zombie rom-com (the second on this list!) flips the format on movies about the living dead: rather than stopping brain-hungry reanimated corpses from getting into the house, Braindead is all about stopping them from getting out, as young sap Lionel must keep his monkey bite-infected mother from bursting into the public eye.
It also features a heartening romance, as Lionel and his beau Paquita must navigate the wild world of braindead murderers and refitted lawnmowers that double as murder machines. What more could any self-effacing romantic want?