Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Valentine’s Day isn’t just for lovers. On a day that calls for revisiting your favorite romantic movies, it’s nice to do the exact opposite. Below, we break down the most chaotic, unhinged, toxic, and disturbed relationships that have ever graced the screen for your Valentine’s Day viewing pleasure.
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Fatal Attraction (1987)
“I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!” For a textbook definition of the word “unhinged,” look no further than Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Close plays a woman named Alex who becomes obsessed with a married man (Michael Douglas) after their one-night stand. From there, chaos, and one boiled rabbit, ensues.
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Misery (1990)
Before there was stan culture, there was Annie Wilkes in Misery. When an author named Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is rescued by his self-proclaimed “number one fan” Annie, played by Kathy Bates , she holds him captive and terrorizes him for days. Come for Bates’ Oscar-winning performance, stay for that scene.
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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick movies are not for the faint of heart, and Eyes Wide Shut is no exception. Shortly before their relationship’s demise, real-life married couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise work through their issues as married couple Alice and William Harford. Much has been written about the diffcult shoot—to be expected on a Kubrick production—but the result is an undeniable masterpiece.
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High Fidelity (2000)
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Manic pixie dream girls, gather round. When Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine’s (Kate Winslet) relationship goes south, they undergo a procedure to have each other erased from their memories in this Michel Gondry-directed classic. How romantic.
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Blue Valentine (2010)
Ryan Gosling loves a good tearjerker. He and Michelle Williams play Dean and Cindy, a married couple who are constantly going through it. If you enjoy watching people argue while their lives crash down around them, pull up a chair and stay a while.
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Black Swan (2010)
On the surface, this may not appear to be a Valentine’s Day movie, but there’s just enough toxic romance in there to qualify for this list. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis play rival ballet dancers Nina and Lily who then become lovers. The only problem? One of them isn’t real. There’s nothing like some imaginary and unrequited love to get the heart racing.
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Her (2013)
Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to fall in love with your computer? Spike Jonze did. In this truly tragic motion picture, Joaquin Phoenix starts to develop intense feelings for his operating system, voiced to smoky perfection by Scarlett Johansson. Though it seems ridiculous, these days, it doesn’t seem all that farfetched.
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Ex Machina (2014)
Speaking of falling in love with machines, Domhnall Gleeson does exactly that in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. When he’s sent to gauge the human-like qualities of the AI robot Ava (Alicia Vikander), he quickly becomes infatuated with her. Unfortunately for him, she doesn’t feel the same way.
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The Lobster (2015)
