If Valentine’s Day makes you cranky or simply bores you as an idea, you aren’t alone. For each one who takes the day as a immediate for large romantic gestures or heat emotions, there’s somebody who thinks of it both as a crass, industrial, empty vacation, or a conspiracy to make single folks really feel dangerous about their lives. However whether or not you’re actively aggravated about Valentine’s Day or simply get pleasure from a very good, darkish down-with-romance film any day of the 12 months, Polygon has you coated. Listed here are a few of our favourite anti-romance films, and the place to stream them.
1
Midsommar (2019)
Ari Aster’s unnerving horror film a couple of horrible couple navigating a horrible tragedy actually ups the ante on break-up scenes. Dani (Florence Pugh) is disintegrating after the deaths of her sister and fogeys, and her weak-willed boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), who was planning to dump her, can’t determine find out how to do it within the wake of such an enormous loss. So he lets their relationship limp alongside, even letting Dani be a part of him and his pals on a trip that doubles as a grad-school thesis undertaking. Visiting a secretive rural commune in Sweden to watch a midsummer pageant, they run afoul of a cult that provides Dani what she most wants — which positively isn’t her present relationship.
The place to look at: Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
2
The Battle of the Roses (1989)
Neglect the 2025 retread The Roses. This darkish comedy, directed by Danny DeVito and starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, is a love-gone-wrong traditional; a bleak comedy that attracts on Douglas and Turner’s popularity as a sparky, horny couple in Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile. Right here, they’re the right skilled couple, till their youngsters are about to go away for faculty and a well being scare exposes the cracks in a relationship neither of them had actually examined. What begins out as a petty divorce feud escalates right into a hilariously over-the-top recreation of one-upsmanship, because the separating couple seems to be for larger and larger methods to harm one another. That sounds grim, nevertheless it performs extra like an eat-the-rich film the place the one folks struggling are the hateful, vindictive, well-off duo who most deserve it.
The place to look at: Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
3
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
The Oscar-sweeping all-time traditional amongst feuding-couples films, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf adapts Edward Albee’s scorching play about an getting old couple who love and hate one another in equal measure, and switch different folks into an viewers for his or her distress. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play Martha and George, a middle-aged pair with an clearly lengthy, fraught private historical past. Over the course of the movie, they’ve a younger couple over to dinner, and the meal turns into a staging floor for George and Martha’s previous grievances. It’s Mike Nichols’ directorial debut, and one in all his best films, up there with The Graduate and Catch-22. Albee’s dialogue nonetheless sparkles with hateful wit, and Taylor and Burton throw themselves into their characters full-force.
The place to look at: Obtainable on Spectrum on Demand, and for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
4
Prepared or Not (2019)
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s sick and twisted horror film a couple of bride being hunted for sport is pretty trashy, and that’s what makes it a lot enjoyable. There’s a tongue-in-cheek high quality to the entire thing, beginning with the premise: Proper after marrying into an ultra-rich household, Grace (Samara Weaving) has to outlive a “conventional household recreation” the place the household chases her by means of their immense property, attempting to homicide her. The script is intelligent and shocking, and Weaving is an appealingly gritty protagonist. All the idea is contrived and requires a certain quantity of “OK, let’s simply see the place that is going…” buy-in from an indulgent viewers, however the suspension of disbelief pays off. The twisty plot, the dedication to gory mayhem, and Grace’s resourcefulness and daring turned Prepared Or Not into sufficient of a small-scale hit to immediate a sequel, arriving shortly.
The place to look at: Streaming on FuboTV and FXNow, and out there for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
5
The Lobster (2015)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ bizarro-world fantasy was prompted by his feeling that society is hatefully biased in opposition to single folks, which he translated right into a setting the place everyone seems to be pressured to be a part of a pair, on ache of a destiny weirder than loss of life. Colin Farrell performs David, a stodgy man remanded to an establishment referred to as The Lodge after his spouse leaves him for another person. He’s advised he has 45 days to discover a new companion among the many different single of us, or he’ll be changed into an animal of his selecting. The Lobster is technically a darkish comedy, however like a lot of Lanthimos’ movies (Dogtooth, The Favorite, Poor Issues), it’s a very straight-faced one, the place the characters say and do preposterous issues with out a trace of overt humor. There’s a hypnotic draw to this creepy, oppressive world, and to David’s forlorn place in it. Folks dealing with Valentine’s Day alone could effectively empathize together with his feeling that he’s being pressured to adapt to guidelines that make no sense, when he simply needs love — or to be left in peace.
The place to look at: Streaming on HBO Max and out there on Spectrum On Demand, in addition to Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
6
The Final Seduction (1994)
A gloriously nasty neo-noir crime movie that treats romance as yet another weapon within the arsenal of a grasp schemer, The Final Seduction provides neo-noir director John Dahl one in all his finest scripts, and Linda Fiorentino one in all her all-time finest roles. Fiorentino performs Bridget, an bold, predatory girl whose physician husband Clay (Invoice Pullman) is deep in debt to a mortgage shark, and has simply pulled off a drug deal to pay him off. Bridget decides to have a good time the rating by double-crossing her husband and operating off with the cash, however circumstances drive her to cover in a small city, the place she units about attempting to rope down-on-his-luck native boy Mike (Peter Berg) into her subsequent scheme. The Final Seduction is endlessly, gleefully cynical about love, romance, relationships, and even informal intercourse. However what else are you able to count on when the ruthless femme fatale is the protagonist and everybody else is a patsy?
The place to look at: Streaming on Prime Video, Fawesome, Hoopla, and Shout Manufacturing facility TV. Free with adverts on Tubi, Pluto, and Plex. Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
7
Audition (1999)
Takashi Miike’s chilly film Audition is tailored for jaded horror followers who suppose they’ve seen all of it and are unshakable. Needle-phobes, watch out for this one! Ryo Ishibashi stars as Shigeharu, a middle-aged widower who decides to discover a new spouse by faking a casting name for the lead position in a TV sequence. That grotesque deception results in grotesque outcomes when a girl with a terrifying agenda (Eihi Shiina) enters his life by means of the audition. You might select to see this as a morality story about relationships, and the way any connection made by means of selfishness and dishonesty is sure to be toxic. However you may also simply take it as a singularly nasty, efficient clap again in opposition to romantic films, and the “all’s truthful in love, struggle, and rom-com contrivances” film philosophy.
The place to look at: Streaming on Kanopy, Shudder, and Hello-YAH. Free with adverts on Tubi. Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
8
Gaslight (1944)
The trope-namer that gave us the idea of gaslighting continues to be an awesome psychological thriller, an edged contest of wills between merciless husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) and his disintegrating new spouse Paula (Ingrid Bergman). First-time viewers will perceive that there’s one thing ugly happening underneath the floor, as Gregory accuses Paula of issues that make no sense, overtly flirts together with her maid, and responds to Paula’s growing agitation with brutal contempt. However unpacking what’s truly happening between them and why is an enjoyably Hitchcockian course of, a thriller that director George Cukor (adapting a 1938 play) unfolds fastidiously and with professional rigidity. It’s an all-time traditional amongst “relationship gone flawed” films, and much more nuanced than the fashionable time period “gaslighting” would recommend.
The place to look at: Free with adverts on XumoPlay. Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
9
What Retains You Alive (2018)
Colin Minihan’s What Retains You Alive feels unusually uncooked and muscular for a queer horror film, and with good motive. It was written as a straight horror-thriller, which modified when the male actor Minihan wished as one of many leads backed out a month earlier than taking pictures, and Minihan changed him with a girl. That is one other “new romance is definitely a foul romance” film, the place a younger girl (Brittany Allen) celebrating her first anniversary together with her spouse (Hannah Emily Anderson) finds out she doesn’t actually know who she married, or the true agenda behind their relationship. Creeping dread turns to bloody mayhem, delivered with a variety of type — it is a grim film, however an immersive one, a shocking micro-indie clearly made on a small price range, however with a variety of verve and taste.
The place to look at: Streaming on Kanopy, Sundance Now, and AMC+. Free with adverts on Tubi. Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and different digital providers.
10
Upside Down (2012)
A whole lot of these films are anti-love and anti-romance in darkish, ugly, cynical, or murderous methods, and never everyone seems to be into that. When you’re searching for one thing lighter, you might all the time simply get some deep, cleaning laughter out of watching the hilariously wrong-headed, incoherent mess Upside Down. This film was clearly designed as a candy, transferring high-concept science fiction fable, with visuals seemingly impressed by Inception, and acquainted stars Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst within the lead roles. However the premise — two planets with opposite-direction gravity, caught collectively simply yards aside, with one being a wealthy utopia and the opposite a downtrodden slum — doesn’t make a lick of sense, and the screenwriters appear to overlook their very own guidelines from scene to scene. This wide-eyed, sentimental love story is without doubt one of the most hilariously misbegotten romances ever made, and simply watching it must be sufficient to make anybody really feel a bit higher concerning the dummies attempting to bundle up love and promote it as a media product.
The place to look at: Streaming on Prime Video, Kanopy, and Hoopla. Free with adverts on Tubi, Fandango, and Roku Channel. Obtainable for lease or buy on Amazon.
