Valentine’s Day comes and goes every year leaving folks with either heartfelt wholesomeness or wholesale heartbreak, effectively splitting the population into (respectively) love and hate relationships with the minor holiday. Whichever side any given person falls on, there always seems to be some amount of speculation as to what to do. Whether it’s quality time with a loved one or waiting the hours away alone, dinner dates only ever go so far and the inevitable movie night always comes with a harder question, “what do we watch?”
There are only so many quality rom-coms, which presents a unique challenge while browsing streaming services. Cue 2019’s release of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, which brought a new audience to the strange, messy world of “horro-mance,” and provided both “toxic relationship analysis” and “genre mash-up masterpiece” in equal parts. While many viewers were disturbed by the sheer real-ness of the scripting, many more left their screens wanting more, but maybe not knowing exactly where to find it.
While Valentine’s Day weekend might be done and dusted for this year, there are plenty of days when nothing hits the spot like a bloody romance on the silver screen.
10 Life After Beth
Life After Beth (2014) is a wonderfully charming rom-com starring Aubrey Plaza and Dane DeHaan as they deal with the biggest challenge their relationship has seen yet, death.
Critically, the film didn’t receive fantastic reviews on release, but the A24 production brought in quite a few viewers who found a lot to love in this indie gem. For anyone looking for a fresh take on the zombie genre, with a fun humorous twist, this might be the one.
9 Mandy
One of the most under-appreciated films of 2018, Mandy sounds like the type of corny B-movie to fall immediately in the discount bin at the local grocery store, forever lost and forgotten to mediocre-at-best ratings. Mandy, however, is a pariah.
Experimental director Panos Cosmatos’ second movie brings Nicolas Cage and Andrea Riseborough into one of the most visually and audibly striking films to ever hit the small screen. The movie plays out a revenge fantasy through a trippy modern take on classic sword-and-sandal fantasy epics.
8 Carrie
Brian De Palma’s Carrie is a wonderfully imagined classic, and easily one of the best horror films of the ’70s, regardless of its seemingly inconspicuous scale and subject matter.
Carrie pulls a fast one on the genre, appearing on the outside to be a much more tame, universal story with a romantic outcome and a solid line-up of hot songs to really bump it into blockbuster territory. What lies in wait, however, is a much more troubled story of a girl so terribly abused that she unleashes something dark into the world when her final string is cut.
7 Ready Or Not
A wonderful addition to the “good for her” cinematic universe, Ready or Not (2019) is a great little callback to the old days of horror-for-the-fun-of-it.
When a bride’s wedding night goes a little too off-the-rails due to the groom’s eccentric family, she has to take things into her own hands or else face an embarrassing fate that won’t go without repercussions. Not only is the film a good representation of how it feels to meet the in-laws, but a wonderful lighthearted exercise in tension.
6 Audition
In one of Takashi Miike’s best works, the ever-prolific director takes a romantic turn from his classically campy filmmaking.
Audition looks into the world of industry exploitation and sexual misconduct, as a well-meaning director holds auditions to find himself a healthy relationship while recovering from the death of his wife several years ago. Not for the faint of heart, Audition creeps in with some of the most unsettling torture scenes in film history.
5 Creep 2
Sequels, while they rarely get it right across any media, can often exceed expectations and become fan-favorites in the franchise. Creep 2, from indie director Patrick Brice, is one of those sequels.
Creep 2 sidewinds away from the first film in an interesting way, almost flipping the roles on their backs as the main antagonist of the original becomes a near-romantic companion to Brice’s new protagonist. Viewers of the original should know exactly what happens next, but how it plays out through the film is extremely fun to watch and comes with a handful of fun surprises and genuinely heartfelt moments.
4 The Bride Of Frankenstein
Another great sequel, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein picks up directly after the retconned ending of the first film.
Frankenstein finally gets what’s been coming to him, as his creation takes his rightful revenge on the mad doctor. After the monster kidnaps his wife, Frankenstein is forced to create a bride to quell the loneliness of his original creation. Not everything goes as planned, however, and it soon becomes obvious that both parties got more than they signed up for.
3 Possession
One of the most surreal representations of Lovecraftian media, 1981’s Possession from Polish director Andrzej Zulawski is not only a horrific descent into madness, but a disturbing look into love and heartbreak on-par with Midsommar.
The film follows a couple as they gradually fall deeper into depression over their imminent divorce and affairs. Through the duration, the slow-burn atmosphere becomes more and more deranged as reality bleeds into fantasy, emotion blurs, and the terrifying heartbreak blends with an ever-growing eldritch evil.
2 My Bloody Valentine
Another genre classic, George Mihalka and Steve Miller’s My Bloody Valentine (1981) is one of the better slasher films of the older-years.
As a small mining town prepares for its annual Valentine’s Day celebration, an ugly evil rears its head from a tragedy twenty years past. The sole survivor of a horrific mining accident seems to be back and wreaks havoc upon the youth who assumed him to be nothing more than an urban legend.
1 Colossal
Colossal was one of the most intriguing concepts from 2016’s film roster, but was inevitably slept on with several more big-budget movies took the spotlight.
While the year boasted quite a few fantastic releases, Colossal remains a standout in concept and execution. As a woman suffers a mental breakdown, a catastrophic event across the world takes precedent, but she soon discovers strange connections between her predicament and this unidentified giant creature destroying Seoul. Colossal can only be explained as a fantastically original combination of “Godzilla meets Lost in Translation.“
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