17 Romantic Movies That Are Actually Just Straight-Up Creepy
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Recently over on the Movies subreddit, u/phantom_avenger posed the question, "What romance movie is actually very creepy and disturbing?" The comments came pouring in, with Reddit users naming seemingly "romantic" films that are actually filled with uncomfortable age differences, weird stalking behavior, and a whole lot of gaslighting.
CBC / Via giphy.com
Here are 17 of those movies:
1.Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
"Steve Carrell’s character's son claims he’s in love with his babysitter and goes to great lengths to try and win her love even after she keeps turning him down and tells him he’s making her uncomfortable. However, by the end of the movie, despite his creepy obsession with her, she gives him hope that there might be a chance for him to be with her when he’s older. It didn’t feel like a great message to tell the audience — that it’s okay to make women uncomfortable and that if you keep pushing, they’ll eventually give in. It's basically telling men to never take 'no' for an answer. That’s not love; that’s entitlement."
"The babysitter ends up giving him nudes at the end — the ultimate nice guy fantasy, which is too bad because the other movie happening with Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling is pretty good."
2.Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018)
"It's super messed up. This poor guy thinks he’s talking to a certain girl and doesn’t know the whole time it’s actually the main character. Then he's tricked into kissing the main character when he thought he was kissing someone else. It just has catfishing/stalker energy."
3.The Notebook (2004)
"The parts when they are both old are nice, but the beginning of their relationship is creepy. The guy hung on a Ferris wheel and blackmailed a date out of the girl by pretending to almost kill himself if she said no."
"That's emotional manipulation."
4.Another Cinderella Story (2008)
"The story is cute and used to be one of my favorite childhood movies, but as I grew up, the age gap became weirder and weirder for me — especially since he’s a celebrity who's probably in his late teens to early twenties while she’s a sophomore-ish in high school. In a flashback, we can even see Selena Gomez's character at 11 years old holding up a magazine of Drew Seeley's character, but he looks the exact same as he does in present day. This means it’s safe to assume Joey is at least four to five years older than the 15-16-year-old Mary. (Just to add on to this, Selena Gomez was 15–16 when she was filming, and Drew Seeley was 25–26)."
5.Twilight (2008)
"It's full of creepy-obsessive scenes, but it's okay because sexy vampire."
"Thousand-year-old vampires creeping on high schoolers and a werewolf falling in love with an infant. 🤮"
6.Groundhog Day (1993)
"It's literally about a dude who, through trial and error, figures out exactly what he needs to say to a woman in order to sleep with her."
7.Overboard (1987)
"He literally kidnaps a woman with amnesia, turns her into a servant, tortures her, and eventually sleeps with her. But Kurt Russell is hot, and they fall in love, so all is forgiven."
8.Untamed Heart (1993)
"A waitress's coworker stalks her every night when she walks home. He also sneaks into her room and watches her sleep. I was obsessed with this movie when I was in middle school, and I still have a nostalgic soft spot for it, but it's definitely a red-flag romance."
9.Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
"I love this movie, but when you get down to brass tacks, Meg Ryan is stalking a grieving widower she became obsessed with from a radio call-in show. I’ve seen true crime documentaries that start the same way."
10.There's Something About Mary (1998)
"The scariest things about it were the home invasion, the obsessive stalking, the fake identities, and the hitmen."
"It could easily be a thriller. A bunch of losers all stalk one woman and try to sabotage each other to get into her pants. It's actually pretty disturbing."
—[deleted]
11.365 Days (2020)
"It was billed as the Polish 50 Shades of Grey and the European answer to kinky romance. But remember how 50 Shades just didn’t get BDSM and portrayed the whole thing as an abusive relationship? Yeah, 365 Days is even worse.
The literal plot of the film is a rich gangster kidnaps a woman — for reasons I literally don’t have the willpower to explain right now — and tells her that he will hold her hostage for one year to convince her to fall in love with him, but don’t worry, he won’t do anything without her permission.
It’s a film that actively romanticizes sexual assault and removes all agency from its female lead to the point that when she’s finally reunited with her best friend, the kidnapping is pushed to the side so they can geek out over wedding dresses."
12.Revenge of the Nerds (1984)
"Lewis has sex with Betty in the moon room, and she thinks it’s Stan until he takes off the mask. And he’s 'so good,' she falls for him. I've always been creeped the fuck out by that."
"And that's after they install hidden cameras in the sorority house and also sell nude pics of Betty to, like, the entire student body."
13.While You Were Sleeping (1995)
"She claims to be the fiancée of a person in a coma."
"The way Sandra Bullock's character weaseled her way into the family by LYING creeped me out. As soon as I found out she was a goddamn liar, I would have cut her out completely and filed a restraining order."
14.St. Elmo's Fire (1985)
"Every 'romantic' subplot in this movie."
"Oh man, when Emilio Estevez admits he's obsessed. Ewww."
15.Dirty Dancing (1987)
"The dad was placed into the villain role because he didn't like his underage daughter being groomed."
"Baby's actually a child, and Johnny's this dude in his late 20s. Super super gross."
16.You’ve Got Mail (1998)
"A man destroys a woman’s small business and then manipulates her into a relationship by gaslighting her into forgiveness via e-mail."
17.And finally, Passengers (2016)
"The film would have been so much better if it was told from Jennifer Lawrence's viewpoint, and then you slowly realize along with her that Chris Pratt had brought her out of cryosleep early and was, in fact, a deranged psychopath instead of the bullshit we got."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
