5 Unhealthy Love Movies to Watch on Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day seems to be the best time to remember the importance of love, friendship and the most passionate feelings. That is, unless we remember that the so-called date is famous for other reasons. For example, on February 14, 1945, the city of Prague was bombed in a terrible historical mistake that resulted in thousands of casualties. Or that on the same day, but in 1981 a fire destroyed the holiday in Nightclub Stardust Dublin, which killed 48 people and seriously injured more than a hundred.

The truth is that the holiday has an inevitable dark and even disturbing undertone. Something that cinema has emphasized in several films that take an uncomfortable and even cruel point of view. From the pain of love in a falling apart relationship to all the murky and perverted elements that make up the image of love in art. The cinematic world generously explores emotions and desires from a twisted and dark perspective.

We leave you with five films about unhealthy love so you can enjoy – if you wish – an unusual Valentine’s Day. From the wounds of loss, through dark incest to deadly obsession. The selection has everything for lovers of the dark side of man. A point as important as any other is to celebrate love, need for each other and passion.

Marriage story

Not all love stories are kind, and this one is especially bitter. Especially when it becomes unhealthy and unpleasant, when you show the emotional and mental wounds that a couple’s breakup leaves behind. Director Noah Baumbach creates a tragic narrative that runs through all the scenarios of adult love. From the surprise of newborn love to the harshness of divorce. The film is a journey through a breakup that will ultimately devastate a middle-aged couple.

Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) must come to terms with the fact that what they had in common has been irrevocably destroyed. Which would also be a farewell to the life they both knew and which, in a way, made them grow together. Therefore, separation will be the beginning of a bitter stage that they will have to be able to cope with.

Scarlet Peak

One of Guillermo del Toro’s best, the film is a major stylistic and narrative experiment. The Mexican director took the classic gothic novel and brought it to the big screen with all the right stuff. From disgraced damsel to incestuous love, through all sorts of ghosts and inheritances that fall to pieces.

The film has everything that can captivate and scare. But especially Tom Hiddleston (already a cult Loki Marvel), in the role adapted for him and making him an icon of classic historical cinema. Nothing is missing in this sumptuous fantasy, which you can watch now on Prime Video.

Vertigo (From the Dead)

At the heart of this Alfred Hitchcock classic is love, but also a painful and brutal journey through the realm of the senses that turns into an unhealthy obsession. The first of the great films about unhealthy love. John (James Stewart) is a detective who takes on a case of possible adultery, leading him to follow Judy (Kim Novak). But what begins as a routine job ends in a labyrinth of increasingly confusing and grotesque situations.

Much more when John is forced to admit that he has more than complicated feelings for his clearly unfaithful wife, which detracts from the neutrality of his work. But things get worse when she commits suicide. Only a sudden death, but the beginning of a series of terrifying events that will make him question reality and even his sanity.

In the end, John will discover that love can become an impetus for extraordinary deeds and deeds. but also for a kind of horror that barely foreshadows Judy’s death.

Housemaid

Director Park Chan-wook took over the production. Fake identity by Welsh writer Sarah Waters to describe the depths of obsession, sexual desire and manipulation in one of the strangest, sickest love films ever made. And all this in the midst of a tense scenario in Japanese-occupied Korea. Divided into three parts, the film tells a twisted, deceitful and cruel love story. which becomes even more suffocating as its characters show their true colors.

Izumi Hideko (Kim Min Hee) is a sophisticated reader of erotica who also represents all the repressed desires of an authoritarian society. Nam Sook Hee (Kim Tae Ri) can’t help but fall in love with her and also fall into a game of half-truths in which he will have to risk his life in every possible way.

But beyond the pain, the director strives to show that love can be dark, cruel and dirty territory. One that also becomes more mysterious as it becomes more tense and intense.

Saltburn

The erotic thriller that has taken over the Internet is, in a sense, one of those love films, although, of course, not a traditional one, much less an idyllic one. Felix (Jacob Elordi) is a young and brilliant heir who has become the object of desire for Oliver (Barry Keoghan). But what begins as a journey through barely contained lust ends up becoming a twisted obsession.

As Oliver reveals that his true purpose is not to love—or be loved—but to possess, the film becomes darker and more tongue-in-cheek. For the scandalous ending, which upset many viewers,Saltburn clarified an important point. Love can be a dark ghost that can kill.