'Happy Valentine's Day!' - here's you gift!
National holidays and red-letter days have come and gone in the last year without much fanfare. If we can’t even make Christmas work, what hope is there for everything else? Right now as the world is in a state of emergency, it’s not exactly the a great time for Valentine’s Day, let alone romance.
If you’re single, other than a painful Zoom meet, you’re not exactly going to be meeting ‘the one’ anytime soon. Lord knows we’ll need a few moths just to get lose the lockdown weight and get back in shape. If you’re not single then you either live with your partner and want to kill them or you don’t and you can’t even do anything for Valentine’s Day away. Either way, it sucks.
So in the interest of keeping our sanity intact, we’ve put together a list of very un-Valentine’s Day movies. We’re talking everything from divorce, horror, mutilation, drug binges, revenge to downright vulgarity, these films will have you thinking romance is well and truly dead…for now.
Drag Me to Hell (2009) – Sam Raimi of Evil Dead and Spiderman fame created a stand-alone comedy horror that’ll have you laughing at every gory moment. Alison Lohman puts in a dedicated performance as a woman who finds herself on the receiving end of a nasty curse.
If tying Luke down is the only way to get him into bed, so be it!
I Spit on Your Grave (2010/1978) – We all like a good revenge movie ut this one takes the biscuit. The 2010 remake of the 1978 isn’t quite the cult classic but it spawned a few sequels. The premise is that a female victim of a brutal gang rape going on a murderous rampage, finding and dispatching her attackers in bloody vengeance.
The Platform (2019) – This Spanish horror/thriller will have you reaching for the sick bag. Set in a tower where the residents are switched to a different floor every 30 days. They are fed from a platform that starts off full of fresh food at the top so the residents there can eat their fill and then it slowly descends, becoming more and more putrid as it get nearer to the bottom. A romantic dinner will be the last thing on your mind.
Hostel (2005) – A film that doesn’t need an introduction, and pushed boundaries in terms of horror. Critics coined the term torture porn for this very film so you can just imagine how nasty it gets.
Ma (2019) – Octavia Spencer smashes it out the park as the unhinged Ma from the title. Proving that you never accept an offer from a stranger to ‘use their basement’ as a wreck room and buy you booze, the movie has gags and gasps throughout. And we get to see a bit of Luke Evans as a sexy red neck too.
Sausage Party (2016) – Starring the voices of Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen (who also co-wrote the script), this CGI movie is NOT for kids. With all the characters in the movie animated food products, the story is thin but the vulgarity is amped up to 11. You’ll be laughing and feeling nauseous in equal measures.
Actual shot of sausages looking forward to Valentine's Day
mother! (2017) – Darren Aronofsky’s movie stars his then girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence and stellar supporting cast including Javier Barden and Michelle Pfeiffer. An allegory for motherhood, fame and cults, the film slowly creeps towards its final truly shocking finale. Romance? You’d be lucky if you don’t throw up.
Kill Bill Volumes 1&2 (2003/4) – nothing says no thanks Valentines like a hack and slash and shoot ’em up dripping with revenge. Quentin Tarantino’s epic double header stars Uma Thurman kicking serious amounts of ass and makes a kung fu queen of Lucy Liu.
The First Wives Club (1996) – Starring a trio of Hollywood legends, The First Wives Club delivers heart, laughs and most importantly revenge. Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Better Midler play – you guessed it – first wives that have been traded in for younger models. Dripping with sarcasm. You’ll never want to get married after seeing this.
Us (2019) – The follow up to uber-successful Get Out was a box office smash making over $250million worldwide and it’s creepy AF. Starring the amorphous Lupita Nyong’o as her character Adelaide as well as her doppelganger Red. It’s beyond creepy and bizarre and you’ll be enthralled from start to finish.
Antichrist (2009) – You won’t be thinking of sleeping with someone after watching this horrific movie by Lars Von Trier. In fact, you might not sleep again. After the death of their child, a couple retreat to a cabin in the woods where their sexual depravity takes hold.
Requiem for a Dream (2000) – Another one on the list from Darren Aronofsky, but this time one of his first and most powerful. Only marginally less disturbing than mother! it is nonetheless mind blowing as we watch Jennifer Connolly, Marlon Wayans, Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn descend into a drug and sex fuelled hell.