10 movies everybody thinks are romantic but are actually creepy
You know that song by The Police in which Sting croons about how “every breath you take, every move you make” he’ll be watching you? Well, movies can be just as creepy. Love them or loathe them, romance movies are one of the most popular genres, and like pop songs, they often present deeply problematic and profoundly unromantic relationship scenarios.
The trouble with the genre is that it tends to overdramatise to make character arcs and plot lines more sensational, which often leads to downright menacing stories. Think of how Sandra Bullock pretends to be the fiancée of a stranger who is in a literal coma in While You Were Sleeping or how a high school teacher in Never Been Kissed falls for a woman he thinks is his student.
These moments are usually played for laughs or are used as cheap plot devices to heighten the drama, but in real life, they would be more likely to lead to a prison cell than an altar. And yes, it is deeply uncool to nit-pick at movies and point out their factual inaccuracies and harmless exaggerations, but some of them take things to truly shameless extremes.
The thing with most of these romances is that, despite being wildly problematic, they somehow still work. Pretty Woman is an incredibly loveable film, no matter how uncomfortable that central relationship is. Sixteen Candles is a high school classic that, let’s be real, is kind of messed up when you think about it for a split second. So, let’s take that split second.
10 romantic movies that are actually insanely creepy:
‘Groundhog Day’ (Harold Ramis, 1993)
There are a lot of rom-coms that excuse any and all terrible behaviour by making sure that their characters try very hard to better themselves. Misogynistic egomaniacs are only terrible people because they haven’t yet met the right woman. That abusive ex who broke your heart is now True Love material because he went away and did some thinking. The most egregious example of this trope is Groundhog Day, which stars Bill Murray as Phil, a misanthropic reporter who finds himself in an infinite time loop where he has to relive the same day over and over again.
Eventually, he takes advantage of the situation by trying to manipulate his producer, Rita (Andy McDowell), into sleeping with him. Not surprisingly, she is at first disgusted by him. He is, after all, a terrible human being. But Phil has an infinite number of chances to win her over, so he starts looking for clues about what she’s attracted to and manipulating her into thinking he’s a good person. It’s a gross premise that isn’t helped by the fact that he eventually uses his time to better himself so that she can fall for him on his own merits.
‘You’ve Got Mail’ (Nora Ephron, 1998)
Tom Hanks is incapable of being creepy, which is good, because if he wasn’t, You’ve Got Mail would give off a very different vibe. Hanks plays Joe Fox, an executive of a chain bookstore who has struck up an anonymous online correspondence with a woman. She is Kathleen, played by Meg Ryan, and happens to own an independent bookstore. When they meet by chance in real life and clash over their professional interests, they still don’t realise that they have been talking to each other online.
When Joe does figure out who Kathleen is, he decides to continue the charade, stringing her along online while maintaining his ruthless business practices in the real world. The only justification for his behaviour is the movie Sleepless in Seattle, which involved Meg Ryan’s character falling in love with the voice of Tom Hanks’s character on a radio talk show, hiring a detective to spy on him, and moving across the country to stalk him and his young son. It is important to note that both of these films are basically flawless. Hanks, Ryan, and Nora Ephron could do no wrong, even when the plot was working against them.
‘Love Actually’ (Richard Curtis, 2003)
Richard Curtis’ holiday classic Love Actually has a lot to love, actually. Anyone willing to go out on a limb and make a pre-Paddington 2 Hugh Grant the prime minister is clearly onto something, and the overlapping stories of love and heartache around the holidays are the perfect Christmas fodder. Then, there is the plot line that really shouldn’t be anyone’s cup of tea.
Juliet (Keira Knightley) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are, as far as we know, very happily married. But his friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) isn’t thrilled with the union. He is so in love with Juliet that when he filmed the couple’s wedding, all he did was zoom in on her face like a serial killer stalking his next target. When Juliet sees the video, Mark doesn’t take the chivalrous route of making himself scarce for the rest of their lives, he shows up at the house she shares with his best friend, to whom, let us not forget, she is happily married, and holds up giant cue cards to inform her that he will love her until she is a rotting corpse. Oh, and Merry Christmas. He then wanders off into the night, presumably to find another victim.
‘While You Were Sleeping’ (Jon Turteltaub, 1995)
The title alone is a red flag. Alarm bells should be ringing. What on Earth could be romantic that takes place while one of the characters is sleeping? Well, in the case of this movie, it’s probably worse than you think. Sandra Bullock stars as Lucy, an extremely endearing and supposedly spinsterish frump who works as a transit authority token collector in Chicago. She has an unhealthy obsession with a handsome commuter played by Peter Gallagher, so when she saves him from being hit by a train, and he ends up in a coma, she does what any sane person would do and poses as his fiancée.
It is very rare that female characters benefit from sexism, but there is absolutely no way this film would have gotten past the script stage if the genders were reversed. If Peter were the token collector and Lucy were the commuter, he would (hopefully) be the villain of the story. The only saving grace here is that Lucy ends up falling in love with Peter’s brother, and Peter himself turns out to be something of a heel.
‘Pretty Woman’ (Garry Marshall, 1990)
Do we even need to get into the details on this one? A rich man cruises through the red light district and picks up a sex worker. He wines her and dines for a week, tells her what to wear and how to act, and burdens her with his personal problems. She, in turn, falls in love. The idea of a slimy millionaire rescuing a hooker with a heart of gold from the streets was problematic even when the film came out in 1990.
The question with Pretty Woman isn’t why it’s creepy but why people still love it anyway. The answer, of course, is Julia Roberts. The reason the film is palatable even 35 years later is that Richard Gere and Roberts’s power dynamics as stars are the inverse of what their characters are in the plot. He is annoying in this movie. He has daddy issues, his job is to destroy businesses, and he’s a misogynist who treats women as commodities. She, on the other hand, is absolutely luminous. Her star power is so blinding that even a film as uncomfortable as this can’t dim her charisma.
‘Never Been Kissed’ (Raja Gosnell, 1999)
Drew Barrymore starred as an innocent 20-something-year-old copy editor in Raja Gosnell’s Never Been Kissed back in 1999, a movie which saw her character, Josie, pretend to be a high-school student in the name of research. Lauded as one of the most beloved rom-coms from the golden era of the genre, the film sees Josie quickly fall for Michael Vartan’s character, her new English teacher, Sam Coulson.
While both are legal adults, the fact that Sam develops feelings for Josie while under the impression that she is a teenager is very creepy. Evidently, Sam isn’t against looking at his underage students in a romantic and sexual light – even if he does grapple with his feelings for Josie. The movie encourages us to root for the pair, despite us knowing that Sam, for most of the film, believes the object of his affection is a teenager.
’13 Going On 30′ (Gary Winick, 2004)
Another well-loved rom-com from the 2000s, 13 Going On 30, is one that we can’t help but raise our eyebrows at – even if it does remain a wholly enjoyable movie and the perfect time capsule of early 2000s New York. The movie plays with all the classic tropes regarding popularity, with 13-year-old Jenna doing all she can to become popular, all while her boy best friend, Matty, is secretly in love with her.
Yet, after she wakes up to discover her dream of being “30, flirty, and thriving” fulfilled due to some magic dust, a now-adult Jenna reconnects with Matty, eventually marrying him after many complications. The whole time, the pair hangs out as adults. However, Jenna is really still a 13-year-old inside, her giddy and childlike personality shining through each scene. While it’s not as outrightly questionable as something like Never Been Kissed, the issue of age and maturity is certainly brought into question here.
‘Grease’ (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
John Travolta rose to prominence as one of the biggest stars of the late ‘70s, and his leading role in Grease, a wildly successful musical, certainly helped to further his star status. It’s a movie that divides audiences, with many loving its classic songs like ‘Greased Lightnin’ and ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’, while others find the whole thing incredibly corny. In many ways, it is an incredibly corny movie, often on purpose, however, there are some moments that are also downright creepy.
One of the worst contenders is the song ‘Summer Nights’, an admittedly catchy number, but one that contains the alarming lines “Did she put up a fight?” Not only that, various other moments make Grease feel rather slimy, like the T-Birds’ overall behaviour and treatment of female characters, and the fact that Sandy’s innocence is continuously highlighted, only for her to emerge as an incredibly sexualised figure at the end.
‘Sixteen Candles’ (John Hughes, 1984)
The teen movie boom of the 1980s saw many popular titles, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club, released to great success. These films were written or directed by John Hughes, who seemed to capture adolescent struggles and hierarchies through his movies, which resonated with many audiences. However, many of his movies have since been re-evaluated and criticised, like Sixteen Candles, a romantic coming-of-age tale that actually has a lot wrong with it.
Alongside the racism found in the characterisation of Long Duk Dong, the way the movie depicts sex and relationships hardly condemns the bad behaviour of its male characters. In one sequence, date rape is essentially played for laughs, with the boys treating women as nothing more than objects to be won and passed around – even if they’re drunk.
‘Big’ (Penny Marshall, 1988)
Before 13 Going 30, Penny Marshall’s Big, starring Tom Hanks, explored the ‘child wakes up in an adult’s body’ storyline. It’s a film that many consider a childhood classic – we all remember the scene in which Hanks jumps on the big piano keys in a department store – but what about the fact that his character, who is a child inside of his adult body, sleeps with a grown woman?
Talking to Page Six, Elizabeth Perkins, who played Hanks’ love interest, explained that the scene in which it is implied that they have sex (“I take my shirt off and he touches my breast, then we cut to the elevator door opening and he’s got a big smile on his face”) was rather questionable – rightly so. She admitted that “we’re in a different time” now.
