Geekscape Presents The Top-10 Worst Date Movies

I generally shrink from a term like “date movie,” as it typically refers to a very certain brand of Hollywood-produced romantic comedy, marked by bland romance and unfunny comedy.  The kind of film that advertises itself as sexy and swoony, but usually only involves the uninteresting non-issues being experienced by attractive, upper-class white people.  I say, if a movie is good, and the two of you are inspire to talk, learn more about one another, or are merely seduced into bed, then it’s officially a date movie, and the presence of Jennifer Aniston be damned.  Indeed, I personally feel that horrible romances like “Valentine’s Day” tend to make for wrose date movies than something more stirring and intelligent, but perhaps that’s just me.

There are, however, most certainly a number of movies that you never, under any circumstances, want to see on a date. And I’m not just talking about gross movies, as the ones I mentioned in my Disgusting Movies article. No, I mean films that seem single-mindedly devoted to get couples to hate each other. While there are plenty of movies featuring the first tentative love of some eager youngsters who are trekking into romance for the first time, there are also a healthy handful of toxic dramas to counterbalance the treacly love with hurtful spite and hatred.

To fly in the face of the unspoken Hollywood convention of the Date Movie, I have complied the following list of films about hatred, breakup, divorce, and often outright violence between couples. Some of these movies are amazingly good, and worth a look, but do leave you depressed. Some are not so good, but leave you depressed anyway. If you’re looking to alienate a loved one, be sure to drag them to one of the following.

10) 5×2 (2004)

Dir. François Ozon

François Ozon is, if you’re not familiar with him, a director with something of a schizophrenic filmography. For every film he makes about sexual manipulation and bubbling resentment (“Water Drops on Burning Rocks”), he makes a lighthearted comedy or even musical about dynamic and interesting women (“Potiche”). He seems equally interested in the workings of the society of females, and also the way people use their sexuality to damn one another.

Of his toxic dramas, the most damning (although, sadly, least interesting) is his divorce drama “5×2,” no named because of its five-act structure involving two people. The five acts are, in what seems like an arbitrary twist, told in reverse order, so we get to see a man (Stéphane Friess) and a woman (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) first argue and divorce and reveal how much hatred they have for one another, and trace them backward through their alienation, bickering, everyday blandness, and eventual romantic meeting. While the film sets us up to expect an ending where their eventual meeting is blissful and wonderful, implying that time and familiarity can breed contempt, it’s actually a bit clever in the way in explains that their initial romantic meeting was actually under bad circumstances, and that they weren’t ever really right for one another.

Not a great film, but certainly a mean one, “5×2” might have you looking at your partner and wondering of what you’re feeling is genuine. Good job, Ozon. You broke up so many people.

9) Date Movie (2006)

Dir. Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Ironically enough, one of the worst date movies of all time has to be the sickly spoof “Date Movie” from the unfortunately popular Friedberg/Seltzer camp of parodies. If you’re not familiar with their output, consider yourself fortunate. If you are, you are likely trying your hardest to forget them. When people complain about the dumbing down of America, they’re often referring directly to the baffling success of these movies.

Each film is marked by poorly-timed slapstick, gallons of human fluids produced for comic effect, and, most notably, a string of unremarked-upon pop culture references that assume the shock of familiarity is somehow the same as humor. This is not a clever riff on popular culture, but a mere litany of recognizable images that preceded it. However, in addition to the stultifying attempts at non-humor, these movies are also marked by an amount of all-too-organic sexism that seems to stem less form an interest in satirizing sexist attitudes, and more from a genuine hatred of women. Every one of these films features a scene in which a woman must sexually humiliate herself for “funny” reasons. It strikes me as far too ugly. If you and your date make the mistake of going to see “Date Movie,” I apologize for the dirtiness you’ll feel afterwords. If your date liked the film, perhaps it should serve as a red flag.

8) Bellflower (2011)

Dir. Evan Glodell

Fans of the zombie genre of films can relate to this adolescent fantasy: The world has come to an end. All of the people you love may be dead, but, by the same token, so are all the people you hate. You, a survivor, not only get to work out your frustrations on the walking dead, but you can declare yourself lord of the wasteland, and no one will be there to disagree, except for that tribe of desperate stragglers, who will look to you for protection and courage. The protagonists of the recent indie flick “Bellflower” have a similar fantasy, only it’s closer to being Lord Humongous from “The Road Warrior,” and they’re not adolescents, but in their late 20s.

The film is essentially about how heartbreak can feel like the apocalypse, and while the film is mostly devoted to the rise and alienation of the central couple (Glodell and Jessie Wiseman), the entire final third seems to spin into a strange hallucinatory sequence where our hero takes a homemade flame-thrower to the belongings and houses of the people who have wronged him. The film dissects exactly how horrible it feels to have your heart broken, and how easy first-time bliss can almost immediately break down into rancorous self-destruction. By the time someone shoots themselves through the head, you’ll be wanting to get away from your date as quickly as possible.

7) Ted Bundy (2002)

Dir. Matthew Bright

Call me sick if you must, but I’m actually very fond of this film. It depicts the life of Ted Bundy, the notorious rapist and serial killer, as if it were an overblown melodrama, full of screaming and pointedly ridiculous sexuality. In one scene, Bundy (played with scenery-chewing glee by Michael Reilly Burke) steals a potted plant just for the thrill. In another, he forces his long-suffering girlfriend to pretend she’s a corpse while he violently fucks her. In another, he bangs a chick in a crowded prison. There’s something delightfully lurid about the film. Seeing as it was directed by the maker of “Freeway,” and the co-screenwriter of “Forbidden Zone,” that should come as no surprise.

But Ted Bundy, much more so than other serial killers, makes for a particularly disturbing movie protagonist. He was the unleashed id of every violent-minded 13-year-old boy, who would pathologically lie, seduce, steal and commit rape with no thought of morals or empathy. His darkness comes from the immature glee he took in his sexual and deathly conquests. Any young woman seeing this film with their man will have a hard time looking at him afterwards. It’ll be hard to get laid after watching Ted Bundy mistreat and murder his bevvy of hot blondes.

6) Blue Velvet (1986)

Dir. David Lynch

I don’t think I’ll need to say too much on this one. We’re likely all familiar with the film’s depiction of twisted crime and sexuality bubbling eagerly under the surface of America’s suburban idylls. We’ve seen Dennis Hopper (brilliantly, mind you) suck gas from inside his jacket and do unspeakable things to the placidly submissive Isabella Rosellini. I really love “Blue Velvet,” seeing it as a return to form for David Lynch, but it’s definitely a classic to leave one with the heebie-jeebies.

I picture, though, the poor young teenage couple, rife with romantic possibility, wanting to try something daring and new, and going, perhaps on their second or third date, to “Blue Velvet,” not entirely knowing who David Lynch is, or what his previous films were like. I imagine them sinking into their theater seats, smiling at one another, perhaps holding hands, eagerly waiting to share this film. Not 30 minutes later, when Hopper is whining “Baby wants to fuuuuck!” and Rosellini is wandering, ghost-like and nude, through the scene, the hand-holding has stopped, and the evening is already being written off.

5) The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Dir. Noah Baumbach

This is actually a rather brilliant film, but a very, very tough one, especially if you were the child, as so many were, of divorced parents. This is a film about a couple (played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney) who, thanks to their selfishness and over-intellectualization of one another, come to be cold and casually cruel. Their two children both react to their cold separation in various socially unacceptable ways. Their 11-year-old son (Owen Kline) takes to drinking as often as possible and masturbating in public. Their 16-year-old son (Jesse Eisenberg) takes to plagiarizing papers, and adopts a hugely frustrating air on intellectual superiority, mostly in emulation of his dad. Watching Eisneberg embarrass himself with his adolescent know-it-all attitude is painful to watch.

No one comes across as good. Eisenberg in particular, seems to be like a nascent blowhard, but without the smarts to back up his arrogance; he refers to a story by Kafka as “Kafkaesque” at one point. His wise girlfriend point out that Kafka would kinda have to be Kafkaesque. He treats said girlfriend very poorly, and eventually dumps her in the hopes of hooking up with an older girl played by Anna Paquin, which he never does. It’s a tale of divorce, alienation, and leaving people for dumb reasons. Have a good date, kids.

Also, where do you think I got that image of teens going out to see “Blue Velvet?” That scene was in “The Squid and the Whale.”

4) Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

Dir. Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman is incapable of making anything pat or simple, choosing to wrestle with the complicated details of an extended marriage with both hands. In his famous TV miniseries (which was shortened to feature length for American audiences, and released in theaters that way), Erland Josefson and Liv Ullman play a married couple who often congratulate themselves for having such a strong marriage after ten years, and for not always bickering. But, as time passes, they begin to feel the itch, and openly discuss whether or not to open up their marriage, or to just get a divorce.

Eventually there are a few affairs, a lot of arguments, and a lot of theorizing on what it means to stay married for decades. There is musing on the nature of practical love, and how it can so often cleave closely to hatred. If you have the gumption, I recommend you sit and watch the entire 5-hour version. It will be eminently rewarding. Just don’t watch it with a spouse or anyone you intend on dating for an extended period, ’cause you’ll start to stare at them funny.

3) Your Friends & Neighbors (1998)

Dir. Neil LaBute

While there are plenty of melodramas and soap operas about couple-swapping and infidelity, I’m having trouble thinking of any such stories that are more acidic than “Your Friends & Neighbors” by Neil LaBute. His characters don’t just have flings and casually cheat on one another, but they’re actually mean about it. They seem to engage in their suburban sex games less as a way of expressing sexual desire, and more as a way of manipulating and intentionally hurting those around them. The characters in this film are all horrible people.

Which, of course, makes it an awesome sight, and an amazingly written film. It has a certain patois that may be described as David Mamet if he were even more focused on sexual politics. If you’re with a date, however, you’ll both start to feel icky early on. By the time you get to Jason Patric’s famous speech about the time he raped a male classmate… and loved it… well you’ll be a little ashamed to have genitals by the film’s end.

2) Revolutionary Road (2008)

Dir. Sam Mendes

Someone put it this way: Don’t see “Revolutionary Road” within five years of getting married. This tale of a 1950s suburban couple is one of the most intensely pessimistic films about marriage I think I’ve ever seen. Marriage, it seems to imply, only serves to stifle your soul, and force you into unwanted affairs, pregnancies, and, ultimately, untimely death.

At the film’s outset, April and Frank Wheeler (Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) seem to be living in a beautiful 1950s suburban idyll, happy with one another, and mercifully more together than their neighbors. They have two incidental children. All is plain and calm and nice. When Frank and April meet the mentally unbalanced John (Michael Shannon), he sees through their façade, and seems to intuit that their marriage will fall apart. Soon thereafter, such a thing does indeed begin to happen, and Frank and April begin to openly loathe one another, preferring to give in to ’50s norms rather than live the life they want. These people just don’t have the smarts or imagination to live a life other than one of dull, throbbing misery.

Can I hold your hand during the movie?

1) Antichrist (2009)

Dir. Lars Von Trier

And we move from films that are merely about couples who hate each other, and saunter horribly and depressingly into the bleakest pit of despair that has ever been recorded on film, where a couple psychologically, physically, and sexually tortures one another. There are three chapters in the film: Pair, grief and despair. The film is weird and arty, and indeed can probably only be understood if you know the psychology of depression. Von Trier was, reportedly, working through some of his own crippling depression when he made “Antichrist.” The result makes that clear.

An unnamed married couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) has moved to their cabin in the woods in order to get past the recent death of their young son. She has become hysterical and suicidal. He, a psychiatrist by trade, decides to cure her. Only it’s never clear if he’s trying to help her or torment her. She becomes increasingly unbalanced, and eventually begins talking about Satan’s Church, and how women have been tortured for years. Time falls out of joint. Animals begin speaking. Sex and death become synonymous. Eventually there are several very intense scenes of horrible sexual violence that I choose not to describe here. Just know that neither he nor she makes it out unharmed.

So be sure to snuggle up on the couch, prepare some savory snacks, and proceed to wallow in suicidal thoughts with “Antichrist.”

Witney Seibold is a happily married man, thank you very much, living in Los Angeles. Be sure to read the hundreds of film reviews available on his ‘blog, Three Cheers for Darkened Years! Also be sure to listen to his podcast, The B-Movies Podcast, which he co-hosts once a week.