The 6 Most Accidentally Creepy Movie Romances
Hollywood is no stranger to creepy romances: We've seen movies about aliens doing it with human women, 100-year-old vampires dating high school teens and Woody Allen hooking up with young starlets, among other unlikely atrocities. And yet, somehow, the writers always find new ways to top themselves, coming up with new and more disgusting ways to creep everyone out without even meaning to.
Here are six more famous movies where the filmmakers tried to add a little romance and ended up unleashing unintentional nastiness at best, pure existential horror at worst.
Source Code -- Jake Gyllenhaal Kills a Man, Then Steals His Life and Girlfriend
The Movie Romance
Source Code is about a time-altering device that can't send a person's body back, but can transport his mind. He just has to inhabit (that is, possess) the body of someone who was there.
Time travel, brought to you by math and the color blue.
So the plot is that Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) uses this device to go back and take over the body of Sean Fentress, a victim in a train bombing, and relives the last eight minutes of Sean's life over and over until he manages to catch the bomber (think Quantum Leap multiplied by Groundhog Day). In the process, Colter, wearing the body of Sean, asks out Sean's hot co-worker Christina (Michelle Monaghan), and the two live happily ever after, presumably.
Why can't Jake Gyllenhaal just travel through time like normal people?
The Creepy Implications
Except that there's one small thing Colter hasn't mentioned to Christina by the end of the movie: Namely, that the co-worker she's had a crush on for weeks is dead, and he's actually some other guy who possessed the dead dude's body.
Basically, Colter has stolen another man's life, and the end of the movie gives no indication that he'll ever tell Christina what's going on -- how could he? She'd probably just assume he had a psychotic break. This "happy ending" is actually a terrible situation for everyone involved: Colter is walking around in the body of a man he knows nothing about, and Christina is now dating a complete stranger pretending to be Sean. There's a name for that, by the way, and it's called "rape by fraud."
"We don't have those laws in the future. Uh, I mean Minnesota. Where ... I come from."
Say Colter does the right thing and stops seeing Christina -- he still has to deal with the man's other friends and family and with his job as a teacher. Colter is a soldier, so unless he's also been getting a degree in education on the side, we're pretty sure that he's about to engage in some Kindergarten Cop-style hijinks. He's going to have to fake his way through basically every interaction he has with everyone, like the guy from Memento, but with fewer tattoos.
Our finest team of mathematicians were paid to whip an intern while he calculated the film's precise genetics.
Add this to the fact that, per the movie's ending, the Source Code (the machine that allows Colter to quantum-leap into Sean's body) was actually creating alternate timelines with every attempt to save the train. This means that, in theory, an infinite number of Jake Gyllenhaals will be creeping out an infinite number of Michelle Monaghans in an infinite number of universes, forever.
Blade Runner -- Harrison Ford Forces Himself on a Replicant
The Movie Romance
In the future, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is tasked with finding and killing four escaped replicants, robots that look like humans. At one point, Deckard makes out with another replicant named Rachael, and the two go off together at the end of the movie, knowing that she only has a few years left before her expiration date arrives.
"So let's get busy."
The Creepy Implications
Sure, a case could be made that Deckard macking on a robot is sorta creepy on its own, but that depends on whether you believe that Deckard himself was a replicant, and we're not going anywhere near that can of worms here. Nope, the scene where they hook up is disturbing for different reasons. Rapey reasons.
Seriously, here's the scene where Deckard makes his move on Rachael (relevant bit starts at 3:05):
Watch that scene again without the sound on and it's infinitely creepier. Deckard starts kissing Rachael and she gets up and tries to leave, but Deckard stops her, forcefully, by slamming the door shut when she opens it.
Not off to a good start here, guy.
Rachael looks worried/terrified/not in the mood for loving and backs up against the wall, but Deckard throws her against the window ...
... kisses her, and makes Rachel tell him to kiss her. She doesn't want to, but he insists.
"I'll take that borderline mental breakdown as a yes."
At no point does her expression change from worried/terrified/not in the mood for loving, despite what the romantic lighting and sexy saxophone music might trick you into thinking. And then, of course, sex ensues.
So, uh, that's rape, right? And if you think we're taking the scene out of context, it's actually even worse in context: The scene takes place immediately after Rachael suffers a massive emotional trauma -- she has just killed a replicant, found out she is one herself and learned that her entire life is a lie. Oh, and then there's the whole "I'm going to die in a couple of years" thing. It's kind of hard for her to argue with Harrison Ford's dick at that particular moment, as it would be for anyone in that situation.
You can't say no to that. Not until he puts down the gun, at least.
So for once, this is a Ridley Scott movie where the rape symbolism is represented by actual rape. We're not sure if that's better or worse.
Tron: Legacy -- Flynn's Son Hooks Up With a Computer Program
The Movie Romance
Twenty-seven years after the original Tron, Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has gone missing, and his son, Sam, goes into the computer world to find him. While he's there, Sam hooks up with a hot warrior chick called Quorra and ends up bringing her into the real world.
Thankfully, we were spared a montage of her learning the wonders of pooping.
The Creepy Implications
The movie never hides the fact that Quorra may look like a human female, but she's actually a computer program. She's an ISO, a program that appeared spontaneously, but she's still a program. In other words, Sam is now dating a bunch of lines of code.
The guy is a freak.
Sure, Quorra learned a bit about the real world from Flynn (and a few books he brought with him in the '80s), but that doesn't change the fact that "she's" as human as an MP3 file. And we put "she" between quotes because the only thing that makes Quorra female is that it has a female-shaped body; in actual fact, it's just as genderless as, say, HAL 9000, or this very webpage.
And yeah, Sam manages to bring Quorra into the human world at the end of the movie, but that doesn't mean it stops being a program -- after all, when Sam himself was digitized into the computer world, he didn't stop being human (the villain realized this when Sam started bleeding). Basically, Sam has brought into the real world a sexless computer program with little understanding of how to be human or behave socially. She's as out of place here as Sam was in the land of neon bodysuits and condom helmets.
"We're gonna eat these things called habanero peppers. Just shove as many as you can at once in your face."
For the sake of argument, let's say she does become real at the end of the movie: Well, that only makes things worse. Quorra was born out of the programming created by Sam's dad, who also acted as her father figure for years, meaning that she's essentially his daughter, too. So, Sam hooked up with either a bunch of soulless lines of code or his sister.
You'd still do it, wouldn't you?
Groundhog Day -- Andie MacDowell Had Sex With an Ageless God
The Movie Romance
Phil Connors (Bill Murray) gets stuck in a time loop because he's an asshole. After being forced to relive the same day over and over thousands of times, Phil slowly learns how to not be an asshole and wins the heart of his co-worker Rita (Andie MacDowell), thereby breaking the curse.
"Awesome. Now, back to being a jerk."
The Creepy Implications
The movie itself doesn't say how many times Phil repeats the same day (it distills the bulk of it down to a montage), but there are some clues. As we've discussed before, the original script states that Phil spent 10,000 years trapped in the time loop. That would mean that Rita is now dating a man not only who is older than human civilization, but who intellectually would find it almost impossible to relate to mere mortals.
We guess that would apply to dating both Phil Connors and Bill Murray.
But even if we ignore the script, Phil still has to be incredibly old. Consider the fact that by the end of the movie, he's an expert piano player, French speaker, ice sculptor and bank robber, among other things, none of which he could do before being trapped in the time loop. Psychologists have determined that you need "10,000 hours of deliberate practice, usually under expert tutelage" to become an expert in something -- Phil didn't have expert tutelage (the piano teacher, for instance, couldn't keep up with him after a while), plus he could only practice these things for limited hours every day, and he was in no hurry anyway. He has to be a few hundred years old, at least.
It probably took another several years to teach that groundhog how to drive.
By the end of the movie, not only is he a genius with a shit-ton of skills; he's also learned the intricate details of the lives of everyone in the town (including literally everything about Rita), he knows how to use these details to manipulate everyone around him like they were puppets and, oh yeah, he knows what death feels like. What we're saying here is that at the end of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray is a god.
Which is what we've been saying all along.
Or at least he's advanced as far from us as we have from cavemen, and consequently Rita is so much his intellectual inferior that their relationship is like ... well, like doing it with a cavewoman. What could they possibly have in common now, besides their mutual hatred of Sonny & Cher?
Starman -- An Alien Impersonates a Woman's Dead Husband
The Movie Romance
The Starman, an alien from a faraway planet, crash lands on Earth and romances a woman named Jenny Hayden, who initially resists him but finally gives in to his charms. Starman has to return to his home planet at the end of the movie, but he leaves Jenny with a little present: She's now pregnant with his space child.
"Seriously, it's like the end of 2001 inside your belly right now."
The Creepy Implications
So how exactly does a normal human woman fall for a creep from another galaxy? Mainly because he's using the body of her dead husband (Jeff Bridges).
He wasn't as sexy before all those white Russians.
Starman comes from a planet impossibly different from our own (at the end he says that if he took Jenny there she'd die), and his natural form appears to be a blue ball of energy. Literally the only reason that Jenny gives him the time of day is because he's hanging out in a body he cloned from her dead hubby, someone so important to her that she obsessively watches old home movies just so she can see him again. If a strange creature shows up wearing his face, of course she's gonna jump his bones.
In fact, he could treat her like absolute shit and she'd still do it -- we know this because that's exactly what he does. First he holds her at gunpoint ...
"This is how advanced alien civilizations solve problems."
... and when she tries to get help from a passing driver, he nearly explodes the crap out of the guy with his magical alien powers. Eventually she falls for him due to a combination of Stockholm syndrome and the fact that he looks like her freaking dead husband, and shortly after they have sex, he casually tells her, "I gave you a baby tonight" and mentions that it will "know everything I know."
"He's gonna be a huuuuuge douchebag."
Finally, Starman gives her a sphere containing some alien magic for her trouble (the equivalent of $10 on the nightstand), and then skedaddles off on his UFO. Honestly, we don't know what director John Carpenter was thinki- wait a second, this is a John Carpenter movie where an alien with the power to assume the appearance of any human crash lands on Earth and proceeds to sow chaos and confusion everywhere as it desperately tries to get back to its spaceship while being pursued by soldiers and scientists?!
Holy balls, Jenny fucked The Thing.
At least we know what the baby's gonna look like.
The Time Traveler's Wife -- Eric Bana Seduces a 6-Year-Old Girl
The Movie Romance
Henry (Eric Bana), a man with a bizarre condition that causes him to spontaneously travel in time at random moments, meets, marries and impregnates a woman named Clare (Rachel McAdams), who travels through time at the usual rate of one second per second. Sci-fi aspects aside, in the end this is just a classic love story about a couple pulling through adversity ...
"My turn to do the dishes? Whoops, there I go again!"
The Creepy Implications
... except for the part where the dude seduced a 6-year-old girl.
Henry meets Clare when they're both in their 20s, but it turns out she already knew him: In fact, Clare tells him that she's been in love with him all her life. Henry's like "Neat," and they have sex. After that, he finds and reads the diary Clare wrote as a little girl, where she's drawn a bunch of pictures of the two of them as a married couple:
"... and then we'll do it on the floor, while other couples watch."
Later, we see the opposite situation: Henry travels to the past and Clare meets him for the first time ... except this time, he's older and she's only 6 years old. Also, he's naked and hiding in the bushes (his clothes don't travel with him, like in Terminator). Little Clare thinks she should call her mom, because they've probably gone through this exact same scenario at school, but Henry tells her, "No no no, don't tell Mommy, just hand me that blanket." The entire scene is supremely creepy.
So, Henry befriends the little girl, knowing that this will result in Clare getting a crush on him that will last her entire childhood (and thus the easiest lay of his life), which brings us back to our first point: Holy shit, this is a movie where the main character seduces a 6-year-old girl.
Hey, it's technically sci-fi. The rules are different, don't judge.
Later still, adult Clare totally calls Henry out when she yells that he "forced into the heart and the mind of a little girl," which is one way of putting it, we suppose. Now, you could argue that there was nothing Henry could do about it: He's actually tried to change events many times, but it never worked, so even if Henry didn't actively pursue this little girl, she would have fallen in love with him anyway.
Doesn't that make things worse, though? That means there's no such thing as free will -- Clare even acknowledges it during the argument, when she says, "I never had a choice." And, what do you know, the very next scene is her having sex with Henry.
Also, if there's no free will -- isn't all sex rape?
For more creepy bits of fiction, check out 9 Beloved Characters Made Horrifying by Japan and The 5 Most Baffling Sex Scenes in the History of Fanfiction.
If you're pressed for time and just looking for a quick fix, then check out 5 Car Designs You Won't Believe Were Actually Approved.
And stop by LinkSTORM to learn why 'Sleeping Beauty' is absolutely terrifying.
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