10 Toxic Relationships from Movies

Toxic Relationships Sure Do Make For Good Cinema.

Toxic relationships are often romanticized on the big screen. What’s more romantic than desperately needing someone in your life? Or fighting against impossible odds to find true love? Unfortunately, a lot of these romantic ideals are often warning signs that relationships are either abusive or doomed from the start. As someone who has had more than their fair share of toxic relationships in the past and a Grinch who is spiteful of Valentine’s day this year, I decided to compile a list of 10 movies that actually portray pretty damn toxic relationships. There will be a few obvious picks on here, but some of them might surprise you. I’m sure that lots of you reading will have plenty to say about a few of my choices, so be sure to leave me some comments below. There are plenty of movies out there that could have earned a place on this list, so I’m going to throw these out there in no particular order. Now, for your reading pleasure, I present 10 Toxic Relationship Movies!

The Graduate

One of the quintessential films about toxic relationships. Dustin Hoffman plays a young man who tries to solve his own issues by chasing after a girl who “should” be the solution to all his problems. Of course, his obsession and eventual manipulation of the much more age appropriate Elaine isn’t the only relationship in the film. There’s the affair he eventually ends up having with her mother, Mrs. Robinson. Like Ben, Mrs. Robinson uses the relationship to fill something missing in her life, namely to be desired. This relationship doesn’t have any emotional depth to it, so Ben does the only logical thing. He ruins Elaine’s wedding and runs off with her only to realize that she isn’t the answer to his problems either.  

Fatal Attraction

This one should be a little obvious as to why it’s on this list of movies with toxic relationships. I mean, Glenn Close gives a bunny an extra hot sauna at one point. If that doesn’t say unstable, I don’t know what does. The thing is that Michael Douglas is hardly the innocent hero in all this. He’s manipulative and self-centered throughout the entire thing. After all, this whole thing starts with an affair and him basically using Glenn Close to feel good about himself until he decides to get serious about his marriage. Then he just tosses her aside. Unfortunately for him, she won’t be ignored.

Grease

Sure it’s a cute musical with lots of fun dance sequences and songs the burrow their way into your mind, but it’s also a movie about a pretty damn toxic relationship. Good old Danny Zuko is pretty much the original F#@& Boi. He spends the summer falling in love with a girl and acting like a totally different guy when he’s around her, then turns into a totally different guy when his boys are around. Hell, the movie starts with him bragging about all the sex he was supposedly having with her. Not exactly the best signs for a healthy relationship. However, the kicker is when both of them feel like they have to change who they are in order to make the relationship work. That’s not a good sign that their love is “true.”

Blue Valentine

Toxic relationships usually don’t have one thing that’s wrong with them. Blue Valentine though is filled with red flags, yet the protagonists do their best to ignore them. It ranges from holding each other hostage emotionally (in one scene Gosling threatens to end his life just to win an argument) to the desire to hopefully save someone who is completely dysfunctional. These signs though are clear from the very beginning of the movie though, so why do these two get together? Well, because they’re both pretty messed up. As much as this movie claims to destroy the audience’s belief in love, it’s not a love story. It’s a story about ignoring red flags until they’re too much to handle.

Beauty and the Beast

AKA Disney presents Stockholm Syndrome the movie. Everyone seems to love how smart and empowering Belle is, but in the end, she is another damsel in distress. She allows herself to be taken hostage by a literal and metaphorical Beast in order to save her father. The Beast then holds her hostage in hopes of MAKING her love him. Of course, everything works out thanks to a movie montage, but what they don’t show is that Beast makes Belle dependent on him which is a major warning sign in toxic relationships. Eventually, even when he lets her go she can’t imagine a world without him.