Five Truly Scary Film Relationships
With Halloween right around the corner, ‘tis the season for things that scare us. In some cases, the scariest aspect of a film is not a ghost or a monster, but someone much more human and close to the main character.
Here’s my list of five films that feature a terrifying relationship!
Gas Light - In this 1944 film, Ingrid Bergman plays Paula, whose romantic interest, Gregory (Charles Boyer), love bombs her and then marries her after only two weeks. She doesn’t realize that her new husband is only interested in stealing some valuable jewels that are hidden somewhere in her house. Gregory employs a number of strategies to make Paula question her own sanity, so that he can have her institutionalized and search for the jewels without any witnesses or questions. His tactics include taking her things, then accusing her of losing them or planting items in her bag, and telling her she’s stolen them. At night, when he goes to the attic to look for the jewels, he turns on the lights which causes the gaslights in the house to flicker, but when Paula mentions it, he tries to convince her she’s only imagining what she sees.
This film (actually the 1938 stage play and 1940 UK film that it’s adapted from) is the reference for the informal term we use today: When someone puts forth a false narrative that leads a person (or group of people) to doubt their own perceptions we say they are “gaslighting.”
Rosemary’s Baby - Talk about getting gaslit… When Rosemary (Mia Farrow) complains about the “undertaste” in her dessert, her husband, Guy (John Cassavetes) negs her until she eats it, roofy-ing his own wife! Bad things happen while she’s sedated, but, tells her that he had sex with her because he knew she wanted to get pregnant. And once she is pregnant, Guy tells her not to trust her instincts—insisting that her pregnancy—and her baby—are completely normal… when he knows for a fact that they aren’t.
Guy is not a good guy! My advice is, try not to marry a man who is willing to make a deal with the devil.
Invisible Man - After Cecilia (Elizabeth Moss) escapes her very wealthy and very controlling boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), he “commits suicide,” but as she tries to rebuild her life, strange things start to happen that make her question whether he is really gone.
She feels like someone is in her house. She arrives at a job interview to find her portfolio has been erased. She faints and they find drugs in her system that she didn’t take — all these things makes her seem unreliable to the very people she needs to love and support her. Adrian’s classic abuse tactics of manipulating and isolating the victim from any support system are even harder to prove because (spoiler alert), Adrian can make himself INVISIBLE!
Things go from bad to worse when Adrian kills her sister and frames her for the murder. This is definitely a relationship you wouldn’t want to be in!
Gone Girl - In this psychological thriller based on a book by Gillian Flynn, it’s the wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) who repays her husband, Nick’s (Ben Affleck) infidelity by framing him for murder. She’s not gaslighting him, though. She’s craftily set things up so that he’ll knows what she’s doing without being able to prove it to anyone.
Nick has been behaving badly in the marriage, so you might think he deserves a little prank scare, but Amy takes it much farther than this, doing everything she can to make sure the public hates him so that the death penalty will be his punishment. And we learn this isn’t her first merry-go-round — turns out she’s got some past experience with framing the men in her life who haven’t paid her the proper respect. Not to give away the ending, but at a certain point, there’s the possibility that Amy and Nick might get back together… and that might be the scariest outcome of all!
Little Shop of Horrors - There’s more than one unhealthy relationship in this 1986 adaptation of a long running off-Broadway musical starring Rick Moranis as Seymour, who grew up an orphan and now works at Mushnik’s Flower Shop on “Skid Row” in New York. His boss, Mr. Mushnik, puts Seymour down every day (a bad relationship though not a romantic one) but at least Seymour gets to work alongside his crush, flower designer Audrey (played by Ellen Greene). Unfortunately she’s dating her sadistic, dentist boyfriend, Orin (Steve Martin). (Definitely not a good relationship for Audrey!)
Then, Seymour finds someone new… or something. It’s his new plant, which he names “Audrey II.” Seymour does everything he can to take care of Audrey II, but still she languishes, until Seymour accidentally pricks his finger, spilling some blood. This, he discovers, is where Audrey II’s taste lies! Soon Audrey II is talking to Seymour... and encouraging him to murder people to feed her. Not a healthy dynamic at all! Still, we aren’t that sad to see Audrey II chomping down on Orin or Mushnik, because they were jerks. But what happens when Audrey II has eaten all the jerks and she’s still hungry?!
You can watch two different endings for this movie—the “directors cut” contains the original ending from the musical version, while the theatrical release version has a happier ending!
Have fun watching your own favorite scary movies and have a very happy Halloween!!
