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Valentine’s Day is around the corner—but enough of that already. For those currently happily in a relationship, there are a plethora of restaurant deals, heart-shaped items, chocolates, roses, and love-themed playlists to go around. What about those of us who remain above the pressures of cuffing season, happy to spend the evening with—to quote Beyoncé—me, myself, and I? The good news is that while there are many rom-coms celebrating the joys of monogamy, there are just as many reminding us that it can be boring, embarrassingly clichéd, delusional, and downright murderous.
So while we also recommend satisfyingly petty activities like naming a hornworm after your ex for the small price of $5, you can also kick back solo with a bottle of something sparkling and celebrate the occasional superiority of not being attached to another person with this list of the best anti–Valentine’s Day movies.
Someone Great
Sure, there’s some romance in this Netflix original film, but ultimately it’s about the friendships that get you through the hard parts of life. (This movie also happens to have an excellent, Lizzo-heavy soundtrack.)
Get Out
If you’re just not having it with romantic love this Valentine’s Day, Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror film will remind you that sometimes it’s okay not to get too invested in a relationship (because your partner could turn out to be a honey trap for a body-stealing operation).
A Streetcar Named Desire
Take it from Blanche DuBois: Romance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The 1951 film adaptation of this classic Tennessee Williams play is the perfect thing to watch when you’re craving drama but just can’t abide another cut-and-dried love story.
The Love Witch
Anna Biller’s feminist, campy homage to ’60s horror and love-potion plots is a gory paean to female intuition and a subversion of the archetype of the evil witch. Come for the big hair and bell-bottoms, stay for the light misandry.
Closer
Remember this hyper-sexual, supremely depressing film version of the 1997 Patrick Marber play? In which Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen compete for how miserable in love they can be? If you don’t, Valentine’s Day is a great time to revisit the dysfunction (including a now adorably quaint scene involving chatroom catfishing).
The First Wives Club
For something a little more fun, try the Ariana Grande–inspiring classic ’90s flick starring the unbeatable trifecta of Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler, who play wives suddenly put out to pasture by their midlife-crisis-having husbands. There’s something for everyone here, whether you’re recently scorned, hoping to reconcile, or dedicating yourself to Botox.
The Family Stone
You’re probably thinking this is a Christmas movie, and yes, you’re right—but it’s also a movie about horrible, horrible people in a bad relationship rearranging themselves into different, even more nonsensical relationships after a horrible weekend with one horrible family. By the end, you will want to never have to meet a set of in-laws again, and you will also understand that The Family Stone is actually a horror film.
The War of the Roses
Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner star in this Danny DeVito–directed ’80s dark comedy about a divorce. Think Roald Dahl’s The Twits, only updated for wealthy people who make each other’s lives a living hell with ill-natured pranks involving a sauna, an elegant dinner, real estate, and, infamously, a chandelier. The moral of the story? Love does cost a thing! A lot of things!
Gone Girl
The other crucial thing to remember is that love kills. Gone Girl explores not only how men are largely lame, carnally driven losers, but that women can be psychopaths, so it’s an equal-opportunity indictment of human beings and the idea that they can enter into partnerships.
Fatal Attraction
The predecessor of other romance-gone-wrong thrillers like Gone Girl, Fatal Attraction pushes the psycho-female stereotype to the extreme—which is why it’s important to revisit it, to reconsider of who exactly is the villain here. Hint: It’s not Glenn Close as the obsessed lover; it is actually the lying Michael Douglas! Look out for a cameo from Jane Krakowski, too.
Kill Bill
It starts with a wedding dress and ends with about 40 murders, so you know that Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse favorite means business when it comes to how love can turn harmful and destructive. Uma Thurman basically kicks and stabs her way through an ex-revenge fantasy, so there’s also that.
The Lobster
If you liked Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, which is at least partly about how love can make one become completely deranged, try the even more absurdist Lobster, which takes place in a dystopian world where Colin Farrell has to find a mate so he can remain human (sort of like Tinder!).