Hi all, and happy Valentine’s Day! On this most romantic day during what is objectively the worst month, I thought I’d take this opportunity to discuss the phenomenon known as ‘Valloween’ (which was encouraged greatly by yesterday’s Friday the 13th), as well as the prevalence of romance in horror, and horror romance as a subgenre. So let’s dive in and learn about why horror and romance go together like peanut butter and jelly, chocolate and strawberries, and blood and guts. Happy reading, happy Valentine’s Day, and stay spooky! 💝💗🔪🩸

To many people, the idea of horror romance is a strange and foreign one. Which makes sense when you consider the majority of genre movies and their subject matter. It can be difficult to see what’s romantic about being crushed to death by a garage door, or murdered with a pickaxe. But that juxtaposition is a large part of why horror romance works so well as a subgenre. The darkness of the horror and the light of the romance, if done right, both make each other pop. This is also a large part of the reason that the horror comedy is such a prolific subgenre. But, like any subgenre, horror romance has its own distinctions. Because, see, there’s romantic horror movies (Lisa Frankenstein, Heart Eyes, Warm Bodies, etc.), there’s Valentine’s horror movies (like My Bloody Valentine or Bride of Chucky), and there’s horror movies that aren’t really explicitly or implicitly connected to romance or Valentine’s but just kind of fit the tone (Jennifer’s Body and The Ugly Stepsister, for example). The latter category exists very prominently in literature, as well, and is often called ‘bubblegum horror’.

What most people call horror romance is what I am here calling romantic horror. These are stories where the romance aspect is the main plot, more so than the horror. Similar to how Romancing the Stone is a romance that’s also an adventure, horror romances are romance movies that are also horror. However, unlike other rom-combinations, the balance between horror and romance is very difficult to get right. Because the genres are so tonally different, there often has to be a very clear idea of tone, mostly concerned with whether the movie is a comedy or not. Lisa Frankenstein, for example, pretty much hit the nail on the head by being a comedy the whole way through. Of course, it deals with difficult situations and emotions, but it’s strictly madcap and camp the whole way through, which makes the tone shifts a little softer and a lot better than they could have been. What it does not do is switch between genres. Instead, it is a romance in which one of the leads is a reanimated corpse, and the other is a traumatized young woman who is willing to kill people for him. Warm Bodies does something similar, but it decides firmly to be a drama instead of a comedy. Both of these films escape the trap that the movie Heart Eyes unfortunately fell into, which is attempting to switch between genres throughout the movie. The thing about Heart Eyes (which was a very fun movie anyway) is that it couldn’t quite decide between being a serious slasher and being a rom-com. That indecision ultimately left the story a little shaky, and tonally odd. So baseline horror romances are often very fun, but very hard to do well.

Valentine’s horror is, shockingly, a lot easier. There are two main categories of Valentine’s horror (categories within categories, I know). The first is that the story is not necessarily romantic, but does take place on Valentine’s Day, like My Bloody Valentine. The second is that the movie is, again, not necessarily romantic, but would be a good watch on Valentine’s Day due to the aesthetic, and the fact of there being a main couple, the story’s just not about them getting together, like Bride of Chucky. The first category fits into the greater canon of holiday horror, right alongside Terrifier 3 and Halloween. The holiday serves more as a shocking backdrop for the ensuing gore than a real plot device, except for some kind of town-wide trauma that happened on that day however many years ago that means the killer has to come back and seek revenge. The second category is just fun. It’s hard to specifically categorize, but because romance is a part of it in the fact that there is a main couple, like Chucky and Tiffany, and their relationship impacts the plot, but because it isn’t the main focus since it is already an established relationship, these kinds of movies don’t fit in the straight romantic horror category. But since they would make good date movies, or fun movies to watch on Valentine’s anyway, they get put in with the other horror romances because there’s really nowhere else to put them.

And finally, the ambiguous bubblegum horror. Similar to Valentine’s horror, these movies aren’t quite romantic, but are likely to be put on a list of movies to watch on Valentine’s Day, with the caveat that there isn’t a main couple. Oftentimes the placement of these movies on Valloween lists is based entirely on vibes and vibes alone. Usually they’re very visually pretty movies, and they are most often directed by women. There’s a certain kind of ephemeral beauty to them that isn’t describeable, but is instantly recognizable. The two best examples of this phenomenon in film are Jennifer’s Body and The Ugly Stepsister. Both are directed by women with very clear aesthetic senses for their work, and mainly involve women and beauty somehow. The feel of these movies (and books, as well) is very modern and pop-y, hence the title ‘bubblegum horror’. Bubblegum horror is also, more often than not, exceedingly gross and off-putting. Bubblegum horror is Jennifer Check being stabbed through with a pole after vomiting up black goo and asking for a tampon, it’s Elvira von Stepsister getting eyelashes sewn directly into her tear ducts and swallowing a tapeworm egg out of a locket full of beautiful pink cotton. There is a gruesomeness to it that is also undeniably feminine in a way that makes people want to associate it with love and Valentine’s Day, so it goes on lists of horror romances despite there not being any core romance that is, like, the point. However, there is often some kind of psycho-social thing going on that adds to the potential romantic-ness of it. The obvious can be said about Needy and Jennifer, and Elvira’s relationship with the Prince heavily impacts the course of the story and her attitude towards her own beauty, but neither of these relationships are the main focus of the story in a truly romantic context. 

Romance is a complicated thing, and so is horror, and maybe that’s really why they fit together so well. The nuances of a talking stage are lost on silent, masked men with knives, and maybe that’s for the better. Maybe being almost killed will help these teenagers figure out their own feelings for each other, who knows? Regardless of how you are spending this Valentine’s Day and with whom, be sure to watch a good, fun, romantic, and bloody movie like the ones mentioned above (though The Ugly Stepsister is not for those of week constitution). And check out the books recommended below, separated into the same categories as the movies in this post were! Happy Valentine’s Day, stay spooky, and don’t get pickaxe murdered by the ghost of a dead miner! 💝💗🌹🔪🩸

Romantic Horror

• Carrie by Stephen King

• Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede

• My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine

Valentine’s Horror

• Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

• Dracula by Bram Stoker

Bubblegum Horror

• My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

• Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

• Bunny by Mona Awad

(I am now realizing that men write a lot of literary bubblegum horror as well. The movies are still mostly women.)