Top 10 Worst Movies for a First Date

What’s that? Why wouldn’t you want to see a movie as sweeping and romantic as “The Notebook” on a first date? Because who wants to try to live up to what Allie and Noah had going on? The romance here is just off the charts storybook perfect. At the same time, we also get to see their entire relationship from its sweet beginnings to its complicated middle and ultimately to its bittersweet end. It’s a lot. A first date is when you’re still feeling each other out. Seeing “The Notebook” would be the cinematic equivalent of talking about moving in or having kids together.

A horror movie can be a great choice for a first date. When you get scared, you can just cling to the other person and get cozy. But “Funny Games” is not the one. Before you know it, you’re watching a nice family being tormented by a pair of sadistic criminals who enjoy testing their devotion to each other. Instead of grabbing for each other, two people on a first date might find themselves inching further and further away from each other. It’s enough to put you off marriage, family, and home ownership for years.

Patrick Bateman is an antihero to the nth degree. The Wall Street sociopath with yuppie aspirations doesn’t really do much to make you want to root for him. He hates his fianceé, and is generally soulless. And that’s before he starts offing people. “American Psycho” takes you on a journey through Bateman’s savage and relentless psyche. He goes on a lot of dates himself, but his way of ending the evening with the women he takes home is pretty unconventional. Graphic, brooding, and completely disorienting, the movie makes you wonder what the virtual stranger sitting next to you might be hiding.

This stylish adaptation of a Japanese manga, at first might appear to be a straightforward action film. But things get very, very weird very, very quickly. A man is kidnapped and imprisoned for several years, and then, upon escaping from this group of mysterious captors, swears revenge on them. And things get even weirder, and more shocking still, after he meets a younger woman he begins to fall in love with. By the end, things have gotten so out of hand in ways that need to be seen to be believed. But we can guarantee it’s gonna zap the romance right out of any date.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in this nonlinear and cryptic drama about two exes who participate in a program to have their memories of each other systematically erased. “Eternal Sunshine” is heartbreaking and mournful. It poetically communicates the beauty, sadness, confusion, and mixed emotions of the end of a relationship. That’s exactly what makes it a cursed first date movie. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to be thinking about at the start of something new. This is a perfect post-breakup movie, and maybe even a perfect date movie for further on down the road in a relationship.

Traveling to rural Sweden for a midsummer festival, partners Christian and Dani are not exactly in a great place when they arrive. She’s traumatized by her family’s deaths and he is decidedly unable or unwilling to help her cope. It’s a doomed relationship even under the best of circumstances. The strange and increasingly violent customs of the festival only drive them further apart. Ultimately, “Midsommar’s” divisive conclusion draws a line in the sand for viewers. If you and a first date come away on opposite sides of that line, the relationship might just be a no-go.

Some people will do anything to put the spark back in a relationship. The sociopathic protagonist of 2014’s “Gone Girl” decides getting revenge on her husband and showing him just how good she was to him is worth staging her own murder and framing him. If that doesn’t spell romance, then what does? This movie is a searing and twisted look at a marriage turned poisonous, and while that absolutely may be some couples’ vibes, it’s not everyone’s. If it’s enough to make you look at the person next to you and wonder if they’re capable of this, it can put a real damper on the attraction.

You never really know a partner until you date them for a while. What can draw you to someone can just as easily turn ugly if the conditions are right. Intense passion might look attractive on screen, but as “Fatal Attraction” shows us, there can be another side to that. In the film, Glenn Close’s character can’t accept not having Michael Douglas to herself, despite the fact that he is married to someone else. So when he ends their brief extramarital fling, she believes it gives her full license to destroy his life. Far-fetched as it may seem, it just might color how you think about someone new in your life.

Sitting through this movie with a first date is sure to keep expectations low, which might be a good thing, depending on how warped your perspective is. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star as a married couple whose relationship has rotted away. Jumping back and forth in time to the beginning and end of their relationship, we get to watch as all they loved about each other gets whittled away by life. All that’s left is resentments and bitter reminders of how in love they used to be. The last thing you need on a first date is a reminder that all the things you like about each other right now can turn toxic in just a few short years.

This polarizing horror film is a surreal and emotional rollercoaster of violence, grief, and trauma. While this may make it a one of a kind cinematic experience, it doesn’t get a relationship off on the right foot. Marriage never looked uglier and less appealing than in “Antichrist.” It blurs all the lines between reality and fantasy, and straddles the fence between art and exploitation. It would take a certain kind of couple with a pair of strong stomachs to walk away from this one wanting a second date. For the rest of us, it’s probably best to avoid this one until a relationship is on more stable ground.

What’s the most unfortunate movie you ever saw on a first date? Let us know in the comments.