Top 10 Valentine's Day Horror Films
Roses are red, your lips are blue, you better hold on tight, while I… deliver a crazy-mad list of Valentine Horror Flicks for your viewing pleasure! Not as creepy as you thought that was gonna be, was it? And they say love is dead. Horse pucky! We have scoured the interwebs and hand-picked some of the creepiest, goriest, and scariest Valentine horrors this side of Aphrodite and her powers of love, beauty, passion, and… ahem… procreation.
So open that heart-shaped-box of chocolates, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage, and prepare for the cockles of your heart to be pulverized, skewered, and ripped from your chest while I give you the Nightmare on Film Street Top Ten Valentine’s Day Horror Films: Love Kills edition!
10. INTO THE DARK: DOWN (2019) + MY VALENTINE (2020)
The season 1, episode 5 of Into the Dark entitled Down tells the tense tale of two coworkers who find themselves stranded in an elevator over Valentine’s Day weekend. Things are charming at first encounter but soon that meet-cute becomes sinister in true twisted Into the Dark fashion. My Valentine (season 2, episode 5) tells a story of a young woman navigating the rough waters of dealing with a vindictive ex. Despite his douchy behavior, she is still hung up on him, slightly obsessed with him and his new love. When the three become locked in a small music venue together things quickly go from icy to firey to violent.
9. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975)
Victoria, Australia, in the early 1900s. Young Miranda, played by Anne-Louise Lambert (Gossip, 1982) is attending a posh girl’s boarding school. One Valentine’s Day, the school’s typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip at a scenic spot called Hanging Rock. Despite explicit instructions not to, Miranda and several other girls venture off on their own away from the rest of the class. It’s not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously. The result is a communal downward spiral into a wash of paranoia, terror, and grief as the school, the community, and the parents come to terms with what happened to the girls of Appleyard College.
8. THE LOVE WITCH (2016)
Elaine is determined to find a man to love her. Elaine is also a witch. Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson (Cam, 2018) dwells in her gothic Victorian apartment making spells and potions to help pick up men where she can then seduce them. All is fine and well but soon the young witch realizes her spells work too well, as she ends up with a string of hapless victims. This seems to be something she can handle for a while. But then she meets the man of her dreams and her desperation to be loved drives her to the brink of madness and murder.
7. HOSPITAL MASSACRE (1982)
While receiving a routine check-up, Susan, played by Barbi Benton (Deathstalker, 1983), finds herself stranded on the hospital’s closed-for-renovations eighth floor where someone posing as a doctor is stalking her. This Dr. Love wannabe will stop at nothing to get to her even if it means killing any staff member who gets in the way. Soon, Susan learns that the obsessed killer could very well be a spurned boy whose Valentine she rejected twenty years prior. It seems some guys can’t take no for an answer.
6. MY BLOODY VALENTINE (2009)
In 1997 an accident in the Hanniger Mines killed five men and put a sixth, Harry Warden, into a coma. A year later, on Valentine’s Day, Warden woke up and murdered 22 people in the nearby town of Harmony with a pickaxe before dying. Now Tom Hanniger, played by Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, 2005-2020), the miner who caused the horrible accident has returned home, still haunted by his past. However, something else is back in Harmony, a pickaxe-wielding killer in miner’s gear. Is it the ghost of Harry Warden or a man burdened by past mistakes that are back to wreak havoc on this small sleepy town? One thing is for sure, a lot of blood will spill before the answer is revealed.
5. PONTYPOOL (2009)
It’s Valentine’s Day and disc jockey Grant Mazzy, played by Stephen McHattie (Come To Daddy, 2019) rolls into work at his basement radio station in the Canadian town of Pontypool. The morning is comprised of the same old same old as Mazzy prepares to go on the air. However, when sudden reports of a virus turning people into zombies begin coming in, the DJ fortifies himself in the radio booth tasked with figuring out what this virus is, how to warn his listeners about the infection, and how it can possibly be transmitted by the most impossible means… the English language.
4. VALENTINE (2001)
February 14th marks the most romantic day of the year where would-be lovers woo each other with flowers, candy, cards, gifts as greeting card companies wring their hands greedily as the profits roll in. Best friends Kate, played by Marley Shelton (Scream, 2022), Paige, played by Denise Richards (Scary Movie 3, 2003), Dorothy, played by Jessica Capshaw (Grey’s Anatomy, 2009-2018), Lily, played by Jessica Cauffiel (Urban Legends: Final Cut, 2000) and Shelly, played by Katherine Heigl (Bride of Chucky, 1998) are looking for a Valentine to die for and this year, if scorned middle school nerd Jeremy Melton gets his way, the five friends who ruined his life just might get their wish.
3. HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U (2019)
This Valentine’s Day 2019 release from Blumhouse sees the return of college student Tree Gelbman, played by Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day, 2017)to a franchise that takes a fresh, exciting spin on the slasher sub-genre. as Tree wakes up, as she did in the first film, she learns that she’s stuck in yet another time loop but now in a parallel universe where her friends are all opposites of who they really are. She finds herself as the target of the Babyface Killer once again and when the masked murder starts to go after her inner circle, Tree soon realizes that she must die over and over once again to save everyone.
2. LOVER’S LANE (1999)
In 1986 two lovers are attacked by a schizoid wearing a hook on his hand à la the hooked maniac urban legend. The two escape only to find the couple in the car next to them slaughtered by the same killer. The psycho is caught and institutionalized and the town moves on past the ugly incident. Fast-forward thirteen years and those that survived that night are now grown, married, have kids of their own and are living their best lives. That is until the fiend with the hook escapes from the psycho ward and heads back to Lover’s Lane in search of the children of his previous victims.
1. MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)
The town of Valentine Bluffs has a strict rule against celebrating Valentine’s Day. After an accident in which two supervisors left several miners in the mines to attend the annual Valentine’s Dance, forgot to check methane gas levels. The result was an explosion that trapped the miners where most perished. Harry Warden, the only survivor, resorted to cannibalism in order to survive which in turn drove him insane. The next year, he returned and murdered the two supervisors who left them there and vowed more death if the Valentine’s Day Dance ever occurred again. Years later, when a new crew of miners defy the killer’s ancient warnings and hold a Valentine’s Dance, they soon find out that their defiance carries a hefty price… their lives.
BE MINE… FOREVER
And there you have it horror lovers, the Top Ten Valentine’s Day Horror Films: Love Kills edition. This beautifully wrapped box of scary sweets should set you up nicely for a romantic movie marathon or even a quick Netflix and kill. Either way, there’s something here for everyone. From the faint-of-heart to the heart-hardened horror fiends, this one’s got it all.
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