We’re Obsessed: 13 Of Our Favorite Toxic Relationships In Horror Movies

Despite being unfairly demonized upon release, Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body has gone on to be re-evaluated by fans as something of a modern day cult classic, not least because it encapsulates, with painful accuracy, the very epitome of the “do I hate her, love her, or want to be her” coming of age type crush that many a woman-loving-woman went through in their teens.

Sure, the stunning succubus Jennifer (Megan Fox) and the nerdy Needy (Amanda Seyfried) might only have shared one kiss in Jennifer's Body, but if you're oblivious to the overwhelming sapphic tension between these two misfits, then that's on you, frankly.

Jennifer is so insanely jealous at the idea of Needy not being hers anymore that she quite literally takes a bite out of any boy who shows even the slightest interest in her, from her lovable golden retriever boyfriend Chip to the late, great emo prince Colin. The only thing stronger than this pair's hate for one another is the love they won't admit to – maybe in the upcoming Jennifer's Body sequel we'll finally see Jennifer and Needy put aside the whole ‘eating boys' thing and get together for good.

Perhaps the most notoriously toxic relationship on this list, nary a cinematic couple has hated each other more than Anna (Isabella Adjani) and Mark (Sam Neill) in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. The ultimate depiction of extreme marital strife, Anna and Mark are at each other's throats for a good 90% of their shared onscreen time, making for an exhausting watch but undoubtedly helping to deliver two of horror's greatest performances.

From Mark's frenzied rocking to Anna's infamous subway breakdown, there's no amount of couple's therapy or tentacle sex in the world that could help this pair regain a sense of marital bliss.

To be clear, we're not saying Anna and Mark's relationship is one anyone should strive for (far, far from it), but we can't deny it's what makes Possession one of the most incredibly intense and memorable genre movies of all time. Good luck to Margaret Qualley and Callum Turner, who will attempt the roles of Anna and Mark in the upcoming Possession remake that's happening for some reason.

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson might not seem the most obvious pair of performers to have sizzling onscreen chemistry, but in Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse they set the screen alight as two completely deranged lighthouse keepers bickering like an old married couple about food, farts and Fresnel lenses.

That's before we even touch on the homoeroticism of Winslow and Wake's relationship, which is depicted with all the subtlety of a wet mermaid tale slap to the face. Be it the isolation or the forced proximity, these two want each other biblically. They live inside a giant phallic symbol, for crying out loud.

However, Winslow and Wake's unconventional love story was as toxic as it gets, with the pair driving each other to insanity and, ultimately, their own violent deaths. All the turpentine and honey in the world couldn't fix this hot mess of a pairing.

Much like Anna and Mark in Possession, this isn't a couple we're actively rooting for in any capacity, but the strained relationship at the heart of Ari Aster's folk horror Midsommar is what makes it so goddamn terrifying, cult stuff aside.

As the grieving Dani, Florence Pugh gives an all-timer performance of simmering anxiety and unresolved trauma, highlighted by Jack Reynor's Christian, who is, for lack of a better word, utterly useless.

Following the murder-suicide of Dani's entire family, the pair join Christian's classmates on a pilgrimage to Sweden's remote Hälsingland province, where a historical festival is taking place.

Christian goes from bad to worse at the festival, forgetting Dani's birthday, flirting with the locals and, worst of all, willingly being friends with the insufferable Mark (Will Poulter). While Christian probably didn't deserve to be burned alive in a bear suit, there's no denying that watching this non-committal, gaslighting, thesis-poaching wet blanket meet a miserable end is cathartic as hell.

Romeo and Juliet. Catherine and Heathcliff. Elizabeth and Mr Darcy. There's great love stories, and then there's Chucky and Tiffany. This miniature plastic pair are hard to beat when it comes to toxic coupledom, with their codependent love for each other rivalled only by their intense hatred of each other.

A bond forged in blood, Chucky and Tiff's on-again-off-again relationship has been a source of great entertainment over the course of four Child's Play movies, and the SyFy series.

With a new Chucky movie on the horizon, we can't wait to see what's in store for this deranged pair, who are hopefully endgame. The couple that slays together, stays together, after all.

Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is often regarded as one of most romantic horror movies of all time. After all, even the most stone-hearted misanthrope would find themselves weak at the knees from the line “I have crossed oceans of time to find you”.

But if we're being perfectly honest, Mina (Winona Ryder) and Dracula (Gary Oldman) are pretty damn toxic, even if they do make a gorgeous couple. For starters, Dracula does some morally reprehensible stuff to Mina's best friend, Lucy Westenra, and it feels extremely out of character for a woman as strong as Mina is to just look past that.

Then there's the whole kidnapping-Mina's-fiancée thing, the whole baby-eating-brides thing, and the whole disguising-the-fact-he's-actually-about-500-years-old thing. This is all without getting into the fact that it's not even really Mina that Dracula wants – he's only interested because of her connection to his late wife Elizabeta. Mina should've just stuck with Jonathan, Keanu Reeves' appalling accent and all.

We've said it before and we'll say it again – when it comes to horny horror couples, Hellraiser ‘s Julia and Frank Cotton were the blueprint. However, we can't really say that a relationship where one half is turned into a skinless, bloody entity by extra-dimensional kink demons summoned by a magic puzzle box and the other, known as the literal Queen of Hell, feeds said bloody entity the bodies of innocent men is exactly healthy.

It's for that reason we have to label Julia and Frank as 100% toxic. But that doesn't mean we don't love these two freaks regardless.

Co-dependence can happen to the best of us. One minute you're your own independent person, the next, you're literally fused with your lover on a molecular-genetic level. In Michael Shanks' Together, that's exactly what happens to Millie and Tim who are hilariously played by IRL couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco, for an extra meta twist on the relationship realness at the heart of Together.

We assume (and hope) that Brie and Franco's nuptials are far less toxic than Millie and Tim's however, as these two are already on the rocks before their bodies even blend together. Tim is an emotionally distant manchild and Millie is overbearing and condescending, while both of them are too cowardly to actually break up as they should have done years ago. It's these relationship realities that make Together so effective as a horror movie and a (doomed) romance.

You may think you love someone, but have you ever loved someone so much you fused together with them in a screeching amalgamation of flesh and metal before going hurtling down the streets of Tokyo with apocalyptic abandon?

Thought not. That's exactly what happens to the two star-crossed lovers at the center of Shin'ya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man – at least, we think that's what happens. In the 1989 Japanese cyberpunk classic, a Salaryman (Tomorowo Taguchi) finds himself transforming into metal after hitting a young man (Tsukamoto himself) with his car.

This man just so happens to have quite an unorthodox interest in metallic textures, which eventually pushes him to chase down the Salaryman in a quest to mutate the entire world into metal, together.

Those who have seen Tetsuo, which can only really be described as a full-blown attack on all the senses, might think this a little strange choice for this list, but consider that some of the final lines in the film are “our love can destroy this fucking world”, well, we're counting this one as a love story for the ages. Just one that involves a hell of a lot of screaming.

In David Cronenberg’s body horror classic The Fly, Geena Davis’ Ronnie has to answer, quite literally, the age-old question posed from her partner: would you still love me if I was a bug? It helps that her partner is Seth Brundle, aka Jeff Goldblum in his prime, but still, once he transforms into the icky, sticky monstrosity that is the Brundlefly we wouldn't begrudge anyone for teleporting out of that loft apartment, post haste.

Let's face it though, even pre-Brundlefly, Seth and Ronnie aren't exactly great for one another – Seth is possessive, paranoid and way too obsessed with his work. He does cook a mean steak, though.

There are very few circumstances in which any sane person would decline joining either Mia Goth or Alexander Skarsgård for a tropical beachside vacation, but Infinity Pool gives you 118 minutes worth of reasons to turn one down.

In Brandon Cronenberg's trippy psychological sci-fi horror, Skarsgård plays James (or JAAAAAMESSSYYYYY), a stereotypical tortured writer living off his wife's money, who quickly forgets he even has a wife when he meets Goth's Gabi, a gloriously maniacal hedonist who enjoys nothing more than watching her own clone – and the clones of her fellow tourists – get murdered.

Gabi and James' whirlwind romance – if you can even call it that – is a trippy mess of hallucinogenic orgies and mental manipulation, eventually culminating in a moment so Oedipal it'd make Freud blush. Absolutely not #CoupleGoals, but deliciously watchable nonetheless.

The 1994 film version of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire may not be as overtly queer as its more recent television adaption, but the core relationship between Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac is just as delectably toxic.

In two incredibly underrated roles from their respective vast filmographies, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt have great chemistry as the bloodsucking pair, manage to allude to the story's overt homoerotic tones despite the bigotry in Hollywood at the time.

Unfortunately, as is the case with many a vampire coupling, these two are terrible for each other, with manipulation, codependency, lying, abuse and baby-trapping all par for the course in the hell that is their shared history.

Obviously with Obsession being so new, we're not going to spoil what exactly it is that makes this couple so toxic, but trust me, whatever relationship issues you're going through with your significant other right now pale in comparison to whatever the hell is happening with Bear and Nikki in Curry Barker's Obsession.

The fact that Bear and Nikki's very “relationship” is built on a Monkey's Paw-style wish granted after Bear breaks the mysterious One Wish Willow is a gargantuan fluorescent red flag in itself. But trust us when we say, things get so, so much worse. They do look cute together though.