While romantic comedies once treated marriage as the inevitable reward for finding ‘the one’, contemporary films and television are increasingly exploring the doubt, anxiety and unsettling realities that accompany marriage.
If you’re a millennial, you probably grew up watching charming Hollywood romances such as My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003). These typically glossy, slightly fantastical, fate-driven romantic movies were based on the premise that love is something that is destined and marriage is the ultimate goal.
They usually revolved around two impossibly perfect people navigating a series of external obstacles and misunderstandings before finally finding their way to each other.
Romantic films of the 1990s and early 2000s built on these tropes because they were set in a time when audiences still strongly believed in idealised love, fate and “the one.” People were finding their partners through slower, more contained social worlds — school, work, neighbourhoods and chance encounters — so stories were built around misunderstandings, longing and delayed connections that felt emotionally plausible and aspirational.
The Netflix miniseries Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen and the movie The Drama, both released this year, fly in the face of rom-com tropes of old. What has changed in how we perceive relationships and ‘happily ever after’?
Melanie Maimon, an assistant professor of psychology at Rhode Island’s Bryant University, with expertise in social psychology, stated in an article for Bryant News that viewers enjoy romantic comedies precisely because they do not accurately depict relationships and because they showcase things we wish were easier for us. They enjoy the escapism and detachment from reality that rom-coms offer.
These films also emerged during a relatively optimistic cultural period, before social media transformed the idea of love. Audiences were more willing to suspend logic and invest in fantasies: beautiful people, grand gestures and emotionally uncomplicated endings.
Today, culture is more sceptical, pragmatic and psychologically literate. Modern audiences tend to value realism, emotional complexity, power dynamics, mental health and individuality over fairy-tale perfection. Dating apps, internet culture and constant social visibility have also changed how people experience romance, making older romantic conflicts sometimes feel vacuous.
Audiences are now drawn to more grounded, realistic stories, where the main conflicts arise from psychological or emotional struggles, clashing ambitions or past baggage. Case in point: La La Land (2016) and Past Lives (2023). Why are such stories resonating with audiences?
This generation no longer expects to stumble upon the love of their life in a quaint café or bookstore, or through a chance encounter, as rom-com films once depicted. They can now comb through a person’s entire digital life before even deciding to meet them for the first time. They are more aware, cautious and cynical. Marriage is no longer seen as a milestone that must be reached by a certain age, but as a crucial decision with consequences that warrants careful consideration.
This focus on emotional unease, psychological tension, and the fragility of connection is at the centre of two new romantic stories, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen and The Drama, both of which were released this year.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is a Netflix miniseries that was released earlier this year. It is a psychological horror centring on Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco), an engaged couple preparing for their wedding at Nicky’s family’s secluded estate. As the day of the wedding approaches, a sense of impending doom hangs in the air. What begins as pre-wedding anxiety slowly spirals into paranoia, dread and revelations about family secrets, curses and existential dread.
The series cleverly subverts the pre-wedding cold-feet trope, weaving wedding jitters with a blood-spattered, sinister curse. Marriage is depicted as a death sentence and is used as a metaphor for commitment, intimacy and the fear of choosing the wrong person. The entire show is about the anxiety that comes with never knowing with full certainty that you are marrying your soulmate — and the danger that comes with it.
The Drama is a romantic movie about a happily engaged couple, Emma (Zendaya Coleman) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), during the week leading up to their wedding in Boston. During a drunken game with their married best friends, they agree to reveal the worst thing they have ever done.
While the other friends share mildly ‘immoral’ misdeeds — such as one man using an ex-girlfriend as a human shield against a dog — Emma reveals a secret that abruptly shifts the mood in the room. She shares that, as a 15-year-old (spoiler ahead!), she meticulously planned and almost executed a school shooting after being a victim of bullying.
This revelation sends Charlie into a psychological tailspin. He starts having misgivings about whether Emma is the right partner for him and begins hyper-analysing her every move. Does she still have homicidal tendencies? Is she inherently violent? This raises the question of how much honesty a relationship can truly sustain. Is full vulnerability ever in one’s favour, or does it risk coming back to haunt someone later?
Both of these stories represent modern anxieties around relationships, dating culture, emotional isolation and the changing expectations of partnerships, which resonate more with audiences than picture-perfect love stories that culminate in the couple driving off into a glowing sunset.
Marriage is portrayed as a lifelong commitment to someone who, ultimately, remains a stranger. Rather than presenting love as a certainty, these narratives portray intimacy as fragile, where a long-buried secret can be enough to unravel a relationship.
Ultimately, both stories raise the question of how many of our partners’ past lives we are willing to carry into our own. This indicates a broader cultural shift: contemporary storytelling is less interested in perfect unions and more invested in the instability that comes with truly knowing another person.
This stands in stark contrast to older romantic movies, where the idea of romance was often facile and naïve, with formulaic narratives in which two people, separated by circumstances, social pressures or misunderstandings, would inevitably reunite. Today, however, romances explore a wider emotional landscape, offering more complex and nuanced narratives that resonate with audiences on a deeper level.
This shift says a lot about the emotional sensibilities of the audience. Romance is increasingly seen as ambiguous and fragmented, shaped by timing, circumstances and emotional readiness. Viewers recognise that relationships do not follow a clear trajectory, nor do they inevitably end in a happy union.
As a result, audiences resonate more with stories that embrace the complications and contradictions of love than those promising ‘happy ever afters’ and sweeping declarations. Perhaps the enduring appeal of modern romance lies not in its promises but in its honesty.
The writer is a clinical psychologist and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at
Published in Dawn, ICON, June 14th, 2026