Best Romantic Comedies With Some Darker Themes

Most romantic comedies follow a formula. Two people meet, complications arise, and everything resolves in time for closing credits. The genre trades on comfort and predictability. But a smaller subset of films keeps the romance and the laughs while threading something unsettling through the story. These movies ask you to sit with discomfort alongside the charm.

The pairing works because love itself carries darkness. Jealousy, obsession, heartbreak, and the fear of being truly known by another person all contain genuine menace. When a film acknowledges this instead of smoothing it over, the romance becomes more believable. The comedy becomes sharper. The audience gets something that lingers past the happy ending.

Gore Meets the Meet-Cute

Heart Eyes, released in 2025, takes the slasher setup and drops a love story into the middle of it. A serial killer targets couples in love during the week of Valentine’s Day. Two coworkers who barely tolerate each other must pretend to be a couple to survive. The premise sounds like a joke, but the execution balances genuine scares with romantic tension that builds credibly over the runtime.

Rotten Tomatoes awarded the film 78% based on 159 reviews, calling it “a mixture of gory slasher and sweet rom-com that ingeniously nails both formulas.” Metacritic gave it 61 out of 100. The box office performance matched the critical reception, with worldwide grosses reaching $32.9 million. The film currently streams on Netflix.

What makes Heart Eyes work is the commitment to both halves of its identity. The kills are brutal. The chemistry between the leads is genuine. Neither element feels grafted onto the other to serve marketing purposes.

Class Lines Blur on Screen

Romantic comedies often pair characters from different economic backgrounds, and the tension between money and affection drives some of the genre’s sharpest writing. Pretty Woman isn’t a movie about a glorified sugar daddy. Rather, it uses wealth disparity to ask questions about worth, transformation, and who gets to decide when someone becomes respectable. The 1990 film earned over $400 million worldwide and remains a reference point for stories that mix romance with pointed class commentary.

Anora takes this premise further. The 2024 film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Mikey Madison earned the Oscar for Best Actress. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as “a romantic drama on the bleeding edge.” The film strips away sentimentality to show what happens when money creates power imbalances that affection alone cannot solve.

Bodily Autonomy as Dark Comedy

Poor Things, the 2023 Yorgos Lanthimos film, follows Bella Baxter, a woman brought back to life by an eccentric scientist. Her brain is that of an infant, placed in an adult body. She discovers the world, including sex, power, and cruelty, with the curiosity of a child and the agency of a grown woman.

The film holds 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and 88 on Metacritic. Critics praised it as “a bizarre, brilliant tour de force.” Emma Stone won Best Actress at the Academy Awards, adding to the film’s total of four Oscars.

Poor Things finds humor in bodily functions, sexual awakening, and the absurdity of Victorian social norms. It also depicts exploitation, manipulation, and the horror of having your autonomy constructed by someone else. The comedy never cancels the darkness. Both exist in the same frame.

A24 Takes on Romance

Materialists arrived in June 2025 with Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal in the leads. The A24 production earned $108 million at the global box office, making it the studio’s third highest-grossing release.

Rotten Tomatoes calls Materialists “a mature deconstruction of the conventional rom-com.” The film examines how people use relationships to advance professionally and socially. The comedy comes from watching characters rationalize behavior that viewers recognize as cynical or self-serving. The darkness comes from realizing how easily we might do the same.

The casting helps. Johnson, Evans, and Pascal each bring charm that makes their characters likable despite their choices. The audience roots for people who may not deserve it.

What Darkness Does for Romance

These films succeed because they trust the audience. Viewers can handle complexity. They can laugh at a joke and feel disturbed by its implications at the same time. The darkness gives weight to the romantic beats. When characters in Heart Eyes finally admit their feelings, a killer lurks nearby. That context makes the confession mean more.

The genre tends toward escapism, and there is nothing wrong with wanting a film that delivers comfort without complications. But the romantic comedies that include darker elements often stay with viewers longer. They feel more honest about what it costs to be vulnerable with another person.

Finding These Films

Heart Eyes streams on Netflix. Anora is available on Disney+ and Hulu. Poor Things and Materialists can be found through major rental platforms. Each film offers a different ratio of romance to darkness, so sampling across all four provides a sense of how flexible the combination can be.

The next time you want a romantic comedy that does more than soothe, these titles deliver. They prove the genre can hold real weight without abandoning the pleasures that make it appealing in the first place.

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