Fifty More Horror Clichés That Should Be Left to Spoil

#39: Toxic Love Triangles

  Like with any other trope presented in the horror genre, love triangles are by default made to be twice as dark as the usual standard.  Unlike other media, horror genre love triangles are not just romantic fluff to bring about cheap internal struggle for the main character.  The love interests for both sides of the triangle are not the perfect role models, or fall into the typical tropes. There is no token guy next door, nor the token bad boy. For horror, the love interests instead take a deeper dive into the gothic side.

In these love triangles, one or both of the love interest characters represent a toxicity in which the main protagonist is trying their darnedest to escape. Either they are thrown onto the main character for an arranged marriage the lead does not find any passion towards or creep towards a lower level on the evil spectrum of the morality scale. These partners are almost always abusive, verbally and/or physically, to the main character. They have egos the size of China that refuse to let them see any type of dissatisfaction the main character is feeling. Blind to reason, these characters believe they are the only acceptable partner for the main character, who has been downgraded to a mere item of affection and not a human being. It is what I personally refer to as the toxic love triangle, a variant of the larger trope found in most romance stories.

Unlike most love triangles in popular culture that can be passed off as mere cute fluff to possibly enhance the drama, toxic love triangles are examples of ugly sexual abuse. Intentional or not, the representatives of the toxic love triangle are acting in a manner that will cause some type of mental or physical torment to the main character. This can range in severity from verbally assaulting the free will of the main character to slapping their object of affection if they do not fall in line. That is not even mentioning the other evil traits of the characters in the toxic love triangle outside of romance, or worse offenses brought upon the main character that are way too mature and messed up to go into depth in for the editorial. Toxic love triangles, as suggested by name, are extremely problematic, especially if brushed off by the main character as nothing.

  A strong example of the toxic love triangle can be seen in the movie Underworld.  While the second subject of the love triangle, Micheal Corvin, falls into the category of the more typical nice guy trope that many romances use, Kravin, the first member of the love triangle, is a completely different story.  Promised main character Selene's hand in their coven, Kravin treats Selene as nothing more but property to advance his status.  He verbally abuses her on multiple occasions for going against his orders, and even in one particularly bad occasion, slaps her for this "disobedience".  This choice to make Kraven abusive to his partner Selene by the movie's writers just predictably lands Selene even faster into the more normal Micheal's arms, and leaves a sour taste in the mouths of people just wanting to enjoy this gothic horror film.  Although Kraven is punished for underhanded tactics later, none of these pertain to Selene at all, and his abuse of Selene is brushed under the sidelines of the plot.  It makes the experience of the film harder to enjoy for the audience, and just makes Micheal seem too much like the perfect guy for Selene when his character has barely been given any complexity besides being a target for the supernatural.

  Just because horror tends to subvert normal tropes into darker variants of themselves does not mean any type of abuse should be given to anyone in a romantic relationship, especially if subject to a love triangle.  This type of abuse in any medium is not okay, and is better left untouched in future horror genre installments.  It just creates cheap antagonists for the audience to root against.

  If you are going to add romance of any kind into a horror story, be sure it is not a toxic one.  Instead, playing around with the healthier romantic tropes available without adding too much of a darker tone is ideal.  It is perfectly okay to have characters be given healthy relationships, even love triangles if written in a unique enough angle.  Toxicity added into any type of romantic trope is just going to cheapen the story and make audiences feel dirty for reading the material.  Unless you wish to spread a strong message against sexual abuse, keep out any and all toxic love triangles.