For Valentine’s Day, Peacock Offers Both Romance And Anti-Holiday Horror

Ah, Valentine’s Day: a day of romance, affection, flowers, chocolate… for some. Many, however, prefer their holiday viewing as far from that realm as possible—and this Valentine’s Day Peacock has everyone covered.

If You Hate Valentine’s Day…

The service’s ‘If You Hate Valentine’s Day’ collection showcases a number of (shall we say) ‘anti-romantic’ films, many of which celebrate the darker sides of attraction and obsession (or are otherwise guaranteed to keep you from thoughts of romance). The collection includes:

The 1988 Best Picture and Best Director nominee Fatal Attraction, centering on a married man’s one-night stand coming back to stalk him and his family.

David Cronenberg’s 1998 classic Dead Ringers, a story of twin gynecologists who build a life around others’ inability to tell them apart until their relationship slowly deteriorates over a new woman in their lives.

Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated 1991 thriller Cape Fear, about a violent convicted criminal terrorizing the family of the lawyer who originally defended him.

The collection also offers several modern horror classics, including Prom Night (1980), Hello, Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), Bride of Chucky (1998), and the notorious entries Hostel (2006), Hostel II (2007), and Jigsaw (2017). among others.

If you’re really looking for an unconventional holiday, the service offers a wide array of other classics. Notably, you can find Psycho II (1983), III (1986), and the 1998 Psycho remake; all four Wishmaster films; and several additional Child’s Play films like Child’s Play 2 (1990), 3 (1991), and Seed of Chucky (2004). More recent films include The Strangers (2008), Drag Me To Hell (2009), and contemporary ones like The Little Stranger (2018) and You Should Have Left (2020).

For the Romantics

For the ‘romantically inclined’, Peacock is also offering a number of time-honored romantic films… something for nearly everyone. For a few examples, the service offers romantic standards like Love Actually (2003), following nine interconnected stories all centered around the theme of love (but let’s be honest: who doesn’t know what Love Actually is about?); Definitely Maybe (2008), following a political consultant on the cusp of divorce who reflects on his past romances with his daughter; and Seeking A Friend For The End of the World (2012), following two unlikely misfits who connect over an impending comet apocalypse.

For less conventional rom-coms, you can check out Knocked Up (2007), the Seth Rogan vehicle about a one night stand bringing together a responsible journalist and an absolute slacker, or Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), about a musician made recently single by his actress ex, who finds new romance on a Hawaii trip. Watch it if you haven’t seen it—you’ll want to see its Dracula puppet musical. On an entirely different kind of ‘less conventional’ wavelength, Peacock has both Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), about a burgeoning BDSM relationship (based on the novel), and Secretary (2002), a great earlier film about the BDSM relationship between a (you guessed it) secretary and her demanding lawyer boss.

There’s something for nearly everyone, regardless of if you have romance flowing through your veins or if you’d prefer to forget the day the calendar says entirely… and you can still try the base tier of the service for free, an element of the service unique among the major ‘big tent’ streaming players.