Fiction renders toxic relationships with a clarity real life rarely offers. This tag collects reviews and essays on stories built around damaging bonds: manipulation, codependence, and the drama of people who cannot leave.
ADHDWorld Mental Health Day is October 10, and the 2026 theme asks for lived experience. Here's mine: thousands of hours of therapy looking for what was wrong with me, a late AuDHD diagnosis, and the relief of learning I just…
2010sGone Girl (2014) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Gillian Flynn adapted her own novel and took a hammer to her own third act. Fincher shot it mostly in one small Missouri town for sixty-one million dollars,…
1940sNow, Voyager (1942) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A woman boards a cruise as her mother's property and comes back a person. The most famous cigarette in cinema, and a last line that refuses the ending…
AmbiguityA small-time investigator photographs a woman meeting a man who isn't her husband and tries to blackmail her. He thinks he's caught a cheating wife. He's caught a spy who can't tell him what she is, can't pay him, and…
FictionEdvard has loved Marisol for four months, and tells himself the love is the larger part of him. In the gray hour before dawn he does the arithmetic one last time and finds the truth he buried under the romance:…
2020sNicolas Cage's gloriously unhinged Dracula anchors a comedy about escaping a toxic boss, undercut by an overstuffed plot. Reframe Dracula's servant Renfield as a man in a toxic codependent relationship with his narcissistic boss, and play it as a workplace…
1970sBrian De Palma's 1976 King adaptation. Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, John Travolta supporting.
1940sTwo Budapest shop employees who can't stand each other are unknowingly falling in love through anonymous correspondence. The Shop Around the Corner is Ernst Lubitsch's 1940 American romantic comedy adapted from Miklós László's Hungarian play Parfumerie, depicting two Budapest leather-goods…
1940sA singer retires to a Connecticut farm and converts it into an inn that only opens on holidays, leading to a rivalry with his former dance partner. Holiday Inn is Mark Sandrich's 1942 American musical depicting Jim Hardy, a singer…
1960sAn ambitious insurance clerk lends his apartment to executives for their affairs, until he falls for the boss's mistress at Christmas. The Apartment is Billy Wilder's 1960 American comedy-drama about an ambitious insurance company clerk who lends his Manhattan apartment…
1990sTakashi Miike directs the story of a widower staging fake auditions to find a new wife, with consequences he could not anticipate. Audition is Takashi Miike's 1999 Japanese horror-thriller film depicting a Tokyo widower who stages fake film auditions to…
2000sMultiple intertwined London relationships unfold across the five weeks leading up to Christmas, from the Prime Minister to schoolchildren. Love Actually is Richard Curtis's 2003 British romantic comedy depicting multiple interconnected London relationships unfolding across the five weeks leading up…
Professional ghostwriting for executives, founders, coaches, and authors who want to get the book done right. 113+ books authored. 54+ ghostwritten for clients.
Ready to discuss your book?
BOOK YOUR PRIVATE CONSULTATIONNo pitch. No pressure.
© 2026 Richard Lowe. The Writing King. All rights reserved.
