Have you heard of the ‘terminal romance’ movie genre before? Well, even if you haven’t, you probably remember Anne Hathaway’s touching character who suffered from Parkinson’s in Love and Other Drugs. Or, Charlize Theron as Sara, a woman with leukaemia in Sweet November. THIS is a terminal romance – when one (or both) of the main heroes in a romantic movie is affected by a terminal disease.
As if the ‘terminal romance’ movies weren’t heartbreaking enough, film producers – inspired by the recent boom of young-adult-books-turned-movies (think Twilight or Divergent) – decided to leave grown-ups, who are more than capable of taking care of themselves, behind and instead place teenagers in the centre of this emotional whirlwind. Surprisingly, these movies have not only turned out to be really interesting but are also very enlightening, bringing awareness to a wider audience about some health conditions they didn’t previously know about.
We definitely recommend watching these movies with your teenage kids or on your own, armed with a giant bucket of ice-cream and boxes of tissues to mop away those tears as these movies don’t always have those Hollywood happy endings that we’ve become accustomed to.
The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
Big Little Lies (one of the 10 best TV shows of the last few years) star Shailene Woodley is very convincing as Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old with thyroid cancer. She meets her first love, Augustus Waters (Ansel Elgort), at a support group. Augustus has lost a leg to bone cancer but is currently in remission and couldn’t care less about the rules and limitations of their condition. He supports Hazel in achieving her dreams and travels with her to Amsterdam, however, she doesn’t yet realise that Augustus’ cancer is back and his time on this planet is about to come to an end…
Five Feet Apart (2019)
This is hands down the most educational and informative ‘terminal romance’ movie ever! Through her video-blog, 17-year-old Stella Grant explains a lot about cystic fibrosis, probably more than one can expect to learn from a teen movie! But, back to the plot… Stella is really well organised and obsessed about following every single step of her medical routine. She meets Will Newman in hospital and discovers he has the same illness but, in his case, a nasty bacterial infection dashes any hopes of him ever getting a lung transplant that would allow him to live for a few more years. Of course, Will and Stella fall in love. Only they can never touch each other, kiss each other or even come closer than six feet to each other! That’s the rule for all CF patients – any closer can be life-threatening for both! But will it stop our heroes?
Though this movie was criticised for depicting medically dangerous behaviour, the opportunity to raise awareness about the struggles of cystic fibrosis patients was really well received by The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and CF community in general.
Midnight Sun (2018)
Katie Price (Bella Thorne) has a rare life-threatening sensitivity to sunlight so she stays behind dark blinds during the day and leaves home at night to play her guitar at the train station. One night she meets her longtime crush Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger) who is mesmerised by her music. With close to zero social skills, Katie has no idea what to do or say and just leaves Charlie confused and rushes back home. Night after night Charlie gains her trust, though he’s yet to discover the truth about Katie’s illness. Will he stay by her side til’ her last breath?
Midnight Sun was blamed for an ‘offensively inaccurate portrayal of a real-life disease’ because Katie’s skin remains clean and bright throughout the whole movie whereas in real life Xeroderma Pigmentosum often causes extreme skin dryness, burns and blisters, eyes can become bloodshot, dry, irritated or cloudy and eyelashes can fall out.
Everything, Everything (2017)
Just like Thorne’s heroine in Midnight Sun, eighteen-year-old Maddy Whittier (portrayed by Amandla Stenberg) can’t leave her house. She has a rare genetic disorder – Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) – which makes her allergic to literally everything. Trapped inside, she only has her mom and nurse, Carla, for company. That is before a new family moves into the house across the road. A boy, approximately her age, writes his phone number on the window and the teens start to chat online. Of course, Maddy soon realises she’s fallen deeply for Olly and when his abusive father starts a fight, she breaks the rules and leaves the house to help him.
Spoiler alert! Unlike most of the movies of this genre, this one doesn’t end with a heartbreaking death. After a series of dangerous events, life actually turns out to be way more positive for Maddy than she ever expected. But we’re not going to give away too much info right now!
Life Sentence (2018)
Surprise, surprise! This one is not a movie but a TV show with a total of 13 episodes. With only 4.47/10 rating on Rotten Tomatoes it was CW channel’s least successful show last year, which already sounds intriguing enough to watch, doesn’t it?
The story of Life Sentence revolves around young Stella Abbott. For the past eight years, she’s been fighting terminal cancer and has already accepted the fact that she will hardly live for another half a year. But the first episode shows Stella at her doctor’s office where she is told that a new experimental treatment has her completely cured! This happiest of news leads to a series of very unhappy events. Stella finds out that her cancer has affected a lot of people around her and now her family is falling apart, she barely knows her husband, she doesn’t even know herself, she has no degree to find a proper job and no real plans for her unexpected future. Now Stella needs to learn to live again.
Though technically it’s not a TEEN movie, as Stella is a 20-something woman, Pretty Little Liars‘ star Lucy Hale still looks so young and innocent that we can totally see her playing teenagers for at least another decade!
