The Netflix Movie That's Breaking Up Couples

Is your relationship on the rocks and only one existential rom-com away from totally falling apart? Better stay away from Netflix for a bit then. The streamer's new movie "The Life List" has allegedly had quite the impact on couples who thought they were just settling in for a typical Netflix-and-chill sort of night. And we're not talking about a positive one.

"The Life List" follows a woman named Alex Rose (Sofia Carson) who suddenly loses her mother, Elizabeth (Connie Britton). But when her mom's will is read, Alex finds out that before she can collect her inheritance, she has to carry through with every item on her "life list" — which is a bucket list she made when she was 13 years old. Some of the simpler items include getting a tattoo or doing a stand-up set at a comedy club. It's the last item on the list, though — "find true love" — that proves to be a bit more involved. Of course, this is the one that drives the plot towards its inevitable heartwarming conclusion.

The question remains, however: Does a rom-com actually have enough emotional sway to literally destroy relationships? Sofia Carson told Entertainment Weekly: "Adam [Brooks, writer-director] would call me all the time after test screenings, and he would say that there were so many people that would [tell him], 'I ended up breaking up with my boyfriend,' or 'I ended up changing or quitting my job.'"

The reaction to "The Life List" that Sofia Carson cites sounds kind of ... extreme, right? Well, many social media reactions seem to back this up — sort of, anyway. One X user wrote: "this movie made me think about my future, even how I want to pick out my future partner and especially the bad relationship with my mother." Another X user, irerr24, posted: "I just finished the life list movie and it was so good, it makes me want to do some motivation in my life," while icy_gwen4bella added, "The Life List on Netflix just raised my standards. 100/10 movie it's so good and eye opening!!"

While these fans aren't exactly confessing to dumping their significant others directly after exiting out of the Netflix app, it sounds like the seed has definitely been planted. And if you don't think that movies can have a real-life impact on people, get a load of this little factoid: There is a direct correlation between "Fast and Furious" movies dropping in theaters and an uptick in speeding tickets. As one researcher from the Harvard Medical School told the New York Post: "We can see a clear increase in the average speed ... It seems to take people already prone to driving fast and make them drive faster."

While the speeding ticket thing may be true, it's a bit harder to believe a rom-com can end a relationship — a solid one anyway. In the end, "this movie will make you break up with your boyfriend" is probably more of a marketing ploy than anything else. It's basically the rom-com equivalent of "this horror movie is making people barf in theaters" — the most recent example being the "Terrifer" franchise. But hey — it works. The numbers don't lie: "The Life List" is killing it on Netflix's Top 10 list.