'Straight Out of a Horror Movie'—Video of Nightmarish Marriage Proposal Goes Viral

A video purporting to show a woman rejecting her boyfriend's marriage proposal in a packed-out nightclub has got viral for all the wrong reasons.

The clip first surfaced on Reddit, after being posted online by Montanaoxfst, and quickly began garnering attention. At the time of writing it has been upvoted over 17,000 times.

However, the reaction has been far from positive, with many users comparing it to something approaching a nightmare.

The video begins with a man, down on one knee in the middle of a nightclub, asking a woman standing nearby "will you marry me?" while surrounded by a throng of people filming the entire sorry saga on their smartphones.

Having popped the question via microphone, the boyfriend passes the mic on to a nearby MC who attempts to push the woman to provide an answer.

She is heard several times responding meekly with "no" while shouts of "yes" can be heard ringing out from the surrounding crowd.

Eventually it all proves too much for the object of the man's affections and she makes a swift exit through the crowd and out of the venue.

By then, her boyfriend had already registered her response and is last seen on the footage anxiously pacing away having realized the gravity of what he has done.

But despite the fact he has most likely put the entire relationship in jeopardy with his actions, sympathy was in short supply online.

"This is a great example of why you need to know your partner and what they want BEFORE trying a public proposal," aufukkum wrote. "Public proposals add so much social pressure from strangers to what's supposed to be a romantic moment."

Shahster agreed: "It takes a special kind of moron to do a public proposal when he's not sure of the outcome."

For other users such as NullNova, the man's choice of setting was ill-advised to say the least. "Everyone encroaching in with their phones with lights blaring is like something straight out of a horror movie," they said. Delicious_Asshole2 echoed that sentiment. "Honestly reminds me of the period scene in Carrie," they wrote.

Another user, posting as Delta-76, thought the man may have had very specific reasons for putting his girlfriend on the spot like this. "Personally I always felt public proposals like these are deliberately done by people hoping the public pressure makes the partner say yes," they wrote.

While the man drew condemnation for his actions, there was a considerable amount of sympathy for the woman he proposed to. "Poor girl just came for a good time not to be humiliated," StrawberryLeche commented.

HateTheCity, like most on the thread, thought it was ultimately a case of wrong place and wrong time. "Unless that club has some sort of big relevance in their relationship, that proposal is NOT the move," they said.

Newsweek has contacted Montanaoxfst for comment.

Though hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing, research has shown that public proposals are statistically more likely to end in rejection that private ones.

In a 2021 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, University of Victoria psychologists Lisa B. Hoplock and Danu Anthony Stinson analyzed 374 stories of marriage proposals posted on Reddit or Weddingbee.

The findings showed that when men proposed in front of other people they were more likely to be rejected.

Just 32 percent of proposals that were accepted came when other people were present. Of those that were rejected, people were present around 45 per cent of the time.