Celine Song’s Materialists (2025) insight into a more nefarious issue — a world where superficial charm masks real danger.

When Romance Becomes Risk

In Materialists (2025), writer–director Celine Song stages a glamorous tableau of surface-level attraction—an algorithmic romance matched not on mutual depth but numbers. The protagonist, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), is a real-life matchmaker—curating dates person-to-person, not through an app—but her clients’ chemistry is engineered with the same algorithmic superficiality as swiping culture. The title Materialists resonates sharply across the film’s thematic satire.

In one particularly troubling storyline, Lucy arranges a date for a client with a man who exhibits several warning signs. Although the red flags are apparent, Lucy, under pressure to deliver results and motivated by the hope of turning a difficult case into a success story, proceeds with the match. Her performance is measured by the number of successful pairings, and this client has proven especially challenging. Tragically, the client is sexually assaulted by the man she was paired with. When Lucy’s manager, Violet (Marin Ireland), learns of the incident, she downplays it as an unfortunate but unavoidable risk; something that happens time to time, implying not only negligence, but a deeper organizational indifference to harm. The incident is not treated as an institutional failure, but as a cost of doing business.

That slouch into denial echoes the real-world posture of Match Group and platforms like Tinder, Hinge, and OkCupid—companies that document assaults yet bury them as unfortunate externalities.

Reality Strikes: Match Group’s Documented Failures

An 18-month investigation—including the Pulitzer Center, The Markup, and The Guardian—uncovered chilling parallels to Violet’s indifference. Match Group, which oversees half of all global online dating, had:

• Recorded hundreds of weekly reports of rape and assault since 2019 via their Sentinel database—dating back to 2016 in documents.
• The case of Stephen Matthews, a Denver cardiologist, is especially damning: reported for rape in September 2020, he remained on apps like Hinge and Tinder—and even featured as a “Standout” profile—until his arrest in 2023. By then, 15+ women had reported assaults linked to him.
• Match Group had publicly promised a transparency report in 2020 but never released it. Internal slides show executives debating how much they needed to reveal—and worried safety protocols could stall growth metrics.
• Safety theater, not safety practice: Teams were dismantled, work outsourced to undertrained contractors, and employees criticized the company’s Slack obsession with metrics over victim safety.
• The Markup tested the system: banned users could easily create new accounts on Tinder—or hop to Hinge, OkCupid, or Plenty of Fish—with the same name, birthday, and photos

A shareholder complaint by Ned Habedus filed August 4, 2025, accuses Match Group of enabling abuse by:

• Tracking assault via Sentinel, yet taking no effective action;

• Allowing known abusers to reinstate accounts using same identities;

• Downplaying the harm to shareholders, while gutting trust-and-safety teams to preserve profits.

This real-world lawsuit mirrors the unresolved legal tension in Materialists: Lucy’s victim sues, but we only hear Violet’s dismissive comment—justice is deferred, responsibility is sidestepped.

Should Dating Apps Be Liable?

In Canada, tort law offers survivors possible routes to justice. The framework of negligence hinges on:

Duty of Care: Dating platforms or in the film, matchmakers who facilitate in-person meetings while knowing about prior danger owe a duty to mitigate risks.

Breach of Standard of Care: Ignoring red flags, failing to vet offenders, deleting evidence, or dismissing assault as inevitable, whether in fiction or fact, falls well below reasonable protection standards.

Causation: With Matthews’ case, the link between Match Group’s inaction and real victim harm is stark. Similarly, Lucy’s negligence in Materialists may be legally actionable if court recognizes her role in enabling foreseeable harm.

Damages: Survivors endure both trauma and institutional gaslighting. This societal and emotional harm is both real—and legally compensable.

Importantly, Canadian courts limit the enforceability of liability waivers for bodily harm, especially when gross negligence is evident. Terms of Use or disclaimers are unlikely to shield platforms or matchmakers in such cases.

Legal Options for Survivors in Canada

If you or someone you know were sexually assaulted by someone met through a dating service, you may have legal recourse:

• Class action lawsuit or individual claim based on negligence, negligent misrepresentation, or consumer protection violations.

• Grounds may include failure to act on known risk, erasure of evidence, inadequate vetting, or deceptive safety claims.

You are not alone, your experience matters, and there may be powerful legal tools to hold those who facilitated harm accountable. Contact us to learn more.