The best horror movies of the 1990s

Director David Fincher hadn’t exactly coated himself with glory with his cinematic debut, Alien 3, but his second film would restore his reputation and set him on the path to superstar director status. Se7en lays down the director’s signature dark, cynical tone from the off, as Morgan Freeman’s grizzled cop and Brad Pitt’s young hotshot hunt down a gruesome serial killer seemingly obsessed with the seven deadly sins. The film keeps you guessing and retching in equal measure, and even manages to combine the two responses with its legendary final scene.

Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning film plays out more like a psychological police thriller than an out and out horror movie, at least for the most part. The exception comes with the character of Hannibal Lecter, played with mannered malevolence by Anthony Hopkins, who is a cinematic monster right up there with Dracula or Alien’s Xenomorph. The late scenes of Lecter’s gruesome escape, as well as our hero’s terrifying final confrontation with the film’s big bad, are truly gripping.

How does the director of Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally follow up such a feel-good ’80s trilogy? Why, they kick off the next decade by adapting a characteristically grim Stephen King novel, of course. Beside demonstrating Reiner’s range, Misery also won Kathy Bates an Oscar for her chilling performance as an obsessive fan, who first nurses and then tortures and bullies James Caan’s writer after a snowy car crash.

Tremors hit cinemas in 1990, and sure enough, it packs a decidedly ’80s spirit. Kevin Bacon (see? None-more 80s!) and Fred Ward play a pair of Nevada handymen who stumble across a pod of whale-shaped killer creatures who move around underground before pulling their human prey into their gaping maws. It’s self-consciously schlocky stuff, told with a near-perfect blend of humour, action, and gross-out bloody spatter. Tremors is a film that does a lot with a fairly limited budget, helped by a likeable cast and several memorable set pieces.

As the final film in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness carried a fair amount of expectation among fans of cult horror cinema. Bruce Campbell returns as series hero Ash Williams, who finds himself battling the undead in the Arthurian Middle Ages. It’s best not to ask such trifling questions as ‘why?’ or ‘how?’. All you need to know is that the blood is soon flying once our offbeat action hero is reunited with his customary boomstick and chainsaw combo.

While we might have asserted in the introduction that there was no set ’90s horror movie type, there’s also no other movie on this list that’s a more fitting representative of the decade than Scream. Not only does it star Courtney Cox of Friends fame, but it’s also shot through with an era-specific metatextual tone, as a young cast guffaws about horror movie tropes. That doesn’t stop them from being viciously slaughtered by a masked villain, of course. Talking of which, said Scream mask became a Halloween costume cliché many moons ago.

Paul W. S. Anderson produced this nasty little 1997 horror flick, which steadily turns from sci-fi mystery to infernal horror across its 96 minutes running time. When a missing starship reappears after seven years and sends out a disturbing distress signal, a rescue vessel is sent out to investigate. The crew comes to discover that the Event Horizon may have travelled further and deeper than any of them could have ever imagined, potentially into the mouth of Hell itself.

Takashi Miike’s 1999 film, based on Ryu Murakami’s 1997 novel, has become infamous for its walkout-inducing latter scenes. You could call it a classic revenge thriller, in which a lonely widower holds auditions for the role of a new partner, and gets more than he bargained for with one mysterious applicant. But after a slow and steady build-up, the level of sadistic violence that eventually manifests on screen places Audition in a whole new category of grounded but gruesome horror.

Anyone who’s only seen his more recent films might wonder just how M. Night Shyamalan ever got to place his name so prominently in the marketing materials. Really, you only need to head back to his third film to find the answer. The Sixth Sense was a late-’90s revelation, and it retains much of its magic today – especially if you’re watching for the first time and have managed to avoid spoilers. Bruce Willis plays the child psychologist tasked with helping a troubled young boy who claims to be able to see dead people.

Few if any ’90s horror movies have proved to be as influential as The Blair Witch Project. The way it turned its limited budget and no-name cast into a virtue proved to be inspired. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s film cleverly positions itself as a roughly edited collation of real life found footage following the disappearances of three young film makers in a creepy forest. Thanks to its verisimilitude, naturalistic performances, and powerfully suggestive use of sound and shade, The Blair Witch Project maintains a unique ability to unnerve.

Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 film stands out for a number of reasons, not least a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino, who also takes a major acting role. This also represented an early leading man performance by a particularly smouldering George Clooney. But From Dusk Till Dawn is also just a very entertaining, deliriously violent, and remarkably fresh action-horror movie. The story sees a pair of bank robbers rampage their way across the border to a Mexican strip bar, only to discover that it’s run by bloodthirsty vampires.

Candyman’s inspired twist on a Clive Barker short story turns what could have been a fairly generic ’80s-style slasher into a way more interesting exploration of American anti-black racism. Even if you somehow don’t pick up on the subtext, however, it’s still a very effective scary movie. Tony Todd plays the spirit of a lynched black man who seemingly appears to anyone who says his name five times into a mirror. Needless to say, you would need to give ’90s kids their weight in candy to make them repeat that ritual in real life.

The original Gremlins was one of the best horror movies of the ’80s, gleefully stirring black comedy into a classic creature feature. Amazingly, Gremlins 2 manages to match and even exceed the original. It does so, as all great sequels do, by upping the ante. This time the action moves from small town America to the big city, as a new group of cackling creatures is set loose in a high-tech skyscraper. Things get deeply, hilariously weird, and it’s all shot through with a rich vein of satire.

Also known as Dead Alive in North America, Braindead is the third film from New Zealand’s finest, Peter Jackson. Don’t expect any cuddly hobbits or pipe-smoking wizards here though, as Jackson offers his signature take on the zombie movie. Think homespun charm, disarmingly dry antipodean humour, and an improbable amount of nauseating blood and guts. Seriously, this may stand as one of the goriest films ever made, even given its advanced age and limited indie budget.

Hideo Nakata’s Ring (known as Ringu in the US) introduced the world to a new and distinctly Japanese strand of horror that would influence the wider genre for the next decade and beyond. It concerns the investigation into an urban legend about a killer video tape, with anyone who watches the cursed recording dying a mysterious death a week after doing so. What sounds deeply daft on paper proves downright terrifying on film, not least thanks to the creepy portrayal of vengeful young spirit Sadako.

If you were to compile a list of famous Stephen King movie adaptations, 1990’s It would surely come somewhere near the top of the list – certainly for Gen Xers, at least. And that’s despite the fact that it’s not strictly speaking a movie, but rather a two-part miniseries. No matter. Both of its parts are movie length, it stars Tim Curry as an evil child-killing clown haunting a town across 30 years, and it scared a whole generation of kids witless.

Francis Ford Coppola’s lavishly overblown take on the great Bram Stoker novel gives us one of Gary Oldman’s great ’90s bad guy performances as the titular blood-sucking count. It also stars Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins in the more heroic roles. But the real star of the show here is the cinematography which, in conjunction with outstanding production design, lends the film an almost operatic sense of grandeur. As silly as it is scary, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a riot to watch.

It wouldn’t be wholly unfair to describe The Faculty as ’Invasion of the Body Snatchers ‘96’, but it does risk downplaying what a fun little teen horror movie this is. Starring the likes of Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Salma Hayek, and Robert Patrick (could it BE any more ’90s?), Robert Rodriguez’s film tells the story of a typical US high school being overtaken by a body-hijacking alien parasite. Only a brat pack of assorted archetypes can stop a full on invasion.

Ten years after the original A Nightmare on Elm Street kicked off an extended yet generally ropey franchise, creator Wes Craven decided to pull a Thanos and do it himself. The result is Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, which applies a whole new layer of meta fun to the fable of Freddy Krueger. In this retelling, Robert Englund’s iconic character is just that – a fictional movie villain played by the actor Robert England. However, events come full circle when the cast and crew start to be haunted by a familiar bladed figure.

Viewing Guillermo del Toro’s debut film back today suggests that the young Mexican director arrived fully formed. The movie has got all of the ornate design, the grisly majesty, and the sympathetic monsters of his more famous Hollywood fare, just married to a lower budget. In this film, a small clockwork contraption confers eternal life on an elderly antique dealer, but with a price that must be paid in blood. It’s the kind of darkly beautiful twist on the vampire genre that only del Toro could have come up with.