The ’90s are perhaps best remembered for self-aware slashers like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer — movies that are fun but not exactly ranked among the scariest. While mainstream horror movies of the era were often criticized for being formulaic, international films started to gain popularity with American audiences. For instance, the late ’90s saw the start of the J-horror (Japanese horror) wave that would continue well into the next decade. New ideas from abroad, combined with a burgeoning indie scene at home, were a breath of fresh air.
“Scary” is such a subjective word. Every movie fan has a different threshold for what freaks them out, and horror fans can argue for days about whether a movie is rightly considered scary. Interestingly, many of the scariest films of the ’90s aren’t even technically horror films. Sometimes, “scary” is a surreal image from a David Lynch film that gets under someone’s skin, and sometimes, it’s a gruesome murder scene from a crime thriller that can haunt viewers for days. These are the scariest movies of the 1990s, ranked by how visceral the reactions they provoke are and how impactful they have become since their release.
10 ‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999)
Directed by Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
By today’s standards, The Blair Witch Project might not seem scary at all. As a film that follows three amateur documentarians wandering around the woods, the pacing is slow, and little happens until the final scenes. Much of the movie is focused on the bickering among the three characters, with a few light scares thrown in during the nighttime scenes. The audience never actually sees what’s causing the disturbances, a choice that may work for some but not for others.
At the time of its release, much of the power of The Blair Witch Project came from its marketing as a “real” found footage film. The actors were unknown, and their real names were used for their characters. They were urged to lay low around the time of the film’s release, lending credence to the idea that they were real film students who had actually disappeared in the woods. The filmmakers couldn’t keep up the ruse for long, but The Blair Witch Project‘s other strength is in its creepy realism afforded by the shoestring budget and the novelty of the emerging found-footage format.
9 ‘Candyman’ (1992)
Directed by Bernard Rose
One of the scariest childhood games involves turning off the bathroom light, standing in front of the mirror, and repeating “Bloody Mary” three times. After the third time, a terrifying woman is supposed to appear in the mirror; most kids never make it past the second “Bloody Mary.” The 1992 movie Candyman, based on a short story by Clive Barker, plays with a similar urban legend. Repeating the name Candyman five times calls forth the hook-handed boogeyman, who then kills the person who summoned him.
Candyman may be light on jumpscares, but it is a haunting film about the painful legacy of slavery and systemic racism that also makes excellent use of its eerie setting, the run-down housing project Cabrini-Green in Chicago. Some memorable scenes also play on the viewer’s natural fear of insects, with one memorable sequence showing Candyman (Rony Todd) and Helen (Virginia Madsen) covered in thousands of bees. Filming the scene was a real-life horror story, with Todd reportedly getting stung 27 times. Madsen put her life at risk that day since she is deathly allergic to bees. Even without the bees, Todd turns in a powerful and terrifying performance as the menacing Candyman.
8 ‘Misery’ (1990)
Directed by Rob Reiner
There are few things scarier than finding oneself at the mercy of an unstable individual. In Misery, superstar author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is injured in a car wreck on a remote road during a snowstorm, and he seems to have found a guardian angel in a nurse named Annie (Kathy Bates), who rescues him from the snowbank and tends to his broken bones in her cabin. As it turns out, Annie is an obsessed fan who is pissed off that Paul killed her favorite character–named Misery–and she’s forcing him to write a new book bringing Misery back.
Paul’s position is terrifying. He’s used to being in control, but now that he’s incapacitated, he must rely on Annie for everything. But while she starts gentle, she soon reveals a violent temper. Kathy Bates is truly frightening as Annie, so convincing that she won an Oscar for her performance; to this day, Misery is the only Stephen King adaptation that has won an Academy Award. The film is also notable for its brutal hobbling scene, in which Annie breaks Paul’s legs with a sledgehammer to prevent him from escaping.
7 ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Regardless of whether The Silence of the Lambs is classified as a crime or a psychological horror movie, it’s just plain scary. Hannibal Lecter is an iconic villain, and Sir Anthony Hopkins is perfect in the role. There’s something uniquely scary about a villain who’s also a genius able to outsmart the good guys at nearly every turn. While FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) doesn’t catch Lecter, she does develop a special connection with the brilliant, cannibalistic serial killer.
What makes Lecter such a frightening figure is the contrast between his calm, sophisticated demeanor and the elaborate gruesomeness of his murders. A scene in which he escapes from his cell and stalks the guards looking for him is especially intense, demonstrating the need for the mask and restraints in which Lecter is often placed. Buffalo Bill, another serial killer known for skinning his female victims, is also a scary creation in an already unsettling film.
6 ‘Lost Highway’ (1997)
Directed by David Lynch
David Lynch‘s dreamlike films are full of quietly unsettling images that evoke dread for reasons that can’t be fully explained. Lost Highway, a Los Angeles-set noir starring the late Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette, has a plot that’s difficult to describe, but audiences can’t forget the terrifying figure of the Mystery Man, played by Robert Blake in ghostly white makeup. Adding an extra layer to the creepiness factor, Blake became a real-life murder suspect when his wife was killed just a few years after his performance in Lost Highway. Her murder was never solved.
The film itself is plenty unnerving without taking real-life horrors into consideration. In the scariest scene, the Mystery Man walks up to Paxton’s character, Fred, in the middle of a party, like a nightmare boogeyman stepping into the real world. The Mystery Man tells Fred to call home, and when he does… the Mystery Man answers despite standing right in front of Fred. It’s a chilling moment made worse by the fact that Fred and his wife have been receiving videotapes filmed inside their home. The terrifying dream logic of Lost Highway lingers after the credits have rolled.
5 ‘Funny Games’ (1997)
Directed by Michael Haneke
Austrian director Michael Haneke doesn’t make horror films, although his work is frequently horrifying. He didn’t intend Funny Games to be a horror movie, although that is certainly how most viewers tend to see it. Meant to be a comment on voyeurism and the blurred lines between fiction and reality, Funny Games follows a married couple and their son as they’re brutalized by two young strangers for apparently no reason. The film slyly suggests that the true motive is to gratify the audience’s bloodlust.
Funny Games is frightening, in part, because of how courteous the captors appear to be at first. The discomfort in the early scenes could be dismissed as accidents or simple misunderstandings, but then the young men kill the family’s dog. Another unnerving aspect of the film is the fourth wall breaking that happens throughout. The captors periodically wink at the audience or speak to the camera. These moments emphasize the viewer’s complicity in watching scenes of torture. Haneke’s shot-for-shot English remake brings the story to an American setting, which is even more fitting for the film’s message about violence.
4 ‘Audition’ (1999)
Directed by Takashi Miike
If one only watched the early scenes, Audition could almost be mistaken for a gentle romantic comedy. Indeed, horror fans often joke about tricking their unsuspecting friends into watching the movie just to see their reaction. At the beginning of the film, a widower decides that he’s ready to find love again, and with the help of his film producer friend, he stages a mock audition for a potential new girlfriend. He’s so charmed by the quiet, sweet Asami that he blazes past several red flags.
While it would be best to go into Audition without any foreknowledge, even seeing that the film is categorized as horror gives away too much. However, plenty of shocks still await the first-time viewer. There are a couple of unforgettable scenes in the second half that fans reference as some of the most terrifying moments they’ve seen in a horror movie.
3 ‘Event Horizon’ (1997)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and his crew go in search of the starship Event Horizon after receiving a distress signal. That’s thrilling enough, but the fact that the ship disappeared seven years ago and the distress signal sounds like the howls of the damned, well, that’s downright scary. Dr. Weir (Sam Neill), the original designer of the starship, is brought along on the rescue mission. They arrive at the ship to find everyone dead, but the hallucinations the crew experiences are even more terrifying than the gruesome massacre.
Neill shines as the increasingly unhinged Dr. Weir. The affable actor from New Zealand carved out a niche for himself, playing menacing, unpredictable types in the ’80s and ’90s, with memorable turns in Possession and In the Mouth of Madness showcasing his villainous side. Despite the dodgy ’90s special effects, the design of the derelict ship is also a major contributing factor to Event Horizon‘s creepiness. It practically oozes a sinister energy that infects both the characters in the film and the viewers.
2 ‘Seven’ (1995)
Directed by David Fincher
The ’90s was a great decade for serial killer movies, and David Fincher‘s gritty crime thriller Se7enstands out as the most disturbing. In the film, detectives David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) investigate a killer who performs elaborate murders on the theme of the Seven Deadly Sins. Each murder scene is more sick and twisted than the one before, with the victim of “gluttony” arguably being the most upsetting.
The film culminates in one of the most memorable plot twists of all time, which is still referenced by movie fans nearly thirty years later. While Fincher isn’t necessarily a horror director, his serial killer movies, Seven and Zodiac, both have horror elements, effectively using colors and lighting to create an atmosphere of unbearable dread. Thanks to committed performances by the cast, realistically gory makeup effects, and the sadistic creativity of the kills, Se7en remains a stomach-churning watch decades later.
1 ‘Ringu’ (1998)
Directed by Hideo Nakata
Only the bravest of souls walked away from Ringu completely unruffled. More than twenty years later, the sight of Sadako crawling out of a well–and then out of the television set–still sends shivers down the backs of horror fans. Ringu was the first taste of J-horror for many Americans, paving the way for later Japanese films, such as Pulse, Dark Water, and Ju-On: The Grudge.
What makes Ring so scary is that it’s an attack on the viewers themselves. A person watches a cursed video and then dies seven days later. The curiosity factor is intense, and watching a video is usually such a low-stakes activity, but there are things that, once seen, can’t be unseen. If anything, Ringu has become even more relevant in an age where videos of real-life brutality can go viral and repeated exposure to disturbing images has the potential to cause real psychological damage.
NEXT: 10 Scariest Movies of the 2000s, Ranked
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