The 30 Best Horror Films Of The 1990s - Page 5 of 6

10. “Cure” (1997)
Japanese genius Kiyoshi Kurosawa made his horror masterpiece with “Pulse” at the turn of the millennium (we named it one of the best films in the genre of the 21st century so far), but his earlier “Cure” is much more than just a warm-up. The great Koji Yakusho stars as Takabe, a closed-off police detective with a mentally ill wife (Anna Nakagawa) investigating a series of murders of people killed with an X carved into them, which would seem to be the work of a singular culprit, except they’re provably committed by a different person each time. Soon enough, Takabe and psychologist Sakuma (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) find the common thread — a seeming amnesiac named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) who may in fact be a master hypnotist. It sounds like something cheap and schlocky, a monster-of-the-week “X-Files” episode at best, but Kurosawa makes something infinitely more interesting: a bleak, dread-filled picture that uses its high concept to dig into something more existential about our free will, and the viral-like nature of violence. Kurosawa’s cool, meditative style isn’t for everyone (it’s hard not to see him reflected in his hero), but if you buy into him as many others have done — Bong Joon-ho called it one of the best films ever made — you’ll be haunted by “Cure.”

9. ”Misery” (1990)
Coming at the end of what is surely one of the greatest 6-year, 6-movie runs in Hollywood history (his debut “This is Spinal Tap,” “The Sure Thing,” “Stand By Me,” “The Princess Bride,” and “When Harry Met Sally” preceded it), Rob Reiner turned away from comedy but brought a distinctly witty sensibility to his first (and so far only) horror film. Orchestrating the scares almost as though they were laughs (it’s a great film for observing how closely related our responses to “funny” and “frightening” truly are), Reiner takes Stephen King’s more grimly-toned novel and turns it into an immensely entertaining popcorn movie that yet does not skimp on the horror quotient. It boasts two powerhouse performances from a comeback trail-ing James Caan as novelist Paul Sheldon and an Oscar-winning Kathy Bates as his biggest fan Annie Wilkes, and a hobbling scene that has gone down in movie legend (and in our list of 40 Scariest Movie Moments Ever). And its portrait of obsessive fandom and the addictive nature of stories feels less farfetched as time goes by — the genius of the movie may be that Wilkes’ fastidious domesticity conceals such psychosis, but she is really an only slightly exaggerated version of an overly invested internet fanboy (just imagine George RR Martin or George Lucas/J.J. Abrams were in Sheldon’s position).

8. “Scream” (1996)
With his tongue-in-cheek megahit “Scream,” the late, great Wes Cravenlovingly lampooned many of the cheap n’ nasty teen horror flicks that he himself directed as a younger man (the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series looms particularly large here) and simultaneously carved out a new blueprint for postmodern, youth-oriented horror. Although the original “Scream” would inspire three inferior sequels and a slew of empty-headed copycat pictures, none of the subsequent slashers came close to matching the original for style, scares, and wicked self-awareness. From its instant classic of an opening, in which the crackle of stovetop popcorn is transformed into a death rattle, all the way to its gore-soaked, batshit finale, “Scream” is as ruthless and efficient as the masked, murderous bogeyman at the movie’s center. Every actor, from Hollywood’s new feminist hero Rose McGowan to the seriously committedMatthew Lilliard, pumps new blood into what are essentially stock characters, all while Craven pays homage to his heroes and shows the young whippersnappers how it’s really done. Everyone from Edgar Wright to the duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller owes a debt to Craven’s seminal fright flick: where ’90’s fashion never died, where Skeet Ulrich is the living epitome of danger, and, most importantly, where scary movies reign eternal.

7. “The Blair Witch Project“ (1999)
Hyped to the ends of the earth after blowing the roof off Sundance, marketed into the ground (cleverly, distributor Artisan tried to suggest, in part through to innovative online work, that the film was real — the result was one of the most profitable movies in history), and essentially birthing every rubbish found-footage horror that’s followed in the past sixteen years, it’s easy to hate the phenomenon of “The Blair Witch Project” and forget the film itself. But with the dust long settled, you swiftly remember the reason for all the fuss in the first place: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s work is a brilliant, thrifty, ingenious film that uses simple technology to build and build and build to a terrifying climax. Tracking three documentary makers — Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard, playing themselves — who head into the Maryland woods to investigate the rumors of a witch who may have inspired a serial killer in the 1940s, the film has times where it can be a little dull or overstretched, but just as your interest threatens to wane, the filmmakers put the chills up you with clever sound design, those fucking stick figures, or the utterly committed performances of their cast. And then comes that abandoned house at the end…

6. “Audition” (1999)
If Eli Roth and Rob Zombie find your film hard to watch, then by the standards of the genre, you must be doing something right. Granted, director Takashi Miike knows how to cause outrage and spill blood like few other filmmakers: his notorious “Ichi the Killer” is genuinely difficult to witness, and his 1999 picture “Audition” manages to go even further in that diabolical direction. Indeed, I know the warning that certain films “aren’t for those with strong stomachs” gets thrown around a lot. Cruelty and savagery are now par for the course the horror genre, and when employed intelligently, they can be crucial factors in a particular film’s success. But seriously, if witnessing the most vile acts of human degradation is something you’re not into, best to not venture anywhere near Miike’s twisted exercise in psychological sadism (the scene where a man is forced to eat his own vomit out of a dog bowl is something that simply can’t be unseen). The fact that there’s been talking of remaking the movie is depressing, considering how stale those sorts of things usually are — which isn’t to say that with flicks like “It Follows” and “The Babadook” aren’t indicative of a sort of new-millennium horror renaissance, but rather that Miike’s venomous vision is something to treasure, not cannibalize. Go ahead and check it out, if you fancy, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.