Scariest Horror Movies Of The 90s

#1 Candyman

If you’ve never seen Candyman, the movie based on Clive Barker‘s short story The Forbidden, then the trailer could be pretty confusing, what with the bees and the hook and all. When you see the movie, the pieces connect so well, and the story is told so perfectly, that it will likely become one of your favorites.

Starring Tony Todd and Virginia Madsen, Candyman tells the story of a graduate student who is studying urban legends and becomes interested in the local Chicago legend of the Candyman. Similar to Bloody Mary, the Candyman appears when he is summoned by saying his name five times while facing a mirror. Once he shows up, the Candyman brutally murders the summoner with a hook jammed in the bloody stump of his right arm.

Candyman uses the paranormal slasher genre to tell a story about racism in America, taking the genre to a new height.

#2 Jacob's Ladder

Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a Vietnam vet whose entire unit died in horrific ways during the war. Or were they? Back in New York, Jacob starts experiencing vivid hallucinations and soon neither he nor we know what happened at all. Best not to quibble with the specifics; you don't need to wrap your head around the tangled plot to be scared.

Hide behind a cushion when: Jacob's girlfriend starts dirty jiving with a stranger on the dancefloor at a party... and metamorphoses into something indescribably eerie.

#3 It

Singlehandedly causing a nation of folks to fear and loathe clowns, Stephen King's It is one of the scariest movies of all time — mostly because of Tim Curry's portrayal of Pennywise the clown. Eight friends struggle against Pennywise as he resurfaces 30 years after they first encounter him as children. There's a remake on the way, but we can't imagine anything measuring up to the original. Good luck sleeping with the lights off after watching this movie.

#4 Exorcist III

It’s rare that the third film in a series is any good, but for horror, it happens more often than not. In many cases, the second movie in a horror franchise is too similar to the first and the studio decides to try something different with the third. Sometimes, like with The Exorcist III, the change is so dramatic that it takes ages for an audience to discover the movie.

Exorcist III wasn’t originally an Exorcist movie. With 1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic being a critical and box office failure, no one was chomping at the bit for another dive into that pool, but when William Peter Blatty began to turn his novel Legion into a film, the studio demanded that he connect it to his best-known work, The Exorcist. While the movie is primarily about a serial killer in Washington D.C. whose work has a satanic feel to it, it initially had few ties to the classic horror movie. The studio forced Blatty to add in an exorcism, which was added to the climax of the movie, and the writer/director was able to make it work beautifully.

Along with being a fantastic mystery, Exorcist III also features one of the greatest jump scares in movie history.

#5 The Sixth Sense

A child psychologist (Bruce Willis) attempts to help a spooky kid (Haley Joel Osment) who reckons he sees ghosts. But the more time he spends with the child, the more it seems his delusions might be true. You probably already know the ending, but even so, theres something enduringly eerie about this movie. Largely due to a trio of solid turns from Willis, Osment and Toni Collette as the boy's struggling mother.

Hide behind a cushion when: Well, if you dont wanna see dead people, youre gonna have to spend a lot of time behind that cushion. Especially the bit when the young ghost whisperer spies a young girl in his apartment. Yeesh. You'll never want to camp again.

#6 Misery

You thought YOU were a big fan of your favorite book? You ain't got nothing on Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). When her favorite author (James Caan) is involved in a car crash near her snowy mountain home, she takes it on herself to nurse him back to health. And by "nurse him" we mean kidnap him, hold him hostage as he heals, and then cripple him when it seems like he's going to get better. There's nothing overtly scary about this movie, but Kathy Bates' icy, weird kindness is about as terrifying as it gets.

#7 Silence Of The Lambs

No one knew it at the time, but 1991’s Silence of the Lambs would start a new fascination with what we today call the serial killer procedural story. There had been movies about police and FBI agents before Jonathan Demme‘s film based on the Thomas Harris novel, but this one captured audiences in a way few other films ever have, thanks in no small part to the work of Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.

Without Silence of the Lambs, there would be no Seven (which we’ll get to next), no Bones TV series, no CSI franchise. So much of America’s interest in serial killers and FBI agents over the last twenty years started with this film, and for good reason. Silence of the Lambs is amazingly terrifying in its realism. While the movie (and the novel it is based on) is partially based on the true-life killer Dr. Alfredo Ballí Treviño, the story is wholly original, but nonetheless creepy.

#8 Scream

By the start of the 1990s, the slasher genre was dead. Freddy Krueger’s story was ended with 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and an attempt to bring the franchise back in 1994’s New Nightmare didn’t catch the way the studio had hoped. Jason showed up in 1993 with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, but audiences didn’t really care to see it. With movies like Silence of the Lambs, supernatural horror had fallen out of fashion.

But in 1996, director Wes Craven, with a script by Kevin Williamson, breathed new life into the slasher genre with Scream. The movie, which was both frightening as well as fun, took a look at the slasher movies of the past with reverence while also questioning their effect on American society. While the true theme is held until the end of the film, Scream is a fantastic examination of the argument that entertainment can lead to real life violence.

Scream launched not only a new franchise but a new flood of “realistic” slasher films that included I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend.

#9 Wes Craven's New Nightmare

By the early '90s, the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise had devolved into a kind of campy quip-a-thon with the occasional freaky dream sequence thrown in for luck. New Nightmare was an attempt to make Freddy scary again by letting him prey on the cast and crew of the original movie. Wes Craven's return to the series he created did meta two years before his self-referential scarefest, Scream.

Hide behind a cushion when: Hide whenever you want, as long as you dont fall asleep.

#10 Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Hellraiser III is the last of the Hellraiser movies thats worth watching. Following the events of Hellraiser II, Pinhead gets trapped in an artefact known as the Pillar of Souls, which gets installed in a new nightclub. All hell, predictably, breaks loose when he begins feasting on clubbers in order to return to Earth.

Hide behind a cushion when: Chains spring out of the pillar and Pinhead starts making new Cenobites. Do peek over the cushion occasionally though, because some of the new Cenobite designs are gleefully weird.

#11 Arachnophobia

Spiders. Spiders. More and more and more spiders. A rural California town becomes infested with spiders, and it's as awful a nightmare as you'd imagine. No, really. It will give you actual nightmares. John Goodman plays the no-nonsense exterminator, while Jeff Daniels is Dr. Ross Jennings, the resident scaredy cat (aka all of us). Dr. Jennings and Delbert team up and get the best of the spiders once and for all. Watch this, and it's a safe bet you'll be itching for the rest of the day.

#12 Leprechaun

Yup, that's Jennifer Aniston in 1993's silliest (but ultimately still a little scary) horror movie. There's a plot concerning stolen gold, a leprechaun on a murderous rampage, and a family farm, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Aniston gets to strut her stuff while fending off a psychopath leprechaun. It's equal parts hilarious and scary. OK, not EQUAL parts, but it's worth the watch.

#13 Interview With a Vampire

These sexy vampires will out-seduce those Twilight vamps any day of the week — and they'll do it with such style and swagger that you'll be left asking, "Edward who?" Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt team up in Ann Rice's thriller to produce what might just be the absolute sexiest interpretation of the vampire mythology ever.

#14 The Frighteners

Originally intended to be the third Tales From the Crypt film following Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood, The Frighteners was Peter Jackson‘s first foray into the Hollywood machine. The New Zealand director had made a number of films, but most of them weren’t exactly catching the eyes of a wide audience. Horror fans loved Bad Taste and Braindead (a.k.a. Dead Alive) but even the most horror loving horror fan wasn’t so sure what Meet the Feebles was trying to do.

Then, in 1994, Jackson took the true story of two teen girls who committed a horrible murder in New Zealand and turned it into the amazing film Heavenly Creatures. Heavenly Creatures showed that Jackson could do more than crazy gore, and studios took notice.

While The Frighteners didn’t set the box office on fire, it has gained a strong following over the years, with special attention paid to the groundbreaking special effects as well as the fantastic acting work of Michael J. Fox, Dee Wallace Stone, and Jake Busey. Jackson used The Frighteners to build Weta Digital, which would go on to help him bring Lord of the Rings to the screen.

#15 Ring

Youve definitely seen this one. Or, if you havent, youve seen one of the 3493849 copycats it inspired. Basically, its about a creepy little girl and her haunted videotape, which causes anyone who watches it to die within seven days. Its so scary that it probably put the final nail in the VHS formats coffin.

Hide behind a cushion when: Ryuji switches his telly on at the end, thinking the whole ordeal is over. Because it really, really isnt.