10 Essential Horror Movies From the 1990S

The best horror movie of the 90s is generally agreed to be Silence of the Lambs. Unfortunately, I hate Silence of the Lambs because it is grotesquely transphobic and because I dislike movies about how serial killers are smarter than everyone else. 

Luckily, there were lots of other good horror movies in the 1990s, especially if you take a broad view of what horror can mean. So here is a list of awesome 90s horror films that are not Silence of the Lambs, darn it.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)

Lynch’s greatest film doesn’t usually get listed as a horror film, but it’s easily the most terrifying movie of the decade.

Naked Lunch (1991)

The movie includes some of Cronenberg’s most vivid nightmare imagery, including a scene of the impassively amused Peter Weller as the Burroughs character sensually spreading heroin/bug killer on the talking asshole of a giant cockroach.

Audition (1999)

Audition jams a steel needle into the male gaze, though whether Miike wants to cut up men or women on it is unclear. He may be auditioning both.

Barton Fink (1991)

Earnest playwright of the working class Barton Fink (John Turturro) takes up residence in an eerie hotel room, with peeling wallpaper and out-of-season mosquitoes. Its corridors soon open to reveal bellowing serial killers and a nightmare of fire and blood.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola’s campy gothic aesthetic arguably found its perfect subject not in the mob, nor in the Vietnam war, but in this gloriously bloated monster pic.

Funny Games (1997)

The film has often been read as Haneke’s sadistic fantasy of torturing the bourgeoisie. But it also is a drawn-out parable about utter helplessness before the whims of the bored and wealthy.

Swipe up to learn more!