The 1990s had a profound effect on a lot of us moviegoers. Truly, this was a decade to flock to theaters to experience the most gripping movie magic. It was a time of blockbuster spectacles, visually flawless masterpieces, and epic Best Picture winners, when movies had our utmost attention and thrilled us with what they had to say. Some struck all the right notes and became known as some of the most intense films of the decade.
The ’90s were defined by intensity. From nail-biting thrillers to monumentally frightening horrors, there’s a plethora to consider to be the most intense of these thrilling ten years. The movies below stand out as the most gripping and shocking of the 1990s, and even intense doesn’t fully describe the effect when watching some of these. Even decades later, these will grip you in until the very end, and keep you on the edge of your seat with how stressful they get.
10
‘Saving Private Ryan’ (1998)
Kicking off this list is one of the ’90s most defining war films, Saving Private Ryan, the riveting classic from director Steven Spielberg. Its impact on cinema is legendary, from its shockingly realistic opening scene to the gripping story about a team of brave soldiers risking their lives in a rescue to save one man trapped behind enemy lines. It instantly hooks you in from start to finish, but above all, it absolutely blows you away with its graphic violence.
The opening D-Day landing scene is still considered one of the bloodiest, most chaotic, and pulse-pounding sequences in film history. It’s been famously praised as so frighteningly realistic, in fact, that the Department of Veterans Affairs actually set up a trauma hotline for veterans who experienced flashbacks after watching the film. This fact is a testament to a truly profound masterpiece that continues to have an emotional grip on viewers.
9
‘Natural Born Killers’ (1994)
Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone stunned many audiences in 1994 with his shockingly bizarre and hyper-violent romantic crime film Natural Born Killers. One of the most controversial films of that decade, it gained nationwide recognition for its explicit themes and bold approach when addressing the harms of desensitizing violence in the mass media. Some critics say its message backfired as the film became banned, and even inspired tragic real-life crimes.
Natural Born Killers is quite unflinching in its portrayal of violence and other touchy subjects, and for some, it’s almost too much to watch at times, as it holds nothing back in what Stone had to say in his story. From grizzly murders to family trauma, the amount of shock in this daring film is staggering, and it can still leave many new viewers deeply unsettled at the end, even after several decades.
8
‘Crash’ (1996)
From the fascinating, creative mind behind some of the most unique body horror films in history, David Cronenberg, comes his eerie, bizarre, and darkly erotic thriller Crash, released in 1996. Starring James Spader, it’s a one-of-a-kind story about a film producer who falls down a dark rabbit hole when, after surviving a near-fatal car crash, he joins a sadomasochistic group that fetishizes gruesome car crashes.
Sparking much controversy when it was released, Crash was a rating nightmare that was hard to pass through censorship and even straight-up banned in certain places for its shocking premise and appalling sexual acts and violence. It gets quite disturbing and hard to watch at points, featuring unsettling imagery and unspeakable character acts so intense that they truly feel unbelievable and forbidden.
7
‘Heat’ (1995)
From Michael Mann comes his action crime masterpiece that became one of the most thrilling films of the ’90s, 1995’s Heat. Action-packed, pulse-pounding, and nail-bitingly tense, this Al Pacino-led thrill ride is the ultimate game of cops and robbers as it follows a seasoned crackdown detective right on the heels of a professional heist crew after they make a mistake at their latest robbery.
With intensely realistic shoot-outs, adrenaline-fueled chase sequences, and masterful performances, Heat is undeniably one of the most riveting films of this decade and a new benchmark for action thrillers. Time has only improved its standing. Indeed, nowadays, Heat is widely considered a masterpiece of escalation that powerfully keeps the audience’s attention span throughout the entire runtime, thrilling them in between with all the action and destruction they could ever want.
6
‘Misery’ (1990)
From the incredible collaboration between horror icon Stephen King and the late Rob Reiner comes a compelling film adaptation of King’s successful novel, Misery. In a tremendous Oscar-winning performance, Kathy Bates plays Annie Wilkes, a disturbed former nurse who holds her favorite novelist, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), against his will after rescuing him from a car accident.
A very eerie, stressful, and claustrophobic psychological thriller, Misery excels in giving audiences the most unforgettable, tense experience. Kathy Bates shone in her villain role, contributing much to the film’s terror with her magnificent ability to flip the switch in Annie from being polite and caring to an unhinged monster willing to kill to get what she wants. Hers and James Caan’s talents when working in the infamous hobbling scene have made that moment all the harder to watch and highly intense. Overall, its gripping performances and shocking scenes truly turned Misery into a thrilling icon of the ’90s.
5
‘Funny Games’ (1997)
Proving to be the most heartbreaking and intense international thriller of the ’90s, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is a film no one will ever get out of their minds after seeing it once. It’s a tragic and unapologetically disturbing thriller that only grows with every scene, following an innocent family on vacation as they’re forced to play sick and twisted games for the amusement of two unhinged teenage boys.
Funny Games strips away any positivity or any chance of a hopeful outcome, and instead forces audiences to witness senseless violence committed on a poor family. Its main goal is to make the audience a part of the violence, calling them out for how desensitized they have become to violent movies and shows. It’s depressing and profoundly dark, making it a hard but necessary watch that can still provoke as much as it did almost thirty years ago.
4
‘Audition’ (1999)
Japanese horror is so full of intense classics that it is hard to choose from. However, one that stands out the most from the ’90s is Takashi Miike‘s horror drama Audition, a fascinating and tense slow-burner that takes its time but leads to one hell of a disturbing climax. It follows a middle-aged man whose attempts at finding love go horribly wrong when he sets up a mock audition for a TV show to find a suitor, only to fall in love with a mysterious woman who is not who she appears to be.
It features one of the most shocking and stomach-churning torture sequences in horror history, a scene that looks so explicitly painful and drawn out that it feels like it lasts forever. Watching it once can evoke so much dread or disgust and leave viewers terribly disturbed for hours after the ending. Audition is an enduring horror masterpiece that’s too shocking and intense to ignore, and undoubtedly represents some of the heaviest films of this decade.
3
‘Cape Fear’ (1991)
Hollywood legends Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro teamed up in another one of their glorious collaborations when creating 1991’s Cape Fear, a chilling nail-biter, which was a remake of a 1962 version starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Starring alongside Nick Nolte, De Niro is at his most intense as Max Cady, a vengeful criminal seeking vengeance on the defense lawyer who broke the law to put him away for years.
It’s Scorsese’s powerful direction and De Niro’s magnificent versatility that turned Cape Fear into one of the ’90s most edge-of-your-seat and unsettling movie-going experiences. Cady is perhaps De Niro’s scariest role, and he is an actor who played Frankenstein’s Monster (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) and the Devil (Angel Heart) at one point. His scenes are filled with so much tension and dread; who knows what his character will do? And, truly, some of the acts Cady does in this film will leave viewers speechless long after the end credits. Scary, suspenseful, and utterly unpredictable, Scorsese’s Cape Fear sure is unforgettable.
2
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)
The only horror film to ever win the coveted Best Picture, the late Jonathan Demme‘s The Silence of the Lambs is the suspenseful thriller masterpiece that horrified countless movie-goers in the early ’90s. A tense, perfectly-paced, and powerfully acted film, it’s a gripping mystery that follows a young FBI trainee as she probes the mind of a brilliant convicted cannibal in her quest to hunt a killer on the loose before he strikes again.
From Sir Anthony Hopkins‘ eerily hypnotic performance as the infamous Dr. Hannibal Lecter to his character’s tense mind game with Jodie Foster‘s Clarice Starling, and finally, to Starling’s horrifying confrontation in the dark basement with the Buffalo Bill serial killer (Ted Levine) at the end, The Silence of the Lambs is a psychologically intense thrill-ride. Even decades later, it still has a profound effect on those who’ve seen it. This seminal thriller has some of the most suspenseful and nail-biting movie moments, not just in the ’90s, but of all time.
1
‘Se7en’ (1995)
Coming in at number one is the chilling and frighteningly dark thriller masterpiece by David Fincher, Se7en. Oscar-winners Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt take on two iconic roles as a pair of detectives trying to stop an elusive killer who bases his murders on the seven deadly sins.
It’s a grim, atmospheric film that builds with so much dread, and some of its highlights, especially the iconic sloth victim scene and every moment involving John Doe (Kevin Spacey), are deeply intense, spine-chilling, and powerfully unforgettable. Despite being more than thirty years old now, Se7en‘s intensity has never dwindled and is still considered one of the most shocking and unsettling films in cinematic history.
Source link
-
-
-
-
-
