8 Forgotten ‘90s Gems That Deserve a Modern Reboot

The 1990s were the best decade for high-concept movies with bold narrative styles. On one hand, you had up-and-coming talented filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, and many more who delivered critically acclaimed and blockbuster movies on the big screen.

But on the other side, some films were either way ahead of their time or too ambitious to pull off. They came, made some noise, and were then forgotten by audiences within the noise of big-budget, highly marketable films.

These films had something unique to them—be it the plot, visual effects, set design, or just the potential of being a great movie. This list consists of such ‘90s forgotten gems that deserve a modern remake today. Let’s jump in.

8 Forgotten ‘90s Movies I Would Reboot Right Away

1. Strange Days (1995)

The juggernaut woman behind the camera and the Academy Award winner, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, is the most underrated cyberpunk movie of all time. Co-written by James Cameron, the plot follows a former LAPD cop, Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), who illegally sells real people’s past experiences in a virtual reality program. When he encounters a murder in footage, he teams up with a friend, Mace (Angela Bassett), only to unravel a vast conspiracy involving the police force.

Strange Days never quite received the love it deserved, but continues to be a cult movie that will appeal to contemporary audiences. With an excellent premise and an extraordinary showcase of sci-fi elements, it was a movie ahead of its time. I feel confident in saying that the Strange Days reboot will definitely be a blockbuster in today’s cinematic landscape. However, it continues to surprise me how this genre-bending gem became a forgettable flop, and why?

2. Dark City (1998)

In a world where we, as people, are continuously starved of new images, Alex Proyas’s Dark City nourishes our sensibilities. This gothic noir sci-fi film follows John Murdock (Rufus Sewell), who wakes up in a hotel to find that he is accused of a series of brutal murders. His search for identity and memory leads him to a sinister underworld controlled by beings called “strangers.”

More than the story, Dark City excels in its art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects, and your imagination. Like Blade Runner, it imagines a city of the future and then drops it into the framework of Severance, but with a more ominous and shadowy spirit. Just imagine a reboot of Dark City in today’s world of identity crises and jarring stimulation.

3. The Game (1997)

In my opinion, David Fincher’s ‘90s classic thriller The Game is his least talked-about movie of all time. It stars Michael Douglas as Nicholas Van Orton, a rich man with an obsessive control over his life. When his estranged brother, Conrad (Sean Penn), arrives at his door with a harmless real-life game, Orton agrees to participate, and soon he finds himself trapped, blackmailed, and wandering like a homeless man throughout the movie, scared.

The whole movie is a control freak’s worst nightmare—it has a relentless pace that grips the viewer’s attention and doesn’t let go. Now, to adapt it in 2026, just imagine swapping the rich banker with a wealthy tech billionaire who owns technology and algorithms that start working against him in a game of life and death. I’m just thinking out loud. Someone, please plant this inception into Fincher’s mind.

4. The Faculty (1998)

Robert Rodriguez is one of the most influential directors who rose through the independent film scene in the ‘90s. Among all his films, I can’t wrap my head around why a movie like The Faculty is not talked about much anymore. Even Ryan Coogler mentioned Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn and The Faculty as two of the biggest influences for his latest blockbuster, Sinners, during its marketing. In The Faculty, a bunch of teens discover that their high school staff and students are being taken over by a monstrous alien form.

The Faculty is smart and full of horror genre violence. Moreover, it is a homage to several genre favorites, notably the cult classics Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing. I won’t have to justify much why this movie deserves a great remake—it’s rumored that director Robert Rodriguez is working on a new version of the film, which is being developed right now at Miramax.

5. Event Horizon (1997)

It’s the year 2047, and a rescue team is dispatched into deep space upon discovering a research vessel that disappeared seven years ago. With no trace of human life in the vessel, an evil force awaits the arrival of the rescue team. The visuals of Event Horizon are majestic, and it’s full of barely audible, squeaky voice-like noises, just like 2001: A Space Odyssey, that’ll creep you out.

Event Horizon went from a box office bomb to a cult sci-fi horror. Initially, critics dismissed the film as derivative and excessive. But Event Horizon’s disturbing blend of psychological horror and graphic imagery still holds up, although there wasn’t much substance to it. However, I can see Event Horizon’s modern reboot becoming the classic body horror in space we need in the late 2020s.

6. Flatliners (1990)

Interestingly enough, Flatliners already had a 2017 reboot with a 4% Tomatometer, so we shouldn’t really get into it because it lacked the original’s dread and depth. The film follows a group of young people wanting to visit the land beyond life and return to tell the story. So, they devise a dangerous experiment to create a condition of clinical death in order to learn about the afterlife.

The consequences of such an experiment are terrifying and intriguing, making its premise worth rebooting for. Flatliners is an original and intelligent thriller, but it wears you out due to repetitive patterns and crises. With just a little restructuring and tightening of the plot, the film deserves to be made once more. Imagine Christopher Nolan doing the remake with a way darker approach than Inception.

7. Cube (1997)

Cube is what you get when you fuse sci-fi with sinister horror tropes. It remains one of the decade’s most visually stunning films. It follows a group of strangers attempting to escape a series of deadly, labyrinthine cube-shaped rooms.

Imagine a film being recognized as the best Canadian debut feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, yet the world forgot about it within the next decade. In a world where Escape Room and the Saw franchise blew the roof off the largely single-location horror genre, director Vincenzo Natali’s ‘90s cult classic would fare well with a modern reboot—if reworked with advanced visual and practical effects.

8. Mystery Men (1999)

I find Kinka Usher’s Mystery Men a wholesome entertainer with lots of potty jokes. Basically, it’s a superhero spoof movie where characters are designed to make fun of themselves. Their superhero powers do not deter their enemies from attacking the city, which in itself is a silly enough premise that’ll make you chuckle.

The USP of this movie is its distinct, witty superhero characters played by Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria, Geoffrey Rush, and Paul Reubens. Every once in a while, there’ll come a punch that’ll leave you with a big laugh. So, why did people forget about it? Bad timing. In 1999, when the superhero genre was in its early stages, this superhero satire felt out of place. But in 2026, with the peak of superhero fatigue, a reboot of Mystery Men is nothing short of a gold mine.