10 Best Supernatural Horror Movies Of The 1990s (According To Metacritic) – Screen Rant

From Candyman to The Blair Witch Project, here are the 10 best supernatural horror movies of the 1990s (according to Metacritic).

Supernatural movies come in all shapes and sizes, from ghost stories to demonic tales to slasher movies involving spirits, demons, and ghosts. They are also often polarizing, as horror is a very subjective genre, and that means critical reviews and scores are often different than the opinions of horror fans.

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In the '90s, horror cinema was in a weird spot. The slasher movies that dominated the '80s were out of style by the time the '90s began. It would be almost half a decade before horror bounced back with the self-referential horror movies of Scream and its ilk. However, the best horror movies are often not the blockbusters, and there were plenty of supernatural horror movies in the decade worth seeking out.

Candyman was a movie that came after the slasher movies ended but had a strong place in that genre's pantheon. However, there was a lot more under the hood of this horror movie than just a generic slasher.

Candyman was a movie about a supernatural vengeful demon, the son of a slave who became prosperous after the Civil War, who was murdered by a lynch mob for daring to love a white woman. The old Bloody Mary legend plays out here, and a person can summon him by saying his name five times while looking into a mirror.

The Faculty looks on the outside like most teen horror movies of the mid to late '90s, but there is more here than just another teen slasher movie. Released in 1998, The Faculty was Robert Rodriguez's only studio project, a horror movie that pays homage to classic movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

InThe Faculty, the teachers of a local high school are acting strange, and it is because they are possessed and controlled by aliens. The cast is amazing, with the teachersfeaturing Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, and Bebe Neuwirth and the students, including Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Jordanna Brewster, and Elijah Wood.

Jacob's Ladder was a mind-trip of a movie released in 1990 by director Adrian Lyne (Flashdance). The movie starred Tim Robbins as a Vietnam War vet who returned home from the war and realized he was having strange hallucinations.

While working as a postal clerk, he begins to believe that aliens and demons are trying to attack and kill him and begins to try to seek out the truth.Jacob's Ladder is a strong study on PTSD soldiers carried back with them, but the endingfeatures a twist that no one saw coming.

Speaking of twists, M. Night Shyamalan has madehis career making movies with massive twist endings. Many of them didn't land, and it eventually became a running joke for his movies. However, when it comes to the movie that started it all, Shyamalan knocked it out of the park with The Sixth Sense.

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This is a ghost movie with Bruce Willis starring as a child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe, who failed one of his patients and wants to make up for it when he meets a new child (Haley Joel Osment) who claims he can see dead people.

A film that remains mostly unknown to mainstream audiences but was one of the top supernatural movies of the '90s is Nadja. This is a vampire movie shot in an arthouse style, starring Elina Lwensohn and Peter Fonda.

Lwensohn is Nadja, the daughter of Dracula, who shows up to claim her father's body after his death. Fonda is Van Helsing, andwhen he learns someone took Dracula's body, he sets out to find out who and for what reason.

In a movie that was two years before its time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare did what Scream did in 1996, but in 1994, fans were not quite ready for it. However, critics recognized its greatness and rewarded it with positive reviews.

In the self-referential horror movie, Wes Craven plans to make a newNightmare movie and enlists Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund to return. All three play versions of themselves, but then the movie shows that Freddy Krueger is real and has manipulated Craven to make the movies and now wants to use Heather's son to enter the real world.

Arguably, the best year for horror movies in the '90s came in the last year of the decade as three of the top 10 rated horror movies of the '90s came out within weeks of each other.The Sixth Sense was one of these movies, and the second was the superior Kevin Bacon ghost movie, Stir of Echoes.

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In Stir of Echoes, Bacon is Tom, a man who lives in a working-class Chicago neighborhood with his wife and son. However, after agreeing to go under hypnosis at a neighbor's house party, he starts to see a ghost who wants him to help her, and when she starts to contact his son, he knows he has no choice.

Guillermo del Toro created some of the best critically acclaimed movies of the 2000s, and in the '90s, he was just getting started. In 1994, Del Toro directedhis debut feature filmCronos.

This was a Spanish-language independentmovie starring Argentinean actor Frederico Luppi and future Del Toro stalwart Ron Perlman. Thestory is about an artifact that gives a person eternal life, but it comes with a cost, including the thirst for blood. Theplot showcases a battle for this object and reveals what people will go through to achieve immortality.

Released in 1990,The Witches is a supernatural horror movie for all-ages, based on the novel by Roald Dahl. The movie stars Anjelica Huston as the head of a witches' coven who plans to turn all children into mice.

However, when she sets her eyes on one specific child and turns him into a mouse, his grandmother will do anything in her power to make the witch pay and bring her child back. The movie was recently remade in 2020 with Anne Hathaway as an HBO Max movie.

The third movie from 1999 to sit in the Top 10 critically ranked supernatural horror movies of the '90s by Metacritic is also the highest-rated one of the year.The Blair Witch Project is the only supernatural horror movie from the '90s that eclipsed an 80 on Metacritic.

An independent movie, the film tells the story of three student filmmakers who head out into the woods to explore the legend ofthe Blair Witch, never to return. Themovie plays out as a found footage story, one of the first of its kind.

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Shawn S. Lealos is a freelance writer who received his Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma with a minor in Film Studies. He has worked as a journalist for over 20 years, first in the world of print journalism before moving to online media as the world changed. Shawn is a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle before relocating to Texas and has work published in the Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma Gazette, Vox Magazine and Loud Magazine and on websites like The Huffington Post, CBS, Time Warner Cable, Yahoo, The Movie Network, Chud, Renegade Cinema, 411mania and Sporting News. Shawn is also a published author, with a non-fiction book about the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers and has begun work on a new fiction series as well. Visit Shawn Lealos' website to learn more about his novel writing and follow him on Twitter @sslealos.

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10 Best Supernatural Horror Movies Of The 1990s (According To Metacritic) - Screen Rant