This is the ninth entry in a series that I am doing on the best, or at least my favorite, live-action horror films of each year. This series includes a winning film along with up to five or so honorable mentions for each year. I also throw in some of what I call “tangential bonus films” at the end. These are films that incorporate horror elements but, in my view at least, do not primarily fit within the horror genre. These tangential bonus films are thus not actually horror films per se but are films that should be enjoyed by horror fans for their comedic or other use of horror elements and subject matter.
Overall, 1998 was a bit of a weird year in horror, especially compared to the relative strength of recent years like 1996 and 1997, and a truly standout year like 1999. That is not to say it was a bad year, as the weakest year for the decade when it comes to horror is still 1993. However, this was the first year in a while where I struggled to find six horror films that really connected with me. The output of teen horror films was particularly disappointing given that studios were interested in cashing in on the commercial success of Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997). Of the half dozen or so teen horror movies released in 1998, only one or two of them (depending on how you want to label/count them) were actually good, and several should have been better than they ended up being. (Yes, I am looking at you Disturbing Behavior. You were a disappointment. But hey we can blame studio interference and butchering for that one.)
And as per usual, there are always some obvious choices for each year that horror fans would expect to see on here, as these films are known and regularly make appearances on best of the decade lists. I definitely include some of those, but I also try to include some smaller, oddball, or cult films that I particularly enjoy. Given that these are my picks, of course they all come recommended. I also went overboard again and included four entries in the category of the tangential bonus film. The weird theme there this time is that the movie posters in the tangential section really love the red and black motif. I recommend all of those as well, as films that are perhaps a better classification fit with other genres though they certainly incorporate some horror elements and should be of interest to a horror audience. Unlike some of the previous years, I did not find any clear or obvious overarching themes or through lines connecting these six horror entries. They represent a range of horror subgenres as well as a range of film production budgets, but I enjoy all six of them.
As always, horror is one of the truly underappreciated film genres, and the 1990s as a decade is one of the underappreciated eras within horror film. That decade is often thought of as a bit of a ‘dark ages’ situation between the numerous horror classics of the 1970s and 1980s and the modern revival of the genre and the dominance of highbrow, artsy, or ‘elevated’ horror films during the late 2000s and especially during the 2010s. That reason, and that we are now culturally in a bit of a 1990s nostalgia period, is why I wanted to start in the 1990s and proceed through the decade year by year. There were quite a few quality horror films that came out during the 1990s that are worth rediscovering. So, whether you are a horror fan, or just looking for a hit of that sweet 1990s nostalgia, I hope you enjoy this list. Previous horror lists for 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 are available, so check those out as well.
Winner: Fallen
MPAA Rating: R
Fallen is one of those movies that makes you glad that you watch horror movies, and in particular it makes me glad that I am doing this list series. Believe it or not, but I had not seen this movie before I started doing this series. But folks, I can tell you that there was no real competition here. Fallen is far and away the best horror movie released in 1998. And it is one of the most underrated, underappreciated, and wrongly maligned horror films of the decade. If you were to look at the embarrassingly low score on Rotten Tomatoes, then you might wonder how I could pick this one as my favorite from the year. Well, the critics are simply wrong about this one. I have never seen such a concentrated dosage of just flat-out wrong reviews of a movie. But hey sometimes Rotten Tomatoes gets is wrong, and this is a particularly egregious case.
Denzel Washington gives a standout acting performance as a homicide detective, named John Hobbes, who caught and witnesses the execution of a serial killer. However, following the killer’s death a series of apparent copycat killings begin occurring around the city. We eventually learn that the entity doing the killing is actually a noncorporeal fallen angel that can move between human bodies by touch. There is considerable back and forth between Hobbes and the fallen angel as the demon/angel tries to ruin Hobbes’ life and potentially frame him for the copycat murders, and Hobbes of course tries to stop the demon/angel from wreaking any further damage on the world.
There are so many great scenes and sequences, and I do not want to ruin any of this for people that have not seen it. The story is very original and everything about the film is executed well. It features a great cast including the likes of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Embeth Davidtz, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. We get a great and memorable use of the Rolling Stones’ song “Time Is On My Side“. Plus, the ending is phenomenal.
Fallen was released against some box office juggernauts and seems to have gotten lost in the mix. Plus, wrongly negative critical reviews likely turned away casual moviegoers and contributed to this film being a relative commercial flop. Fallen is truly one of those overlooked gems of a film and comes highly recommended! Fallen should have been a critical and commercial success on the level of Seven (1995) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but instead it lives on as a cult classic.
Honorable Mention: The Ring (Ringu)
Not Rated
I say in jest that this is our obligatory non-English language horror film on this list. In all honesty, the original Ring film here is a well-made and highly influential film both in the world of Japanese horror itself as well as internationally for popularizing Japanese horror films outside of Asia. The Ring was one of the first of the Asian horror films to gain popularity in North America and received an American remake in 2002, which itself really kicked off the phenomenon during the 2000s decade of English language remakes of Asian horror films.
The story follows a journalist investigating an urban legend about a cursed video tape that causes its viewers to die seven days afterward. Her niece and some of the niece’s friends had died mysteriously and are thought to have viewed the cursed tape. Our journalist, played by Nanako Matsushima, is able to locate the tape and views it and receives the ominous phone call about the seven days. She recruits her psychic ex-husband, played by Hiroyuki Sanada, to help her investigate the history behind the tape and identify who the girl on the tape is. We learn that the girl on the tape is the vengeful spirit of Sadako Yamamura who was a psychic child that was the product of an affair between her psychic mother and a researcher. Her father tries to kill her and drop her body in a well, but Sadako survived in the well long enough for her psychic energy to imprint on a video tape.
As I said, the original Ring film is a well-made movie and a highly influential one. While this type of movie and this type of story is really not my preferred type of horror, the original Ring film is still essential viewing for horror fans for the year and the decade.
Honorable Mention: Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later
MPAA Rating: R
I have talked a bunch about the Halloween multiverse, so I do not intend to revisit much of that here. Suffice it to say that H20 exists within what I have called the first internal reboot, and it is possibly the best of all of the Halloween sequels. H20 is noteworthy as one of the earliest of Hollywood’s attempt to reboot a popular franchise and ignore later unpopular sequels rather than continue down and be contained by the restrictions of the events of other sequel films. H20 is definitely one of those films that popularized the reboot approach to salvaging a film franchise. H20 was also the attempt at the reinvention of this classic slasher franchise for the Scream generation. There was story input by Kevin Williamson and the plot features a number of teenagers portrayed by up-and-coming actors.
And speaking of those teenage characters, one of the highlights of H20 compared to other Halloween films is the strength of the cast. We of course get the welcome return of Jamie Lee Curtis to the character that made her a star: that of course being the iconic final girl Laurie Strode. In this timeline, Laurie Strode faked her death, changed her name, and now is the headmaster at a boarding school in rural California. Her love interest is one of the teachers played by Adam Arkin. And her son, played by Josh Hartnett, attends the school. Other noteworthy cast members are Michelle Williams, Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and even LL Cool J as the school’s security guard. I would also be remiss if I did not mention that H20 is the second and final film in which the mother-daughter acting tandem of Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh appear in the same film. The first was actually John Carpenter’s 1980 film The Fog. In H20, Leigh plays one of the employees at the school, and I absolutely love her final scene where she gets to be ‘maternal’ and we get nods to her role in Psycho with her car and the musical score.
H20 is also probably Jamie Lee Curtis’ best actual acting performance in the entire series, and that is certainly one of the true highlights of the film. Yes, 1978’s original film is iconic, but Curtis was a young and relatively inexperienced actor back then. But here she is a much more seasoned actor just over twenty years into her career, and it shows for the better. The story and script allow her to do actual dramatic work as a mother, as a headmaster, and as someone that survived the trauma of her serial killer sibling. I also love that Curtis was pivotal in making this film happen and that she was the one that wanted to revisit the franchise on its 20th anniversary. H20 also has my favorite ending to any Halloween film, and the one that is certainly the most satisfying. Sadly, this ending is horribly undone by the next film, but the less said about that abomination of a film the better as I like to pretend that it does not even exist.
But having gone through the good things with this film, I suppose I must also mention the common criticisms with this film that I definitely agree with. The masks used in this film are not great, to put it mildly. The score borrows sections from other films. And the runtime is actually too short, and the film would have benefited from more character work and development, and even another set piece or two in there.
But having said all of that, H20 is still possibly my favorite of the Halloween sequels. And it is definitely the conclusion of my preferred Halloween trilogy, featuring the 1978 original of course, then 1981’s Halloween II, and then wrapping it up twenty years later here with H20. Honestly, you can get rid of the rest of the movies in the franchise for all I care. Those are my three.
Honorable Mention: Bride of Chucky
MPAA Rating: R
The Chucky or Child’s Play series is one of those horror franchises that I have never been a huge fan of. The series began in 1988 with the original Child’s Play film. The series continued into the 1990s with Child’s Play 2 in 1990 and Child’s Play 3 in 1991. Regular readers will notice that those two films did not make my best of lists for those years, which you can correctly interpret as another way of me saying that I am not a huge fan of this series. However, this series is unique and noteworthy among the horror franchises for having the same creative force behind it for the bulk of its run. This was the creator and writer Don Mancini.
Given that the fourth film in the series, Bride of Chucky, is on this year’s list, then you can correctly deduce that it is one of the few from the series that I genuinely do enjoy. In fact, Bride of Chucky is my favorite film in the entire series. It was directed by Ronny Yu who before this was known for directing martial arts movies. That does not mean we get any martial arts scenes. Rather, this was part of the intentional reinvention of the series for the 1990s. While still a supernatural slasher film about a possessed doll, Bride of Chucky does move the series into a much more comedic direction. Chucky made some wise cracks in the previous films, and here they really expand on the dark humor side of the character. And the film succeeds because of that productive balancing of horror and dark humor. Another influence on this film was the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein film which likewise took the Frankenstein series into a more comedic direction.
Horror veteran Brad Dourif returns of course as the voice of Chucky, and he is as wonderful as ever in the role. But what elevates this film is the introduction of Jennifer Tilly’s character to the series. Tilly is one of the best elements in this movie as she is a breath of fresh air for the franchise. Her chemistry with Dourif is seamless, and it makes you wonder why they did not have the idea of a romantic interest for Chucky prior to this film. In terms of other cast inclusions, it is also fun to see people like John Ritter and Katherine Heigl in this type of a movie.
The story would continue down this more comedic line with the next movie, 2004’s Seed of Chucky. Sadly, that film really drove this more fun side of Chucky into more dumb and ridiculous terrain and really drove this series into the ground for a long time afterwards. It is telling that they did not make another entry in this series until 2013’s Curse of Chucky. That nine-year gap is the longest in the history of the series, and that is not a coincidence. However, the mediocrity of the follow up does not take away from the genuine fun of this Bride of Chucky film, and for me this one marks the high point of the entire series.
Honorable Mention: The Faculty
MPAA Rating: R
Remember how I said on the 1996 list that Scream was the product of the beautiful creative synergy between director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson? Well I did. But anyway, we get somewhat of a lesser duplication of that here with The Faculty. Kevin Williamson was the screenwriter here, and the director was Robert Rodriguez whose previous film was also on my best of 1996 list. That of course was From Dusk Till Dawn. What Scream was for teen slasher films, The Faculty is for body snatching alien invasion movies. It borrows heavily from classic horror movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing, and really is basically just a Scream-style version of that type of story except in a high school context.
There were actually several other movies along these similar lines of variations on the theme of aliens trying to take over the planet by infiltrating our bodies. Some examples of that include 1994’s The Puppet Masters, 1996’s The Arrival, and even the actual Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake in 1993 called simply Body Snatchers. Where Scream succeeded as being possibly the best teen slasher film of the decade, The Faculty also succeeds in being probably the best alien body snatching movie of the decade.
The Scream movies succeeded in their enjoyability partially by including a large number of recognizable faces, especially of younger and up-and-coming actors. The Faculty does the same. Some of these younger and up-and-coming actors include Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Usher, and Laura Harris. And yes, I said Josh Hartnett, which in conjunction with H20 above means that we get two Josh Hartnett movies on this year’s list. As for the older actors, we also get a bunch of recognizable faces including Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Christopher McDonald, Daniel von Bargen, and even Jon Stewart. Yes, that is a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart!
While overall, The Faculty is not as great of a film as say Scream, or The Thing, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it is a more than adequate blending of all three of those movies. Depending on how you want to label H20 above, The Faculty is also clearly the best of the teen horror movies from 1998. There were several mediocre or otherwise disappointing teen horror movies from 1998 including the likes of Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legend, and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Again, The Faculty is an enjoyable film within the mold of Scream, and is the cream of the crop of its type for the year.
Honorable Mention: Pi
MPAA Rating: R
Pi is a bizarre yet quality first film by writer and director Darren Aronofsky. His films often span and incorporate a range of genre elements but deploy them toward a psychological story concept. While Aronofsky is not a purely horror director, and in all honestly very few prominent directors are pure horror directors (including the horror masters), horror is definitely one of those genre elements at play. Along with Pi, some of his other films that lean into horror are 2010’s Black Swan and 2017’s Mother.
Pi itself is a frenetic psychological horror film in the vein of David Lynch. The film was made on a microscopic budget and became a critical darling. The story centers on a mathematician named Max Cohen who believes that everything can be explained by numbers, and he is trying to find the mathematical basis to everything. Due to his obsession and paranoia regarding his work, he suffers from chronic headaches, hallucinations, and like a host of diagnoseable personality disorders. Several groups of people take an interest in his work including a group of Hasidic Jews who believe the Torah is a mathematical code for deciphering God, as well as a group of Wall Street people interested in his use of mathematics to try to predict the stock market.
While there is not much violence in the movie per se, there are a number of disturbing and surrealist scenes as we experience this obsession and paranoia through his own mind. What pushes Pi into the terrain of horror is that the viewer experiences the plot through the already mad, obsessed, and paranoid mind of Cohen, and we follow him until he finally breaks. I personally debate the ending whether he is actually at peace at the end or whether he is just truly broken. Nonetheless, Pi is a fascinating trip through a different type of insane (read: non-homicidal) mind, and Aronofsky is able to pull it off.
Tangential Bonus 1: Blade
MPAA Rating: R
Given my affinity for superhero films, you regular readers should not be surprised to see this one here as it appeared previously on my best superhero movies of the 1990s list. Blade is one of those great superhero movies based on a Marvel Comics character before Marvel itself got into the business of making movies. Blade was released by New Line Cinema. The character is a vampire hunter, which goes a long way to explaining its place here in the tangential section as a horror adjacent movie. As I said back on that earlier list: “The film is significant though both for Marvel characters and the entire genre in demonstrating that you can actually produce a quality film based on a comic book character and do so by staying true enough to the character and the subject matter to earn the R rating. Blade, as a vampire hunter, not only earns the rating, but the film delivers on quality action sequences and a serviceable plot”. And that is really the core of it. Blade is a solid vampire action movie and delivers a number of memorable and now iconic scenes and sequences, and numerous quality kills. Plus, Wesley Snipes excels in the titular role and his performance is one of those elements that makes the film work and deserving of its revered status.
Tangential Bonus 2: The X-Files: Fight the Future
MPAA Rating: PG13
The X-Files was one of the most successful television series of the 1990s decade with its original run from 1993 to 2002. The show followed the careers and lives of two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson), who get assigned the most bizarre cases. Mulder believes in the paranormal and the existence of extraterrestrial life, while Scully is a medical doctor and does not believe in such things. Much of the character drama and dynamism from the show comes from their contrasting personalities and their mutual attempt to discover the truth of what is happening. The show was also balanced between monster-of-the-week episodes and some larger narrative arcs. While the series definitely featured darker themes, leans into horror occasionally, and has some genuinely creepy episodes, the overall feel and genre classification for the series would really be as more of a science fiction investigative drama. Due to the popular and commercial success of the series, it has expanded into a larger franchise with spinoff shows and two films.
The X-Files: Fight the Future is the first of those films and is the only one to be released while the series was in its run. It takes place between the fifth and sixth seasons of the series and follows the larger running story arcs of the series about the potential existence of extraterrestrial life and a potential government conspiracy to conceal it. While the film is situated within the context of the show, it is wisely independent enough that one does not need to be caught up on the show to be able to follow and appreciate the story. Overall, this first X-Files film features an intriguing story and is executed well on all levels.
Tangential Bonus 3: A Perfect Murder
MPAA Rating: R
There were two remakes of classic Alfred Hitchcock films in 1998, and amusingly both of them starred Viggo Mortensen. Unfortunately, one of them was good, while the other was, frankly, not good. Obviously, by its placement here on the list, you can safely assume that A Perfect Murder was the good one. It was a remake of the classic Dial M for Murder from 1954. The not good (to put it mildly) Alfred Hitchcock remake from 1998 was of course Psycho starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. The 1960 original is one of those like ‘perfect’ films and should have never been remade. While the 1998 Psycho was a near shot-for-shot remake that somehow ended up being less than the some of its parts, A Perfect Murder makes some changes to its story both to update it for a 1990s American setting and to add some more and different twists. You can debate which of the changes are for the better and which are for the worse. However, A Perfect Murder succeeds at being a compelling story and an enjoyable viewing experience whether you have seen the Hitchcock original or not. And much of that credit can be given to the intrigue and love triangle between our three leads of Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen, who all turn in solid performances and who are all given their moments to shine.
Tangential Bonus 4: The Quiet Family (Choyonghan kajok)
Not Rated
The Quiet Family is our second film from Asia on this list, though this one comes from South Korea and is thus in the Korean language. The Quiet Family certainly contains some horror elements and is a difficult film to classify in any specific genre as it combines elements from multiple. However, for me this film plays as more of a dark comedy than anything else, and certainly more than an actual horror film. The story follows a family that moves out of the city to the country and renovates an old building for use as a lodge for hikers. While they find it difficult to attract customers initially, they are elated to finally get their first customer only to then be horrified the next morning to discover that he has apparently committed suicide in his bed. In order to avoid any police involvement, the bad reputation, and potential financial hardship the death could give to the fledgling business, the family decides to cover up the suicide and dispose of the body in the woods. The comedy and dramatic tension build with trying to conceal this death but becomes compounded when other guests begin dying off as well under a variety of circumstances. The family tries to conceal these deaths in similar ways, but it gets more difficult to do with an increasing number of bodies to hide and the police starting to look into reports of missing persons in the area. Overall, this movie is executed well and is a fun and quirky dark comedy.
Doctored Entertainment 