10 Greatest Thrillers of the 1990s, Ranked
Everyone loves a good thriller. From 1960's Psycho to 2024's Conclave, suspense movies have been around for decades and will always find an appreciative audience.
The genre has been in a bit of a slump lately, with fewer thrillers released in theaters than in its heyday in the '90s. That decade was arguably a high point for thrill-seeking movie fans, with a seemingly endless supply of commercial and critical hits like Basic Instinct with Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone and Se7en with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Watch With Us picks the 10 best thrillers of the '90s and ranks them from the very good to the absolute best. It's a testament to the strength of '90s thrillers that some fan favorites like Primal Fear with Richard Gere and Misery with Kathy Bates didn't make the cut.
David (Mark Wahlberg) is every teenage girl's dream: he's polite to parents, attentive to his partner and looks like a Calvin Klein underwear model. That's why 16-year-old Seattle high school student Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) falls for him, and why most of her friends and family like him. But Nicole's dad, Steve (William Petersen), doesn't trust him, and soon his instincts are proven right — David is a psychopath who wants to take over his entire family. Can Steven convince Nicole she's sleeping with the enemy?
Fear is a criminally underrated thriller that was largely ignored when it was first released in 1996. It's still effective in 2025, and that's due to the surprisingly layered performances by Witherspoon and Petersen as a father and daughter whose lack of connection is exploited by David. Fear also functions as a great snapshot of Seattle in the mid-'90s, when grunge music and flannel shirts still ruled pop culture.
Fear can be rented on Amazon Prime Video.
It's every mother's worst nightmare — your children are being threatened, and there's nothing you can do about it. For Claire (Annabella Sciorra), the threat comes not from outside, but from within her home. New nanny Peyton (Rebecca De Mornay) is not what she seems, and her pleasant demeanor hides a quiet rage that threatens not only her friends and family but Claire's life as well.
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Often derogatorily described as 'the killer nanny movie,' The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is better and subtler than its trashy reputation suggests. As Peyton, DeMornay brings real pathos to her disturbed caretaker and pulls off the impossible trick of making her more sympathetic than Sciorra's frustratingly helpless Claire. The film isn't afraid to be pulpy, and a young Julianne Moore energizes every scene she's in as Claire's chain-smoking friend Marlene, who clocks Peyton's phony angelic act right from the start (and pays for it later on).
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle can be rented on Amazon Prime Video.
Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) doesn't like to be alone. After catching her longtime boyfriend cheating on her, she kicks him out and places an advertisement looking for a 'SWF' (Single White Female) roommate to share her spacious Manhattan apartment. That's how she meets Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who soon moves into Allie's place and slowly takes over her life. Hedy is just as needy as Allie, and she's willing to kill to remain in her new roommate's life.
Single White Female has a lurid premise, but the two lead actresses invest enough depth and conviction in their roles to make the thriller better than others. Hedy is clearly disturbed, but Jason Leigh lets you see the full extent of Hedy's lethal neediness. Allie isn't that much different from Hedy, and Fonda excels in showing Allie's subtle transformation from victim to hero by the film's end. Single White Female is one of the more stylish thrillers on this list, and its blue-tinged cinematography gives the film a unique, moody look that is hard to forget.
Single White Female is streaming on Pluto TV.
'What's in the box?' Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) desperately asks his partner, William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), near the end of Se7en. He already knows the answer— and so do we. The events leading up to that devastating moment are just as nauseating and fascinating, making Se7en one of the few thrillers you're glad to have seen and never want to watch again.
Two city detectives, David and William, team up to investigate a series of murders based on the seven deadly sins: gluttony, lust, pride — you get the idea. As each murder is increasingly more bizarre and violent than the next, the two detectives race against time to stop him before he claims more victims.
Se7en can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime Video.
Malice offers the best value on this list — it's two thrillers in one movie, and there's little connection between the two. A serial rapist is terrorizing a small campus town, and Prof. Andy Safian (Bill Pullman) is both a suspect and maybe the only man who can catch the assailant. Meanwhile, Andy's wife, Tracy (Nicole Kidman), loses the ability to have children due to a botched emergency surgery conducted by Andy's old friend, Jed (Alec Baldwin). Did Jed deliberately harm Tracy due to a God complex? Or is something more sinister at play?
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Malice is a curiosity — both plots don't really add up, and you're left wondering why it bothered to have two of them instead of one. But that doesn't mean it isn't an effective thriller filled with atmospheric shots of shadowy homes and secret seaside cabins, a creepy score by Jerry Goldsmith and memorably nasty turns by Baldwin and Kidman. Malice also has one of the great comeuppance endings in the thriller genre when the bad guy gets a nice dose of karmic justice.
Malice can be rented on Amazon Prime Video.
Dr. Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) is a rich and successful criminal psychologist who is agoraphobic due to a past attack by a deranged fan. Her mind is still sharp, though, and she's the only one who is noticing that a serial killer is stalking San Francisco and copying famous killers like Son of Sam and Ted Bundy. She begrudgingly teams up with two detectives, MJ (Holly Hunter) and Reuben (Dermot Mulroney), to find the killer before he strikes again.
Copycat is a rare thriller with two female leads who function as both the damsel in distress and the hero of the story. What makes the thriller even more fascinating — and entertaining — is that Helen and MJ don't really like each other. Both women get on each other's nerves, but are smart enough to realize they are the only ones who, together, can catch the copycat murderer.
Weaver and Hunter provide real dimension to their characters, and aren't concerned with making them likable or even relatable. You still pull for them to succeed, though, and that's what makes Copycat one of the best thrillers in any decade.
Copycat is streaming on Hulu.
Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is a career criminal with an axe to grind. He believes his defense attorney, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), deliberately lost his case years ago so he could spend time behind bars for the rape of a 16-year-old girl. Now free, Max enacts a revenge plan that involves seducing Sam's daughter, Dani (Juliette Lewis), and alienating Sam from his depressed wife, Lee (Jessica Lange). Sam might have to go beyond the law to protect his family and deal with Max once and for all.
A remake of a so-so 1962 thriller of the same name, this version is more nuanced, more violent and infinitely better. Credit director Martin Scorsese for using the bones of Cape Fear's original story and crafting a superior remake that's just as interested in showing how damaged a seemingly typical American family really is as he is at scaring audiences with Max's periodic violent outbursts.
De Niro got an Oscar nomination for his unsettling performance, but just as good are Nolte and Lange as a married couple whose love has been overwhelmed by their mutual exhaustion with one another. The great cinematographer Freddie Francis gave the film a dreamy, hallucinatory feel, and Scorsese wisely left Bernard Herrmann's original tense score largely intact.
Cape Fear can be rented on Amazon Prime Video.
It's New York in the 1950s, and Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), broke and alone, is offered a unique job: travel to Italy to persuade a wealthy man's son, Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), to return to the United States. Tom accepts, but he quickly likes Dickie's la dolce vita too much and decides to murder him and assume his identity. But how long can Tom keep up this act before being discovered by the authorities and Dickie's increasingly suspicious girlfriend, Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow)?
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The Talented Mr. Ripley remains the best of all the Ripley adaptations because it excels as an escapist thriller that never loses sight of the loneliness that both fuels and cripples its lead character. Tom wants what others have, and murder is a justifiable means to get to a desired end. Damon was never better as Ripley, and the whole film has a warm, sunny feel that is deceptively welcoming and sets up its brutally cold, gut-punch of an ending.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is streaming on Paramount+.
Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino) just might be the coldest woman ever to exist in a movie. That's both a compliment and a warning, as nothing can really prepare you for what she does in The Last Seduction, a modest neo-noir from 1994 that's still as brittle and brilliant after all these years.
Longtime New Yorker Bridget has stolen some drug money from her abusive dentist husband, Clay (Bill Pullman), and she's lying low in a small town so she can get a quickie divorce. But when she meets dumb, good-hearted Mike, she soon concocts a plan to get rich quick and maybe get rid of Clay without the help of a lawyer.
Directed by John Dahl, The Last Seduction doesn't get enough credit for its lean, mean direction (not a second is wasted) and tight story. But this is Fiorentino's show all the way, and she's hypnotic whenever she's on screen. Her Bridget is always cool and collected, even when things don't go according to her plan. By the time the movie ends, you're left feeling impressed by what she pulls off — and a little scared at how easily she does it.
The Last Seduction is streaming on Tubi.
When rock star Johnny Boz (Bill Cable) is brutally murdered with an ice pick, Detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) thinks his girlfriend, bestselling author Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), is the killer. She has a thing for ice picks, writing books about murders that eventually occur and hanging around with reformed serial killers — oh, and she also has a thing for Nick.
Nick likes to live dangerously, so he begins an affair with her even though he's not convinced she's innocent. Did Catherine kill Johnny? Or is the real killer closer to Nick than he realizes?
With its mix of noir, action and even horror, Basic Instinct is a maximalist thriller slickly directed by Paul Verhoeven and cleverly plotted by Joe Eszterhas. It's always entertaining, even if it's often in bad taste, and it's dominated by Stone's blonde femme fatale. It's obvious Catherine is the killer, but the genius of her performance is that she convinces Nick — and you — that she's innocent. The main thrill of Basic Instinct isn't finding out who did it, but piecing together the puzzle afterwards. It's enormously fun, too, and that's why it's the best thriller of the 1990s.
Basic Instinct is streaming on Paramount+.
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