These underrated ’90s movies weren’t the biggest hits, but stand out for their originality.
They’re products of a decade when filmmakers weren’t afraid to take creative risks and challenge audiences.
And they’re also just flat-out entertaining.
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Pump Up the Volume doesn’t get the credit it deserved — perhaps because the internet gained popularity not long after its release, making its setup seem dated. Still, its themes of rebelliousness and non-conformity are timeless, making it one of the most underrated ’90s movies.
Christian Slater plays a quiet high school student by day who spends his nights broadcasting a pirate radio station where he plays dark, cool music.
A shock jock on the surface, he’s actually a sensitive soul upset by the hypocrisy and self-censorship all around him.
The film feels prescient of a time when people behave one way in the real world, and very differently online.
Hangin With the Homeboys (1991)
The ’90s were a great decade for hangout movies, and Hangin’ With the Homeboys is one of our favorites.
Directed by Joseph Vasquez, and starring Mario Joyner, Doug E. Doug, Nestor Serrano and John Leguizamo, it follows a group of friends looking for a lighthearted night of fun.
But they end up growing up a lot in a few hours, and confronting the future in ways they couldn’t have imagined. Critically acclaimed, it didn’t do much business at the box office — but did get plenty of VHS play from young men trying to figure life out.
Ricochet (1991)
Written by Steven E. de Souza, whose credits include such classics as Die Hard and Commando, Ricochet is a pulpy, over-the-top thriller that stars Denzel Washington as LAPD cop Nick Styles, who is studying to become a lawyer when he outsmarts and arrests the notorious killer Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow) at a carnival.
Years later, Styles has become a beloved prosecutor. Blake, fresh from prison, seeks his revenge by framing Styles to ruin his career.
But Styles’ isn’t done. He seeks out Odessa (Ice-T) a childhood friend turned drug dealer with whom he has grown apart — because only a criminal can save him now.
Garishly cartoonish in the best way, Ricochet benefits from Washington, Lithgow and Ice-T giving their all, and from director Russell Mulcahy keeping things moving with panache. It’s one of those underrated ’90s movies that might appeal especially to lovers of ’80s action thrillers — with a ’90s edge.
Fear of a Black Hat (1993)
Written by, directed by and starring Rusty Cundieff, Fear of a Black Hat is like a hip-hop This Is Spinal Tap that perfectly refracted and parodied the state of the rap music industry in the early ’90s — arguably the best time for hip-hop.
Taking its title from the classic Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet, the mockumentary centers on the NWA-like breakup of a group called NWH. As the former members go off on their own, their respective output smartly satirizes artists from Ice T to Ice Cube to PM Dawn to C&C Music Factory.
Filled with solid jokes, characters and commentary, it’s also a classic example of the satirist clearly loving the things he’s mocking.
Freeway (1996)
One of two Kiefer Sutherland movies on this list, Freeway is a boundary-defying update on Little Red Riding hood starring Reese Witherspoon as a young woman on the run from the law, on her way to grandma’s house.
Of course there’s a big bad wolf: Sutherland’s repugnant Bob Wolverton is a serial killer who stalks his prey on, you guessed it, freeways, while posing as an upstanding citizen.
Freeway is a perfect reflection of the tabloid TV era, and is one of the best cast movies of the ’90s, with unexpected faces turning up at every turn: Brooke Shields, who a few years earlier might have played the Witherspoon role, is especially good as Bob’s wife, who can’t believe her husband could be a predator. The cast also includes Dan Hedaya, Amanda Plummer and Bokeem Woodbine.
Bound (1996)
Before they made The Matrix, the Wachowskis wowed critics with a scrappy mob movie about a gangster’s girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly) who falls for the handywoman next door (Gina Gershon).
They cook up a plot to rob the gangster (Joe Pantolioano, who would later appear in The Matrix) but a cast of bad guys including a gangster nepo baby played by Christopher Meloni wreak havoc with their perfect plan.
The film barely earned back its budget at the box office, but became a cult hit in large part for its stylish storytelling, top-notch acting, and sympathetic portrayal of a romantic relationship between two women, a relative rarity in the 1990s.
Dark City (1998)
Speaking of the The Matrix: a year before it was released to widespread acclaim, director Alex Proyas offered his own fascinating take on a world where nothing is as it seems in the captivating Dark City.
Taking inspiration from a 1940s noir flm, Dark City follows John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) who wakes up in a dingy motel room with the body of a recently murdered woman. He soon learns that he’s married to a singer named Emma, played by Jennifer Connelly (pictired) — but also that she’s recently cheated on him and that he may be a serial killer.
Adding to the mystery is his desire to get to a place called Shell Beach, to which no one can remember the exact directions. And he’s pursued by pale figures known as the Strangers. Some of the answers are held by the creepy Dr. Daniel P. Schreber, played by Kiefer Sutherland.
Dark City bombed, but soon achieved well-deserved cult status. It may be the most ahead of its time of all underrated ’90s movies.
Cube (1997)
A low-budget Canadian sci-fi film, Vincenzo Natali’s Cube makes the most of its limited setting. It’s the strange story of a group of strangers trapped together in a structure made of interconnected cubes, who must use their wits — and a lot of math — to evade booby traps and find their way to freedom.
Made for about $350,000 Canadian, it earned more than $9 million, and to spawn sequels, a 2021 Japanese remake, and a slew of imitators, many of them in video game form.
The film — which stars David Hewlett, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, and Maurice Dean Wint — becomes even more captivating when you learn that it was all shot in just one-and-a-half rooms.
The Saint (1997)
The tragic death of Val Kilmer has led to a reappraising of many of his films, including The Saint.
Based on a series the Saint book series devised by Leslie Charteris in the 1920s, The Saint offered a very ’90s take on a spy story, as Kilmer hams it up as a series of colorful characters inspired by saints. The movie works because of his terrific chemistry with the always great Elisabeth Shue, who plays a beautiful but sometimes rattled scientist who has come up with a revolutionary cold fusion formula.
It’s notable for a soundtrack from the golden age of electronica, back when a lot of us called it “techno.”
Can’t Hardly Wait (1998)
Can’t Hardly Wait perfectly captures the Xennial era between Gen X and millennials, when the world seemed relatively carefree but a much scarier decade was right around the corner.
It follows Jennifer Love Hewitt (above), the cool but kind senior around whom everything revolves. Her delightful supporting cast includes Ethan Embry, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green and Melissa Joan Hart.
It’s a total pleasure for the cast and the stacked soundtrack. Named for a Replacements song, it also features perfectly timed tunes from Guns N Roses and Run-DMC.
It’s also lovingly parodied in one of the most underrated movies of the 2000s.
Wild Things (1998)
Wild Things is a twisty high school noir that feels like it’s never met a line it isn’t delighted to cross.
It follows Neve Campbell and Denise Richards, who seem to be victims of a popular teacher played by Matt Dillon — but the machinations are just beginning.
Add Kevin Bacon, Bill Murray as a scheming attorney, and an unforgettable pool scene, and you have one of the best so-wrong-it’s-right movies ever made.
It’s one of those underrated ’90s movies that wouldn’t be made today without a lot of rough edges being sanded off.
Last Days of Disco (1999)
Simply one of our favorite movies ever made. It offers a bittersweet, intoxicating dissection of the late disco era, with the wisdom of two decades of hindsight.
Whit Stillman’s third film features a who’s who of rising Gen X actors, led by Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale as young publishing employees who spend their nights looking for love and friendship at Manhattan discos.
But disco has long since become mainstream — maybe too mainstream — and both need to decide whether to embrace their inner eccentricity or be seduced by the material world. Packed with disco masterpieces, it also has one of the best movie soundtracks ever.
Main image: Wild Things. Columbia Pictures.
If you liked this list, you might also like this list of Dazzling ’90s Movies Set in the ’70s.
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Editor’s Note: Corrects main image.