‘In Search of Darkness: 1990–94’ Hopes to Change Your Mind About Horror’s Forgotten Decade

Director David Weiner talks about his latest foray into 1990s horror and why it’s a lot scarier than you remember

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” became a clarion call for horror fans raised on Wes Craven’s 1996 film Scream. But the question seeped so far into pop culture that a general consensus formed around the film and the genre as a whole: 1990s Horror was a corpse until Scream revived it.

The problem with saying anything like that, and for so long, is that it eventually becomes accepted truth even if the facts paint a different picture. Recreating the alchemy that resulted in horror exploding in the 1980s proved impossible. In retrospect, maybe the first mistake was expecting the same results in a new decade with different challenges and fresh voices. That said, many a horror fan waxes poetic about the films from horror’s supposed nadir decade. Can an era that gave us Candyman, Child’s Play 2, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Jacob’s Ladder, the Night of the Living Dead remake, and Arachnophobia be that much of an asterisk in film history? David Weiner wants to find out.

Weiner explored ’80s horror with the In Search of Darkness trilogy, and now he’s turning his fine tuned directorial lens to horror’s other decade with In Search of Darkness: 1990–1994.

David graciously lent his time to discuss his new film, and why the ’90s has a lot more to offer than two teens in Ghostface masks quizzing their victims on horror movie trivia.

*Due to the ongoing SAG strike, and to show solidarity with their cause, we did not discuss actors appearing in the film. This interview is edited for length and clarity.

Still Crew: 1990s horror traditionally gets a bad rap, so let’s start with the obvious: Why is it usually referred to as the genre’s “forgotten decade” ?

David Weiner: There was a lot going on in the ’90s and it’s hard to encapsulate the decade with one trend or overall theme. I think people forget just how much horror we got at that time, which is why it’s a bit of a lost decade. But there was so much variety on the big screen, on television, and in video stores. And there was a wealth of material if you looked for it.

Still Crew: That’s a great point about variety. Across the board in entertainment, the ’90s provided something for everyone with no one style dominating anything. Was that your motivation for digging into this decade after exploring the ’80s with three installments? Or was it to combat the prevailing idea that ’90s horror lacked a pulse until Scream dropped in 1996?

DW: The problem with the ’90s, I think for many people, is that the ’80s was a busy and prominent decade for horror. And the ’90s, especially during the transition from one decade to the next, lacked that one element that defined it for fans. And that makes it, in their eyes, lost or forgotten. But a lot of stuff was around there just seems to be a giant memory hole that convinced fans nothing happened. And arguably, Scream was so successful that people believe we got nothing before it.

That played into how we structured things for In Search of Darkness: 1990–1994 as we decided to do things a little differently this time. We’re using the same structure as the previous films but split it into parts to include more movies, as best we can. We didn’t include television in the original [’80s focused] trilogy because we just didn’t have room for it. But I feel like television, especially in the late ’80s and early ’90s, became an important component for horror. A lot of Stephen King miniseries came to television, along with Tales from the Crypt, Twin Peaks, or The X-Files. And then gateway horror for kids at the time, like Eerie, Indiana.

SC: Or Are You Afraid of the Dark.

DW: Yeah, Are You Afraid of the Dark as well. And Tales from the Crypt, an adult show on HBO, gave us a Saturday morning cartoon, Tales from the Cryptkeeper. We had Friday the 13th the Series, which wasn’t about Jason but featured a concept I loved. There’s just so much material and we thought splitting it into two parts made it more manageable. These movies are huge labors of love and I felt that doing it this way gave us more time to examine each film.

SC: So with no real trend to define the decade, how did the horror villains of the ’80s handle that transition? And did we get something new?

DW: The horror villains that we all loved from the ’80s were plentiful from ‘90–’94. Jason went to hell, Pinhead came back, Chucky was just getting started with Child’s Play 2, and Leatherface as well. But alongside those guys, we transitioned into something new with Candyman, Leprechaun, Annie Wilkes — the ultimate toxic fan — in Misery, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, and the emergence of an entire subgenre of serial killer movies.

Hollywood didn’t want to call their horror movies “horror” because it had a stigma. So they called some movies a “psychological thriller” or an “erotic thriller.” And sometimes, it was hard to tell the difference in the advertisement between something like Misery or The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

SC: So, Hollywood finally coming to grips with how much money horror films generate define this era too. I saw a question on some social media site asking the difference between horror and thriller. For me, the difference is whichever way studio execs want to market the movie.

DW: That’s the answer. In Search of Darkness Part III features a chapter about horror lurking in every genre. It’s there if you want to find it. Whether it’s a gateway horror for kids or a wonderful love story; it doesn’t matter. Even if it’s a moment of dread, regret, or absolute terror; it’s there.

SC: Does anything else about ’90s culture, specifically 1990–94, influence the films the way ’80s horror reflected the times?

DW: You can draw a straight line from Jefferey Dahmer to Silence of the Lambs and similar films in the ’90s. There was an evolution with the villains where many of them were wolves in sheep’s clothing. Going back to Annie Wilkes in Misery, she seems like a saint at first where she nurses James Caan’s character back to health. But she represents an absolute threat to someone in a very vulnerable situation. She, and a lot of these villains, represent the fact that we didn’t know what was happening with the people next door.

There were still supernatural villains like Pennywise, but a lot of the threats dealt with mankind’s uncertainty, and that took a foothold in horror filmmaking. We got Pacific Heights where the tenant, played by Michael Keaton, turns out to be a psychopath. Or Single White Female exploring the fact that we never know if the person who appears to be our friend is actually our worst enemy. These are the new villains that permeated horror/thriller gray area genre defitions. But at the end of the day, when people are getting killed in creative ways, that’s horror. And if this was happening to you in real life, that’s horror.

SC: Would you say one key difference for the early ’90s is that people became the monsters?

DW: Absolutely. Even Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, which satirizes reality tv, but it’s about serial killers. Or Kalifornia where David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes go on a road trip to look at the places where serial killers do their misdeeds. And they end up becoming ride partners with a serial killer played by Brad Pitt. Jacob’s Ladder expands on the idea of fearing man and expands it to a bureaucracy that won’t do a thing for you even though they pretend that they will.

We got more complicated villains and scenarios for an evolving audience that was becoming smarter about the type of horror they wanted to consume.

SC: Did those changes, whether it’s Hollywood seeing more dollar signs or just consumers wanting something different, show themselves in other ways from ‘90-’94?

DW: Well, at the same time that we got these new villains, the A-listers of the era loved ’80s horror and they wanted to play in the genre as well. But because of that stigma, they went to the classics. Francis Ford Coppola makes Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which possibly elevates it because the author’s name is in the title. It tells the audience it’s not just a horror film. It stars Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, and Gary Oldman, who is amazing playing different variations of Count Dracula. And it’s a great film.

Then Kenneth Branagh says he wants to make Frankenstein, but he makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. He gets Robert DeNiro to play The Monster and casts Helena Bonham Carter as an almost unwitting Bride of Frankenstein. Not to be outdone, Tom Cruise says he wants to get a bite out of this stuff as well, and does Interview with the Vampire. Jack Nicholson, in between Lakers games, decides he wants to play a werewolf in Wolf. He gets Mike Nichols, the director of The Graduate and other classic films, and then romps around and marks his territory as a wolf opposite Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader.

SC: With Hollywood making those big films with notable names, do you believe the genre as a whole became more respectable during this era or less?

DW: I think when horror went back to its gothic roots [with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Interview with the Vampire], it was more respected. This stuff received big budgets and Hollywood shouted that from the rooftops and loved it. The A-list wanted in because they knew if they starred in a movie produced by a major studio, that meant an ad budget large enough to draw massive audiences. And they differentiated themselves from the rest of the genre when you have high-level filmmakers like Coppola or Branagh.

As much as Hollywood wanted to sidestep horror, they embraced it when they could sell it the way they wanted to sell it. And they never shied away from the horror-adjacent movies like Flatliners.

SC: With all that change, are there any similarities between 1980s horror and early-mid ’90s horror that you found while making the film?

DW: There actually is no fine line; it’s a gray area. The early ’90s felt very much like the late ’80s party was continuing. Things that were established in the ’80s remained a regular go-to in the ’90s, like the video store. Although it became more corporate with a Blockbuster on every corner while mom and pop businesses struggled and fought against entities like Blockbuster, it still served an important purpose.

If the movie wasn’t on the big screen, by way of Hollywood, so much content went direct to video. Producers like Charles Band, Lloyd Kaufmann, and Roger Corman led the charge with all this amazing indie film that took advatnage of this zenith in practical effects. They flooded the shelves with fun franchises. We got video store staples like Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, or the Class of Nuke ’Em High sequels. Horror fans looked forward to those movies and if they couldn’t rent Bram Stoker’s Dracula the first weekend it came to VHS.

SC: How did this new landscape affect Jason and Freddy Krueger? I’m leaving Michael Myers out since we don’t get another Halloween movie until 1995.

DW: Jason Goes to Hell from ’93 is called that because the studio couldn’t call it Friday the 13th. The series moved from Paramount Pictures to New Line Cinema and the benefit was creating a movie with Jason and Freddy Krueger since they lived under the same company. I think enough time has passed that I can spoil Jason Goes to Hell’s surprise ending where Freddy shows up with the promise of that movie. And a couple years earlier, we got Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare but in ’94, Wes Craven reinvents Freddy with New Nightmare.

SC: I’m glad you mentioned Craven. We keep talking about the early ’90s as a transitional period, so how did directors like Craven, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Mary Lambert, and Tobe Hooper adapt to the a new landscape?

DW: That’s a great question. All of these iconic directors struggled to either keep it going or veer out of horror. Cronenberg, for example, cut his teeth on so many amazing horror films. But then he tried to get out of that and he ultimately veered away. Joe Dante made Gremlins 2 in the early ’90s, but then he moved onto Small Soldiers. He wanted to expand his repertoire. Carpenter made a great film that horror fans know, In the Mouth of Madness, but I don’t know if a general audience thinks about it. It’s an amazing convergence between a Stephen King-like character with Lovecraftian ideas.

When something original like In the Mouth of Madness doesn’t connect, he goes to movies that make sense because he’s a working director. So he does an Escape from New York sequel and a Village of the Damned remake. Even if you’re Carpenter, if you want the privilege to make more movies, you have to have movies that make money. And at a certain point, you have to lean in on the things you feel like an audience will respond to because it’s already pre-sold to a certain degree.

Craven was at the top of his game with The People Under the Stairs and New Nightmare, but the only thing available to Lambert was a Pet Sematary sequel, so she did it. And Sam Raimi evolved with Darkman and Army of Darkness.

But we got new filmmakers who found their voices at this time. Peter Jackson with Dead Alive, Guillermo Del Toro with Cronos, David Fincher with Alien 3 and later Se7en. It was a new time and new directors came in with great voices and great storytelling abilities.

SC: Did genre stalwarts like Carpenter, Lambert, Craven, or George Romero feel slighted when studios finally invested a lot of money into horror only to go with directors the executives considered bigger names? Or did they like not being a part of the studio system?

DW: Having spoken with Carpenter, I know for a fact that he wanted his control. George Romero wanted his control. The closest thing Romero came to a studio picture was Monkey Shines and he didn’t have final cut, so it was a miserable experience.

SC: That’s a great point about some directors wanting control I understand that. Horror was always built for rebels. Thinking about the filmmakers makes me think about filmmaking techniques. Audiences got their first big introduction to CGI in 1993 with Jurassic Park, a horror-adjacent film. Do you think that because some ’90s CGI hasn’t aged as gracefully as Jurassic Park’s also affects how fans view the decade?

DW: Absolutely. It’s very much a part of the early ’90s conversation. When producers saw Jurassic Park they said, “Holy crap, I want that too.” But they didn’t understand that a large percentage of what they saw was practical effects by Stan Winston. A very small amount of the effects are CGI and they blended them seamlessly with Stan’s creations. And I think that goes hand-in-hand with dismissing the decade until Scream; people saw a lot of bad CGI. There might’ve been great practical effects in other parts of the film, but as soon as the bad CGI appeared, that became the most memorable thing.

And it was everywhere! Whether in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, or the opening credits of Dr. Giggles. I think people look back at this decade and remember how bad [the technology] was before it got better.

But it’s important to remember this was a technology in its infancy. If you can reframe your perspective, think about the fact that that producers and filmmakers took advantage of an emerging technology that could do so much more than practical effects. And they did their best with what they had at the time. You can look back at that era as quaint and nostalgic, similarly to looking back at Jason and the Argonauts or The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Ray Harryhausen’s work. You don’t dismiss those films because it doesn’t look real; you love it because Harryhausen and his crew did their best to create a believable fantasy scenario.

SC: I agree. Context is always important. Well, with all this ground covered, how do you summarize ‘90-’94? Is that even possible?

DW: Many people call it the “lost decade” unless you’re paying attention. For all the reasons we discussed, whether it’s franchise carryover or the way Hollywood designated genres, it still felt a bit like the ’80s. But looking closer, the ’90s started carving its own path with new filmmakers and darker subject matter. Some people dismiss it but I think it’s one of the most vibrant periods in horror that just isn’t properly documented. And I can’t wait to do it with In Search of Darkness: 1990–1994.

SC: Last, and possibly most important question: How can anyone reading this, especially the ’90s kids, get their hands on the film?

DW: Go to 90shorrordoc.com from now through Halloween, and they can order the film, which is currently in pre-production. They’ll get their name in the credits, cool swag, a physical copy, a digital copy, and a year’s worth of interactions with the filmmakers. We have events throughout the year where they can talk to us about the film or talk with some of the icons who appear in the film. There’s always much more than ordering it and waiting for it.

Marcus Benjamin is a danger to the public, an alum of American University, St. John’s University, a screenwriter, and has an intense relationship with words. Witness his tomfoolery on X @AbstractPo3tic and over at Cageside Seats , Consequence, and Bloody Disgusting.

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