Decades Later, These 6 ‘90s Family Movies Feel Like Fever Dreams

Nostalgia is a powerful and often bittersweet feeling. It can be lovely to revisit things from our past – like watching a favorite childhood movie and feeling that innocent joy again. But it can also make it hard to be objective about those cherished memories. People can become so attached to older films that they struggle to appreciate newer ones, even if those newer films are actually good.

It’s funny how revisiting childhood favorites can change your perspective. You might re-watch a beloved family movie from the ’90s and realize it’s much stranger than you remembered! Many films from that era wouldn’t be made today – things that seemed normal then now feel odd, over-the-top, or even a little inappropriate. While this can be surprising, it’s not necessarily a bad thing – sometimes these movies feel like wonderfully bizarre dreams.

The Pagemaster is Much Scarier Than Most People Recall

Back in 1994, Macaulay Culkin, at the peak of his fame as a child actor, appeared in a movie that looked like a guaranteed hit. The idea – an animated Culkin fighting his way through famous stories to return to reality – seemed like something every kid would love.

Despite sounding promising, The Pagemaster wasn’t a hit with audiences. Its psychedelic visuals, mature themes, complex references, and frightening portrayal of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde proved too intense for most children. Even Macaulay Culkin’s popularity couldn’t rescue the film, which failed both with critics and at the box office.

It’s one thing to watch this movie as a child, but revisiting it now as an adult really highlights how strange it is that 20th Century Fox ever expected it to be a success. It’s surprising that a film featuring things like kissing books and a pirate threatening a child hasn’t held up over time – it feels like a bizarre, unforgettable dream that’s best left in the past.

The Indian in the Cupboard Has Some Deeply Unsettling Tonal Swings

When The Indian in the Cupboard came out, it wasn’t a huge success. Despite this, critics generally liked it, and it remains a valuable story for helping kids understand the harmful effects of colonialism and the way old Western movies often misrepresented Native Americans.

The movie teaches valuable lessons about respecting different cultures and understanding the responsibilities that come with power, which are important for children to learn. But at its heart, it’s still a story about a boy who essentially has godlike power over a miniature Native American figure he finds in a magical cupboard – a gift he received on his ninth birthday.

Ignoring how unlikely it is that a nine-year-old would want furniture as a gift, the movie feels strangely disjointed due to its unpredictable shifts in mood. The awkward way the small prop of a Native American figure, Little Bear, and the child actor are combined digitally makes things even worse. It creates a distracting and unnatural look in many scenes, pulling you out of the story.

The Talking Tots in Baby Geniuses Are Total Nightmare Fuel

The 1999 film Baby Geniuses is a truly terrible children’s movie. It features a plot about villainous scientists kidnapping incredibly smart babies, and it’s a waste of 95 minutes. It’s a low point in the careers of Christopher Lloyd and Kathleen Turner, and it’s a strong argument that the director, known for films like Black Christmas and Porky’s, wasn’t suited to making movies for kids.

Seeing babies ‘talk’ with the help of computer effects is consistently creepy – and just feels wrong. While it was a challenging film to make almost 30 years ago, director Bob Clark likely faced huge technological limitations. The effects simply weren’t advanced enough to create realistic talking babies, and perhaps they never will be.

Honestly, the decision to use miniature actors and digitally put babies’ faces onto them… it really didn’t work for me. It ended up being genuinely unsettling, like something out of a bad dream – the kind you get after a long, exhausting day dealing with a particularly mischievous toddler! It just wasn’t a pleasant visual, and honestly, it left me feeling a bit creeped out.

Casper is Literally About a Dead Child Haunting His Own Home

The 1995 film Casper, based on the classic cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost, is unusual. It’s one of those family movies that feels strangely surreal, like a vivid dream you have after a late-night snack. Looking back, it’s a really odd and memorable movie.

Casper is a surprisingly heartfelt movie for kids, dealing with themes of loss, healing, and first love. It centers on a teenage girl who develops a connection with Casper, a friendly ghost who lives in his family’s haunted house. The film also shows Casper being mistreated by his mischievous uncles. Despite the serious themes, Casper stands out because of its unique, slightly spooky atmosphere, similar to the popular film Edward Scissorhands.

The movie is a unique blend of sad, nostalgic, slightly creepy, and genuinely funny, but director Brad Silberling (later known for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) manages to make it all work seamlessly. Perhaps family films today could use more movies like Casper, which aren’t afraid to be a little unusual.

Small Soldiers is Pretty Violent For a Kids’ Flick

Director Joe Dante explains that the movie’s shift in tone happened because of studio requests. He was initially hired to create a film geared towards teenagers, a story about warring action figures brought to life by a computer chip. However, after the studio partnered with Burger King for promotions, they asked him to make the movie more appealing to younger children.

Dante attempted to make the movie more suitable for a wider audience, toning down much of the chaotic action, but the result was awkward. It was too intense for young children and not exciting enough for teenagers. While the film didn’t do well in theaters initially, it has since become a beloved cult classic. A large part of its fanbase is made up of millennials who remember watching it as kids and now enjoy how wild and unrestrained it seems compared to today’s carefully crafted children’s movies.

It’s rare to find a modern family film with a tough, battle-worn toy giving a child such a stark choice – like, ‘You can be captured or killed, it’s your decision’ – or making a shockingly insensitive joke about wartime atrocities, such as those committed by the Japanese army in World War II. Those kinds of moments just don’t happen much anymore.

James and the Giant Peach is Scary and Bizarre in Classic Roald Dahl Fashion

Roald Dahl consistently knew how to write children’s stories that were delightfully strange, spooky, and unusual – and that was a good thing! Kids actually enjoy being a little frightened, as it makes them feel more mature. So, when Henry Selick, known for The Nightmare Before Christmas, agreed to direct a film combining live-action and stop-motion animation, it felt like a perfect, wonderfully weird pairing.

Okay, let me tell you, this movie just felt like a perfect fit for director Henry Selick, and he absolutely delivered. James and the Giant Peach is wonderfully weird and unique right from the start. If you loved The Nightmare Before Christmas, you’ll immediately recognize Selick’s signature animation style – it’s got that same playful, slightly spooky vibe that made the original such a hit with kids.

Selick playfully includes a pirate who strongly resembles Jack Skellington with a hat and beard, and a character even wonders if it is him. While this doesn’t necessarily connect the movie to the Nightmare Before Christmas universe, it contributes to the film’s wonderfully bizarre and unpredictable atmosphere—an atmosphere where a mechanical shark threatens a giant, flying peach, and a man casually offers a child a bag of crocodile tongues “boiled in the skull of a dead witch.”

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2026-02-27 03:45