10 Underappreciated 90s Thrillers You Must Watch

A few years before his blockbuster run at Spider-man, Sam Raimi made arguably his best work since The Evil Dead and its sequel.

A Simple Plan starts off with Bill Paxton, as Hank, outlining his simple dreams based on his Father’s mantra. All of this changes when he, his older brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and Jacob’s friend Lou, find a plane crashed in the woods containing 4.5 million dollars. It doesn’t take them long to decide to keep it, sit on it and then split it when the time is right, a simple plan, but not for long.

The narrative spirals into paranoia and violence with both brothers taking actions and decisions driven by their new situation, things they would clearly never contemplate doing, including murder.

The film’s absolute beauty lies in its environments and its performances. Paxton, Thornton and Bridget Fonda as Paxton’s wife are completely flawless here, even in scenes of panic there is never the expected shift into uncontrolled melodramatics.

Against a backdrop that draws parallels to Fargo, it’s a combination that lifts the film to new levels. Especially notable is the differences between scenes within the town and on its outskirts; we immediately feel the quiet isolation but relative safety of the town and its residents and the dangers which lie immediately beyond its boundaries.

A practically perfect thriller to end one of the genre's best decades.