The right mix of terror and an amazing duo set '90s disaster movies apart from stuffy romances and comedies. In the '90s, disaster movies were all that. If moviegoers wanted to experience a plane crash, an earthquake, a tornado ripping through the drive-ins, or an alien takeover, they'd find themselves at the theater from 1990-1999. Disaster movies are loved and accepted by so many people because they’re such a guilty pleasure; sometimes, they’re so bad that they’re good.

Natural disasters were dominating the screen, and people just accepted it; some hated it while others loved it. Modern audiences might find the CGI of Godzilla (1998) to be absolutely terrible, but there’s something so nostalgic about a 400-foot monster robotically moving through the city, destroying everything in its wake.

The disaster movie in the 2000s took a different turn. After the tragic events of September 11th, the pleasure of watching a city get destroyed felt in poor taste. Natural disasters were no longer engaging threats, and audiences embraced supervillains and evil organizations for a world at war. Now, large-scale disaster spectacles tend to be put in big superhero action films like Transformers: Dark of the Moon, The Avengers, or Man of Steel, to name a few. For those nostalgic for when disaster movies were simple, take a look back at the best of the genre from the 1990s.

Updated December 1, 2023: If you are a fan of disaster movies, you'll be pleased to know we've updated this article with the finest disaster flicks of the '90s and where they are streaming.

15 Alive (1993)

Some of the best disaster films are based on events that transpired in the real world. Such is the case of Alive. This heartbreaking survival film is based on Piers Paul Read's 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which recounts the story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashes in the Andes Mountains. Stranded and enduring freezing conditions with little hope of rescue, the survivors must endure unimaginable hardships to stay alive.

What Makes It a Great Disaster Film

This powerful story was directed by Frank Marshall and features young faces of the early '90s including Ethan Hawke, Vincent Spano, and Josh Hamilton. The plane crash scene is simple (no music effects) and yet absolutely gripping, where the plane splits in two, some passengers fly out of the plane, and the rest hang on for the terrible landing. The engrossing drama is known for being a genuinely challenging watch, showcasing humanity's raw nature in dire situations. Still, it also highlights the resilience of the human spirit and the lengths people will go to survive against all odds.

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14 Firestorm (1998)

Very few films touch upon the terrible disaster caused by wildfires. Firestorm offered a great chance to explore this setup but got bogged down with multiple side stories. This intense, action-packed film follows a group of smokejumpers (elite firefighters) battling a massive forest fire that threatens to consume everything in its path. Firestorm is also a crime drama with an exciting bonus story that explored a heist gone wrong and how the nature of fire killed the prospect of a hidden reward for a double-crossing team of thieves. While the film still manages to tell a compelling story, it could have explored the thankless job done by wildfire firefighters.

What Makes It a Great Disaster Movie

Firestorm features the talents of working actors such as Howie Long, Scott Glenn, and William Forsythe, whose performances are so natural they hardly feel like acting. The gifted group of actors perfectly embodies the challenges of being firefighters and how to manage such a life-threatening job. The film is loaded with stunning visuals, especially scenes of spreading wildfire, lighting the camera red, and great action sequences that pick up the pace of the movie even more. It also explores the injuries that can get these men out of commission, and is a must-see for viewers who appreciate a good action-packed disaster movie.

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13 Avalanche (1994)

Although the big studios made numerous tent poles with natural disasters during the '90s, some networks also sought to get into action with their offerings. Such is the case of CTV Fox making a unique film named Avalanche, using the rocky Canadian mountains as the story's background. This solid thriller follows the premise of a dangerous diamond smuggler who finds himself lost and separated from his loot after a violent avalanche. After being rescued by a family, he forces them to dig in the snow to get his diamonds back.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

This small-scale drama was directed by Paul Shapiro, with a great script by Tim Redman. The cast includes actors from the big red north such as Michael Gross, Deanna Milligan, Myles Ferguson, and the special participation of David Hasselhoff as the scumbag Duncan, which shows the Baywatch mainstay has some acting range outside of his comfort zone. The flick is full of tense moments and is wonderfully paced, and the characters' story takes a backseat to the natural disaster but still makes for a compelling watch.

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12 Daylight (1996)

Something strange was going on with Sylvester Stallone's career during the '90s. He consistently released a couple of films every year, but most of his best work during the decade is sandwiched between stinkers. Daylight is the underdog of the bunch. In this high-octane action film, a group of people finds themselves trapped in the Holland Tunnel after a massive explosion causes a catastrophic collapse. With limited time and rising water levels, a disgraced former emergency medical services chief leads the desperate rescue mission.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

Stallone, Amy Brenneman, and Viggo Mortensen headline the entertaining picture, with the action legend playing the lead character Kit, a former New York City Emergency Medical Services Chief who gets caught up in the catastrophe. He gives a nuanced performance as someone solely motivated to do the right thing, even in the face of impossible odds, and is the perfect archetype of the savior hero who is up against a deadly explosion as a nemesis. The pace of the movie is perfect for exploring the conundrum of being trapped under tons of rubble and for the suspense that comes with whether they will make it out alive.

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11 Fearless (1993)

Very few disaster films explore the aftermath of a disastrous event, but Fearless goes one step ahead. After surviving the crash, Max acquires a new lease on life, with no more fears invading his mind. Authorities don't know what to make of it, as he leaves the disaster scene and doesn't try to reconnect with his family. He eventually meets the nearing survivors of the crash, one struggling with survivor's guilt. The encounter triggers something in him that could help him get back to normal. It's an intense story exploring the human psyche and how people deal with trauma.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

This unique flick was directed by Peter Weir and beautifully explores the strange detachment that overwhelms a single survivor. Fearless features the talents of Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and Rosie Perez. The story explores the aftermath of a plane crash in which Max Klein survives against all odds. It dives deep into the post-traumatic effects that made Max, who also suffers from a bit of a survivor's guilt, a changed man. Bridges carries the whole movie with a matchless emotional performance that is unquestionably believable, and he compels the viewer to be sucked into every scene and every dialogue.

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10 Outbreak (1995)

Wolfgang Petersen’s medical disaster film Outbreak was a box-office hit in 1995, grossing over $189 million durings its successful run. The movie focuses on an outbreak of a killer virus brought to America, California, by a monkey from the African jungle. It is a terrifying thriller, which was released when a shocking real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus was occurring in Africa.

Related: Best Movies About Pandemics and Viruses, Ranked

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

The movie features an impressive A-list cast, including Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, and Donald Sutherland, and Kevin Spacey went on to win a Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film. Because of its realistic look for handling a pathogen able to cause a global biological meltdown, Outbreak’s popularity surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, akin to other films like Contagion. Now that the audience has developed a taste for civilization-threatening-virus films, Outbreak is more watchable than ever.

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9 Armageddon (1998)

Michael Bay’s explosive 1998 blockbuster Armageddon stars Bruce Willis as an oil driller leading his team on a dangerous mission to nuke a Texas-sized asteroid from the inside before it hits Earth. Harry Stamper accepts to lead the dangerous space mission with a crew just as brave. The idea of the movie was criticized for being unrealistic, but it's still very highly entertaining.

What Makes It a Great Disaster Movie

The movie was so successful, despite the critics' negative opinion, that it became the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide. Despite its somehow weak build-up, the appeal of the talented Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, along with the other skilled actors turned this outer space disaster flick into a success story. Watching a group of astronauts try to save the Earth from an impeding danger will never grow out of fashion. The movie simply touches on something as primal as survival and, at the same time, introduces the marvelous frame of space. It's a wonderful disaster/space combination that is worth it for audiences to check out.

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8 Deep Impact (1998)

Directed by Mimi Leder, the film begins when a 14-year-old amateur astronomer (played by pre-The Lord of the Rings Elijah Wood) discovers a giant comet hurtling toward Earth. Despite efforts to keep this life-threatening event a secret, reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) uncovers the truth. Like Netflix’s important failure Don't Look Up, Deep Impact involves the media’s and the president’s (played here by Morgan Freeman) reaction to the crisis.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

In 1997, there were volcano disaster films (Dante’s Peak, Volcano). In 1998, two films about comets hurtling toward Earth, Deep Impact and Armageddon, were released. Armageddon fared better at the box office, but Deep Impact became one of the most scientifically accurate movies. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson did not bring up any scientific errors in Mimi Leder’s science-fiction disaster hit, saying that Deep Impact "had really good science going there, which is rare in movies about space." The movie definitely earns the trust of its viewers through its realistic feel and its scientific accuracy.

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7 Deep Blue Sea (1999)

Easily one of the best shark movies of its time, the iconic Samuel L. Jackson and Saffron Burrows star in Deep Blue Sea, and it really takes the cake for cheesy '90s CGI sharks. The story follows Burrows’ character, Dr. Susan McAlester, as a researcher for an Alzheimer's disease cure, which conveniently is found in the brain tissue of altered sharks. When things go wrong (which, of course, they do), she calls Russel Franklin (Jackson) to help combat these man-eating sharks.

What Makes It a Great Disaster Movie

Paired with a great cast (the wonderful Jackson, Thomas Jane, and Saffron Burrows), an unconventional story, and a solid soundtrack (consisting of hip-hop and R&B music), it's easy to see how it made $165 million at the box office. It's not a classic cheap-thrills shark movie in which viewers jump in fear every five seconds. Deep Blue Sea is rife with fun moments, tasty suspense, and unpredictable events that make the audience guess.

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6 Volcano (1997)

Inspired by the real-life Parícutin volcano in Mexico, Volcano pretty much gives viewers all they need to know about it in the title. Tommy Lee Jones stars as Michael Roark, the city of Los Angeles’ director of emergency management, and from the beginning, he suspects that something is going wrong in his city. When a volcano erupts in the middle of downtown, it takes a stacked cast of Jones, Don Cheadle, Keith David, and Anne Heche to try and stop the flow of lava.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

Volcano is such a pure disaster film simply because of all the reckless destruction that takes place. Movies about volcano eruptions could be the rarest of disaster movies, and this automatically makes Volcano such an authentic story with a highly commendable plot. The flick also has amazing actors, such as Jones, Don Cheadle, Anne Heche, and Gaby Hoffmann, who deliver raw and compelling performances. The movie gifts the screen with incredibly amazing visuals of the tameless lava taking over the city. In the end, Los Angeles is destroyed, and Tommy Lee Jones is the hero. What more could someone ask for?

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5 Dante’s Peak (1997)

Dante’s Peak stars Pierce Brosnan alongside Linda Hamilton and the late Charles Hallahan, and it's based in a fictional town where a dormant volcano sits until one day, it wakes up and wreaks havoc on the sleepy little community; chaos naturally ensues. Those who love bad disaster movies and acting that's so weird that it's good need to look no further than Dante’s Peak.

Related: Best Natural Disaster Movies, Ranked

What Makes It a Great Disaster Movie

Unlike Volcano, Dante’s Peak, another volcano movie, did absolutely terrible at the box office. It received negative reviews, certainly couldn’t keep up with Volcano in box office revenue, and people just hated it. However, that’s what makes it so good. The CGI is unpolished, the story is already overdone and cooked, and Brosnan delivers one of his weakest performances, and yet… it’s a '90s cult classic. The simultaneous eruptions of Hawaiian-type basaltic lava flows and pyroclastic surges made it sound so unrealistic, but after the 2023 earthquakes of both Turkey and Syria within a week from each other, it's definitely worth another watch.

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4 Independence Day (1996)

Independence Day follows the birth of a strange, mysterious phenomenon around the globe. The color-changing skies that brought terror and fear throughout the world's major cities revealed a ruthless alien invasion. Their mission is to totally annihilate the world over the Fourth of July weekend. The movie then describes how the survival of mankind rests solely in the hands of an unlikely group of people: a pilot, the US President, a geek, and a group of ragtag survivors.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

Roland Emmerich's Independence Day is routinely considered a turning point in the history of the Hollywood blockbuster. The astonishing images of mass devastation from this action-packed film about an alien force that attacked on July 4 became commonplace in disaster movies that followed. Despite quite a ridiculous script, stereotypical characters, and weak dialogues, Independence Day benefited from outstanding visual effects and became the highest-grossing film of 1996. Twenty years later, the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, was released, yet it did not capture the zeitgeist in the same way.

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3 Apollo 13 (1995)

Ron Howard brings the true story of the Apollo 13 mission to life with the help of Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and the late Bill Paxton leading the journey. This stunning picture dramatizes what happened on the mission to land on the moon, but when an explosion of an oxygen tank takes place, things start to go very wrong for Lovell (Hanks), Swigert (Bacon), and Haise (Paxton) and they must fight to stay alive while awaiting help.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

This disaster movie is so good because, while it isn’t something nature-related, like an earthquake or a tornado, this is history being retold again. The audience is entranced by the performances of three critically-acclaimed actors, telling the frightening story of what it was like to be on that eventful mission. Viewers are put into the middle of the harrowing action, making it an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride and a rare blockbuster that also became an Academy Award nominee.

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2 Titanic (1997)

Titanic is another based-on-a-true-story disaster extravaganza that refuses to die (pun intended). The spectacle of the doomed luxury liner with the love story of Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) is still one of the most important disaster movies of all time. It features the great RMS Titanic, which set sail in 1912 with 2240 passengers on board. Its dramatic sinking to the bottom of the ocean was brought about by hitting the Iceberg and splitting in two, taking the lives of more than 1500 passengers.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

James Cameron’s Titanic won 11 Oscars, including awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark at the box office. The compelling chemistry between DiCaprio and Winslet that first blossomed in the harrowing hit continued in other major dramatic movies like Revolutionary Road. They delivered an emotional, intelligent, complex and simply excellent performance that shone a light on themes of unconditional love, class struggle, and social hypocrisy.

The big dramatic scene of the sinking was extended and imbued with unforgettable visuals that keep this movie a timeless cinematic masterpiece. Compared to the 'so bad that they’re good' disaster B movies, Titanic is even better than it needs to be; it's a disaster epic about an epic disaster.

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1 Twister (1996)

The first thing viewers need to know about Twister is that it is the most ridiculous tornado movie ever made. The second thing they need to know is that it is the best disaster movie ever. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt lead this epic flick, with a handful of notable cast members surrounding them, including the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Jami Gertz, and Cary Elwes. The film is about a group of tornado chasers and their love for not only horrible weather but also each other.

Why It Makes a Great Disaster Movie

Twister has something that most disaster movies ignore: the found family. Helen Hunt’s character, Dr. Jo Harding, leads this group of misfits around the state of Oklahoma, chasing the biggest tornados they can possibly find and using their new device, Dorothy, along the way. In every other disaster flick, it's the big dramatic disaster that surprises idle, helpless characters, but this movie twists up the scenario, making the characters chase after disasters.

Twister features several nasty tornadoes (jaw-droppingly huge), that come sweeping in and, with them, a ton of life-or-death moments. The movie was such a swirling success on every level (it was the #1 movie at the North American box office and raked in nearly $500 million) that the audiences are still eagerly awaiting the sequel, Twisters, set for release on July 19, 2024.

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