Tom Cruise has long been one of Hollywood’s leading movie stars, but not in the way you might expect. The new generation knows him for his long series of spectacular action films like “Mission: Impossible” or “Jack Reacher”, but in the 1980s and 1990s, Cruise moved away from genre films and traditional blockbuster entertainment. He was in cheesy sex comedies like “Risky Business” and “All the Right Moves,” before moving into the hands of notable artists with films like “Legend,” “The Color of Money,” “Rain Man,” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” It seemed that Cruise wanted career variety, and his films were successful enough to allow him. Action movies like “Top Gun,” “Days of Thunder,” and “Mission: Impossible” were outliers in his career, not baseline reading.
As such, Cruise hasn’t starred in too many horror films. He wasn’t one of those actors (and they are veterans) who began their careers in low-budget slasher films, or who spent a decade paying their dues by splashing blood on stage. Actually, generally he doesn’t seem to have much interest in scary things. Taking a look at his filmography, one can find only three films that count as horror films. Fourth, if you want to be really generous and count “Legend”, but I don’t think anyone reading this would describe “Legend” as a horror film. And in fact, one of the movies below can only be described as science-fiction, and not necessarily a horror film.
For completeness we’ll include it here, and we’ve listed them below. Cruise played the role of the demon in two of them. In the third, they were attacked.
3. The Mummy (2017)
Alex Kurtzman’s 2017 film “The Mummy” wasn’t just bad; It was notorious. Universal Pictures, seeing the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thought they could launch their own far-reaching interconnected film project with the Dark Universe, a series of films that would reboot all of the studio’s most famous monster films from the 1930s and 1940s. Each new film was to star a widely famous actor, and each monster would eventually star in their own film, followed by a giant “Avengers”-like monster mash where they would all team up. “The Mummy” stars Tom Cruise and also stars Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Javier Bardem was to play the role of Frankenstein’s Monster, Angelina Jolie was to play the bride, and Johnny Depp was to play the Invisible Man.
However, as we all know, “The Mummy” was so poorly received that the entire Dark Universe was scrapped. In the film, Cruise plays an angsty former soldier who now makes a living by robbing tombs and illegally selling artifacts. However, one of his grave robbing attempts awakens an ancient mummy (Sofia Boutella) with magical powers. By the end of the film, Cruise’s character will discover that the mummy’s spirit has infected him, turning him into a superpowered monster. The idea was that Cruise would play a superpowered mummy monster in any additional sequels.
The best thing about “The Mummy” is Boutella, who exudes the appropriate level of menace. But the script is terrible and the plot is dull. This was surprising, as it involved Hollywood legends like Christopher McQuarrie and David Koepp. “The Mummy” is not only the worst of Cruise’s horror films, but may be one of his worst films in general.
2. World War (2005)
Based on H.G. Wells’s 1898 novel, but adapted exactly from the 1953 George Pal film, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 “War of the Worlds” was more a sci-fi response to 9/11 than a straight-up horror film. The film stars Tom Cruise as Ray, a divorced father who is becoming estranged from his teenage son (Justin Chatwin) and young daughter (Dakota Fanning). In the middle of a bad weekend with your kids, a fleet of Martian warships arrives at Earth and proceed to vaporize the population with death rays. Most of “War of the Worlds” features Ray wading through a panicked crowd, with no real plan in mind and doing his best to save his children from destruction. In 2005, critic Andy Klein, writing for the now-defunct and unfortunately unarchived L.A. CityBeat, said that “War of the Worlds” took place entirely in Ray’s mind, the fantasy of a miserable divorced father who needed a crisis to prove he could be a hero.
“War of the Worlds”… Okay. Spielberg was an expert at creating stunning and horrifying images of devastation and destruction. When people are vaporized, their clothes remain in place while their bodies instantly turn to ash. Soon, Ray is covered in the ashes of dead humans, and looking like a 9/11 survivor. Those parts of the film make “War of the Worlds” a proper horror film. That, and the scenes in which people are transported en masse to a Martian ship, mixed together in a grimy basket. No one knows their fate. The film is full of fear and terror.
And Cruz, playing against type, is a tragic, incapable figure. This time he is not the hero. He is simply swept away into the chaos. This is a good turn.
1. Interview with the Vampire (1994)
In 1994, Anne Rice was already a celebrity in the world of pop literature, but she became much bigger with the release of Neil Jordan’s “Interview with the Vampire,” based on his Vampire Chronicles debut novel. In the film, Brad Pitt plays a modern vampire named Lewis who agrees to give an interview to a journalist, played by Christian Slater. He recalled becoming a vampire for the first time in Louisiana in the 1790s. He is bitten by a very ancient vampire named Lestat, played by Tom Cruise, and Lestat teaches him all about being a vampire and how his bloody appetite will work. However, moreso, Lestat explains that traditional morality doesn’t really apply to blood-drinking immortals, and hedonism is the way to go.
“Interview with the Vampire” is bleak and atmospheric, and the almost erotic relationship between Lestat and Louis is exciting to no end. In fact, a big reason why “Interview” became such a hit was because of all the handsome boys in it. Slater, Pitt and Cruise are joined by Antonio Banderas, who plays the vampire Armand. In the film a young Kirsten Dunst, who was only 12 at the time, played the role of a girl who becomes a vampire.
“The Interview” was a huge success, grossing over $223 million at the 1994 box office, and ensuring that Anne Rice would, for at least a decade, continue to be talked about in the same voice as Stephen King. This is Gothic romance of the highest order and the quintessential slumber party movie. This is definitely Tom Cruise’s best horror film.