There’s a time and a place (emphasis on time) for settling in for a three-hour epic watch. But that kind of time isn’t always on hand, and sacrificing minutes doesn’t have to mean sacrificing engrossing stories and satisfying conclusions. One might even argue that there’s an art to grabbing a viewer’s interest quickly and ushering them through a fast-paced plot.
Whether it’s a looming bedtime, a short attention span, or just a small window between activities, a 90-minute movie is the perfect length to hasten a good time. Luckily, whether you’re craving a comedy, drama, thriller, or horror film, your quick-fix options are abundant. Here are some suggestions for a 90-minute watch (or right around 90 minutes). Press play and start your stopwatch … now!
1 hour, 26 minutes
If you’ve ever experienced the surreality of The Eric Andre Show, you might already have an idea of what to expect from a movie like Bad Trip. If not, you’re in for a ride. Andre brings back the art of the hidden-camera prank in this comedy about two best friends, Chris (Andre) and Bud (Lil Rel Howery), who embark on a road trip from Florida to New York so Chris can declare his love for a girl he had a crush on in high school (Michaela Conlin). All the while, they’re being pursued by Bud’s furious sister (Tiffany Haddish), whose car they’ve stolen. But the best part of this film is watching the actors, who stay firmly in character the entire time, as they interact with unsuspecting people who provide some of the movie’s best moments.
1 hour, 22 minutes
This kooky comedy from New Zealand counts Taika Waititi as an executive producer, which is just one reason it’s worth your time. Jen (Jackie van Beek) and Mel (Madeleine Sami) are best friends who are cynical about love. (They only met because they discovered they were dating the same man at the same time.) They run a peculiar business in which they stage elaborate situations to help people break up with their partners. The tight bond between the women starts to fracture when Mel starts dating a client and looking at their line of work differently. What results is a dryly funny examination of friendship, love, and adulthood.
1 hour, 32 minutes
If you’re craving thrills but don’t want to wait for them, this movie will have your heart rate up within the first 15 minutes. Produced by Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead) — a man who truly knows horror — and co-directed by Brian Netto and Adam Schindler, the film’s premise is simple but terrifying. A grieving woman, Iris (Kelsey Asbille), finds solace in an isolated forest where she encounters a stranger (Finn Wittrock) who injects her with a paralytic agent. As her body gradually begins to stiffen and shut down, Iris searches desperately for someplace to hide before she completely loses her ability to defend herself.
1 hour, 30 minutes
If there’s any genre known for its efficient run times, it’s horror. This slasher film is the fourth installment in the Fear Street series, inspired by the novels of teen horror author R.L. Stine, all set in the fictional — and cursed — town of Shadyside. In this one, it’s 1988, and the students of Shadyside High are preparing for prom. The competition for prom queen is heating up, and outcast Lori Granger (India Fowler) puts her name in the bidding despite going up against the four most popular girls in the class. But what none of them know is that there’s a killer on the loose, one who’s hunting would-be prom queens.
If you want to watch the other spooky tales from Shadyside, check out Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978, and Fear Street Part Three: 1666.
1 hour, 31 minutes
An LAPD officer working as a 911 operator (Jake Gyllenhaal) receives a distress call from a woman (Riley Keough) who says she’s been abducted by a man in a white van who’ll soon kill her. As the cop works to get her to safety, he uncovers more details about her life and situation, growing more frazzled and unhinged the longer the night goes on. The hook of this movie, which is directed by Antoine Fuqua and is a remake of the Danish thriller of the same name, is that Gyllenhaal is one of only a few actors to appear on-screen (Keough, as well as Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Paul Dano are all heard, but never seen), making the film feel like a frenetic and mesmerizing one-man play.
1 hour, 33 minutes
An asylum-seeking couple escape from South Sudan to England, but quickly discover that something about their new house isn’t what it seems. They try to assimilate to British culture, only to face racism from their unfriendly neighbors; they try to adjust to their living quarters, but begin to notice the unsettling presence that seems to be living in the walls. They’re trapped not only in their new life, but in their extremely haunted house that seems to be using all of their most upsetting memories against them.
1 hour, 33 minutes
Take a quick trip to Ireland and back with Irish Wish. In this romantic comedy, Maddie Kelly (Lindsay Lohan) finds herself in a bit of a bind. She’s traveled to the Emerald Isle for her best friend Emma’s (Elizabeth Tan) wedding, but there’s one problem — Emma is marrying the man Maddie is secretly in love with. So what’s a girl to do? Well, Maddie makes a spontaneous wish and winds up in an alternate reality in which she becomes the bride-to-be. Now she just has to decide whether she wants to marry Paul Kennedy (Alexander Vlahos) or choose a different path for herself. She just has to make the right wish!
1 hour, 39 minutes
Perfect for a family movie night where you’re hoping to get the kids into bed on time, there’s a reason this animated feature is Netflix’s most popular film of all time. K-pop superstars Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong), and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) are more than just their band HUNTR/X. As secret demon hunters, they use their training to protect the world from supernatural soul-eating beings and use the love from their fans to keep the Honmoon — an invisible protective barrier — going strong. But then a rival boy band of demons in disguise arrives, threatening everything HUNTR/X has worked for.
1 hour, 34 minutes
Chadwick Boseman made his final film appearance before his death in this lustrous adaptation of August Wilson’s play of the same name. The film takes place on one tempestuous day in 1920s Chicago, in which legendary blues singer Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) and her band gather for a recording session. Boseman plays cocky trumpeter Levee Green, who can’t stop butting heads with the headstrong Ma as he hopes to break away from her shadow and launch a solo career. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom elegantly weaves together the interpersonal tensions running through the group with the various facets and struggles associated with the Black experience in America.
1 hour, 30 minutes
Here’s a quick movie about a quick wedding. Lana Winslow (Brooke Shields) is widowed and very close with her only daughter, Emma (Miranda Cosgrove). She’s thrown for a loop when Emma calls to say she’s changing up her career plans and getting married … in one month. Emma has secured a brand deal with a hotel chain, and they’ve offered to pay for her wedding at a resort in Thailand. Lana finally gets to meet Emma’s fiancé, RJ (Sean Teale), and extended family, but is in for a shock when she learns that RJ’s father, Will (Benjamin Bratt), is her college ex-boyfriend , who broke her heart and ghosted her.
1 hour, 38 minutes
This sequel to 2019’s Murder Mystery (which, for the record, is another short watch, clocking in at around an hour and 38 minutes) brings back Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler as married couple Audrey and Nick Spitz, who are now trying their hand at becoming legitimate detectives. They’re called abroad to watch their good friend, the Maharajah (Adeel Akhtar), marry his fiancée (Mélanie Laurent). After he’s kidnapped at his own wedding, the Spitzes’ investigative skills are put to the test as they race to figure out who’s behind the scheme.
1 hour, 37 minutes
Keke Palmer and SZA (making her acting debut) star together in One of Them Days, the raucous buddy comedy you didn’t know you needed. The pair play Dreux and Alyssa, best friends and roommates whose lives are thrown into chaos after Alyssa’s boyfriend steals their rent money. With the threat of eviction hanging over them, Dreux and Alyssa go on a mad dash through Los Angeles in an effort to recover the funds. But what makes this Issa Rae-produced film special is how lovingly it pays attention to the friendship between the two women, even as their circumstances spin hilariously out of their control.
1 hour, 29 minutes
Andy (Ray Romano) and Michael (Mark Duplass) make for a funny pair of downtrodden friends in this low-key indie dramedy. Their daily activities consist of doing things like eating frozen pizza on the couch or playing their own riff on racquetball, which they call Paddleton. Their blissfully easy way of life is disturbed when Michael is diagnosed with terminal cancer and quickly concludes that he wants to be in charge of his own end rather than let the disease take him. He decides to spend his final days with his best friend, forcing both himself and Andy to reckon with death, grief and their friendship.
1 hour, 32 minutes
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s directorial debut stars Gina Rodriguez as Jenny, a music journalist who suffers a devastating breakup with her boyfriend, Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), after securing her dream job, for which she’ll be relocating from New York to San Francisco. Determined to help heal her broken heart and make her final night out in the city one to remember, Jenny’s best friends, Blair (Brittany Snow) and Erin (DeWanda Wise), take her out for one last adventure. Because of the way it focuses primarily on the strong friendship between the three women at its center, Someone Great feels like a fresh take on the romantic comedy.
1 hour, 32 minutes
If you knew something bad was going to happen, would you try to stop it? It’s 2024 and Lucy Field (Outer Banks’ Madison Bailey) feels like she’s living in the shadow of her older sister, Summer (Ginny & Georgia’s Antonia Gentry), who was murdered 21 years earlier. When she stumbles upon a time machine, Lucy sees an opportunity to travel back to 2003 — the era of Avril Lavigne, Juicy Couture tracksuits, and UGG boots — to stop the murders of four teens in her hometown, including Summer. You’ll have to watch this time-travel slasher to find out if Lucy can change the past or if the grisly events of the early 2000s are meant to remain “So Yesterday.”
1 hour, 25 minutes
Sometimes the real villain… is gentrification. This horror comedy follows a group of teenagers who realize that the mysterious band of real estate developers buying property all over the Bronx are actually a group of vampires trying to take over the borough and grow their blood-sucking army. Even as the kids witness increasingly nefarious activity and neighbors being killed, the adults in their lives don’t believe that supernatural creatures could be roaming around — which leads to them taking matters into their own hands to protect their neighborhood.
1 hour, 31 minutes
Leighton Meester stars in this mystery thriller as Beth, a new mother who agrees to take time away from her baby and troubled marriage by going on a girls’ trip to Croatia. After a raucous night of partying, her best friend, Kate (Christina Wolfe), goes missing, which leaves Beth questioning everything as she works to put together the truth behind the disappearance. There are enough wild twists and turns here to keep you hooked until the very end.
1 hour, 32 minutes
This claustrophobic thriller stars Jason Segel as a burglar who breaks into the vacation home of a wealthy CEO (Jesse Plemons) and his wife (Lily Collins). His plan to hang out consequence-free is destroyed when the couple abruptly arrive at the house. Panicked, the burglar takes them hostage, and things immediately begin to spiral out of control. As he works to figure out a way to cover up his crime, he also becomes more ensnared in the couple’s lives, discovering cracks in their foundation they’d been trying to keep quiet.
1 hour, 35 minutes
In far less time than it would take to read Ruth Ware’s bestselling novel, this adaptation will intrigue with a seemingly impossible mystery. Laura (Keira Knightley) is a journalist who takes an assignment aboard a luxury superyacht. Late one night, she witnesses a woman being thrown overboard from the room next door. When she reports what she saw, she learns that all passengers are accounted for, and the room next to Laura’s has been empty for the entire trip. At her own risk, Laura begins to investigate what’s truly going on.
1 hour, 35 minutes
Anna Kendrick pulls double duty as director (her feature debut) and star of this unsettling crime drama inspired by the true story of serial killer Rodney Alcala. In 1978 Alcala (played here by Daniel Zovatto), in the midst of his infamous killing spree, appeared on the popular game show The Dating Game, which led to his nickname as the Dating Game Killer. In the film, Kendrick plays the real-life Sheryl Bradshaw, a struggling actress who agrees to appear as a contestant on the show in the hope that it will lead to her big break. Among the three eligible bachelors, Sheryl ultimately chooses the charming Bachelor #3 as the winner, not knowing Alcala’s true nature.
Additional reporting by Ananda Dillon.
