The Dentist (1996)

The Dentist takes one of life’s most ordinary anxieties—the bright chair, the whine of the drill, the forced smile—and turns it into a slick, mean-spirited little nightmare that’s hard to shake. Brian Yuzna directs with a pulpy confidence, letting Corbin Bernsen play Dr. Alan Feinstone as a man whose obsession with perfection curdles into something grotesquely fascinating, with darkly comic touches that make the horror go down even sharper. The vibe is glossy ’90s suburban rot: clean surfaces, ugly secrets, and a steady descent into mania that keeps tightening like a clamp. Fair warning: it’s not for the squeamish or anyone sensitive to sexual violence elements, but if you like your thrillers audacious, grimly entertaining, and willing to go all-in on a killer premise, this one bites.

The Dentist is clearly trying to turn everyday dental anxiety into a sleek, satirical descent into madness, with Brian Yuzna leaning hard into body-horror and gross-out shock value. The problem is the filmmaking often feels cheap and the writing is thin, so the “psychological breakdown” plays more like a string of nasty set pieces than a story that builds real dread. It’s relentlessly mean-spirited and designed to make you squirm, with graphic dental torture and some deeply uncomfortable sexual content that can feel more exploitative than scary. If you’re in the mood for a trashy ’90s midnight movie with Corbin Bernsen going full unhinged and a few memorably queasy moments, you might tolerate it—but if you want smart suspense, believable characters, or anything less than pure revulsion, this is not your appointment.