Powder

Powder was released October 27, 1995, by Disney's Hollywood Pictures label (with Caravan Pictures), written and directed by Victor Salva. Sean Patrick Flanery plays Jeremy "Powder" Reed, a hairless, chalk-pale young man whose pregnant mother was struck by lightning; raised hidden in his grandparents' cellar, he emerges with an off-the-charts intellect and strange electromagnetic powers — electronics go haywire around him, and storms seem to seek him out. Mary Steenburgen plays the child-services psychologist who takes him in, Jeff Goldblum is the physics teacher fascinated by him, and Lance Henriksen plays the local sheriff.

It's an earnest, odd parable about being gifted and unwanted, building to the lightning-field ending — and critics split right down the middle (50% on Rotten Tomatoes). It still grossed $30.9 million on a $9.5 million budget, and then did what strange mid-90s movies did: moved to the rental shelf and cable rotation, where it became one of those "weird movie you half-remember" touchstones the decade specialized in. The release also drew protests and boycott calls, because Salva had been convicted of molesting a 12-year-old actor during the production of his 1989 debut Clownhouse — a matter of public record that shadowed the film then and shadows it now.

For the kids who caught it on a Friday-night rental, though, Powder endures as a specific 90s feeling: the sad, glowing outsider movie you watched once, never quite forgot, and years later had to ask the internet to help you name.