Inspire Your Inner Sleuth with the 15 Greatest Murder Mystery Movies of All Time

Cinema Sins

May 23, 2023 at 11:13 PM·11 min read

Murder mystery movies are all the rage these days, whether in documentary or fiction form. All of a sudden, everyone seems to fancy themselves a detective ready to solve a whodunit from their sofa. And while it's trending now, nothing compares to a classic murder mystery. Chris, Barrett and Jeremy of CinemaSins got together to talk about murder mysteries--and argue over Clue. If you, too, like to solve crimes with the best of ‘em, grab your magnifying glass and keep on reading.

Best Murder Mystery Movies of All Time

15. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

We’re going with the Swedish version. It's a really complex mystery, with all these parallel plotlines. You've got Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) meeting and coalescing so beautifully--professionally and personally--and you see their journey to get to the bottom of a cold case mystery that's incredibly layered. The whole trilogy is great to watch.

14. Gone Girl

This is a different kind of murder mystery in that it’s told in two parts. The beginning is Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike’s life together, then ultimately she’s gone...girl. Then comes the grieving, then everyone thinking Affleck did it. Speaking of which, he was pretty good in this movie, even though all he had to do was play really dumb. We definitely recommend it if you haven't read the book--you'll never see the second half coming.

13. The Gift

OK, pay attention, because this one is a doozy: You have Cate Blanchett as a small town fortune teller with a few regulars, including Giovanni Ribisi and Hilary Swank, who’s married to abusive nightmare Keanu Reeves. Meanwhile, we have this other side story where Greg Kinnear's about to marry Katie Holmes--who goes missing. Detective J.K. Simmons obviously doesn't believe that Blanchett can tell the future, but she begs to differ. The Gift is an underrated, under-seen movie, partially written by Billy Bob Thornton.

12. Shutter Island

This one has a whammy of an ending. Leonardo DiCaprio, aided by Mark Ruffalo, is investigating an asylum, and it seems like everywhere he's turning, people are saying things that are just a little off, or they're not telling him everything. Meanwhile, he’s having harrowing visions of his now-dead wife, played by Michelle Williams. It's a very non-Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese movie--you just don't see him do something like this very often. Even after the whammy of an ending, it has an even more devastating epilogue. We almost want to describe it in detail because it's so good, but we're going to leave that for you to discover on your own.

11. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

When it comes to Shane Black murder mystery comedies, many think The Nice Guys has supplanted this, but it’s still an awesome movie. Val Kilmer plays a great character hired to teach detective-ing to Robert Downey Jr., an “actor” up for the role of a detective. There’s lots of shocking humor, moments that you're not expecting, sudden deaths, sudden reappearances, and a really solid mystery. If the humor was the only thing here, the movie would be more forgettable, but there's a really good mystery underneath it all.

10. Murder on the Orient Express

We’ve seen the Kenneth Branagh version, but the Sidney Lumet one is incredibly different. We remember watching this movie and thinking Albert Finney was a terrific Hercule Poirot--it's a very, very specific role. The guy is confident in his abilities, but he's not Sherlock Holmes. Hercule Poirot is more like Batman and Sherlock Holmes is more like Superman. Sherlock Holmes knows everything just by looking at it. Hercule Poirot seems like he's doing actual detective work. He's not apathetic; he does understand humanity, which plays a large role in the finality of this movie, actually. The solution of this mystery might be considered a cop-out, but you also have to consider it hadn't really ever been done before. It's a tightrope, and Finney did a spectacular job walking it. So did the rest of the cast, including Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael York.

9. Scream

Scream is a clever mystery movie that sort of hides behind a slasher film. We're trying to figure out who the murderer is all the way through the film, whereas in your typical slasher, we know Freddy Krueger, for example, is behind it all along. There's no mystery there. Wes Craven does a pretty good job of making everybody a suspect in this; everybody seems to have a motive. It focuses on a group of students including Neve Campbell, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy. But even principal Henry Winkler has a motive. People just keep getting killed one by one, and these students are determined to figure out who did it. There's a self-awareness within the plot that Kevin Williamson ran with for years after the original. The characters talk about the rules of horror movies and everybody is very knowledgeable about how this could play out. But, clearly, not knowledgeable enough.

8. Knives Out

This has a very Christie-inspired, classic murder mystery setup: There’s a bunch of people (Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Toni Colette, Ana de Armas) in a fancy house with a dead body (Christopher Plummer), and they’re all possible suspects. The detectives (including Lakeith Stanfield) believe they’re investigating a suicide, but Daniel Craig thinks there's more to the case. Rian Johnson knows what Christie knew: the key to a good mystery is a very compelling detective. If your detective is just reacting to everything, you have nothing. Craig’s Benoit Blanc is a character we haven’t seen before, both in the way he acts and thinks, but also in the way he speaks. He steals the movie, in part because he's so charming. And the actual last shot of this movie is a whole ‘nother level of awesome that most murder mysteries wouldn't take the time or care to do.

7. Clue

There was a little bit of diverging here: Jeremy and Chris ranked it low. Of course, Barrett, because he's nostalgic, puts Clue very, very high. It’s similar to Knives Out where these are fully fleshed out characters, which is bizarre because it's a board game. We've seen that movies based on mundane things like Legos can be very interesting, intriguing and even emotional. This is not necessarily emotional, but the plot fits together absolutely perfectly. The characters get along; The dialogue is rapid-fire; The music is spectacular. The murder mystery itself is so well thought out and so well planned that that's the reason we think that it's so re-watchable. There are three different endings, which is unheard of. Tim Curry, as the butler, Wadsworth, will just absolutely charm the pants off you. Plus, you've got a spectacular cast with Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, Lesley Ann Warren and Christopher Lloyd.

6. The Nice Guys

Almost everything we said about Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is present in The Nice Guys.Russell Crowe is not known for comedy and somehow Shane Black was able to make that guy funny, even though we know him through very intense roles. We've always thought his costar Ryan Gosling is a great comedic actor (have you seen him in The Big Short?) and he was perfect for this. You’ve also got young Andrea Rice, the adult in the family compared to Gosling, who doesn’t know how to be a dad at all. And then you throw Crowe into this and the three of them established great chemistry. The movie even sets up a sequel. So Black, if you're reading this article, let's get to it!

5. Zodiac

If this movie were just a little shorter, it might have ranked a little higher on this list. It focuses on a few men, including a young cartoonist played by Jake Gyllenhaal, obsessed with uncovering who the Zodiac killer is. What stands out are the scenes of the killings, particularly the first one. It's not heavily scored or overshot. And we think that was done on purpose because those who lived during the Zodiac killings in California were probably really, really terrified. The other thing we love about Zodiac is the unflinching rollout of who the Zodiac killer could be, creating a case for each character. Or should we say, suspect?

4. Se7en

At No. 4, we have Se7en. This is about a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) basing all of his murders on the Seven Deadly Sins. Retiring detective Morgan Freeman is tasked with joining the new kid on the block, played by Brad Pitt, and solve these murders. As always, Freeman's great. But back in the day, this was a different role for Pitt. He was always the romantic hunk (Thelma & Louise, Legends of the Fall), but this is maybe the dreariest movie ever. Se7ven is a top-five just in terms of all-time great endings. It’s not necessarily an easy ending, but very well-earned and a well-crafted story. It's one of those movies you wish you could wipe your brain of, just so you could watch the ending for the first time all over again.

3. Chinatown

We probably haven't all seen Chinatown. (It took Jeremy till his 30s to see Citizen Kane, after all.) It feels a little silly to make an effort not to spoil a movie pushing 50 years old, but to people who’ve never seen it before, you’ll thank us. In Chinatown, there's a drought in California and the engineer for the Department of Water and Power has been murdered. So the question becomes, why did this person get murdered for this? It’s a classic for a reason, and Jack Nicholson has probably never been better than he was as detective J.J. Gittes. People knew who he was as an actor at that point but this is his ultimate breakout role, which is funny because he’s got a giant bandage on his nose for 80 percent of the movie.

2. L.A. Confidential

It's going to be sacrilege for some that we put this movie ahead of Chinatown, because L.A. Confidential has a lot in common with Chinatown. It's a Los Angeles murder story--a really complex crime story that Curtis Hanson had to adapt from a James Ellroy novel. What we love about the movie is it gives you three different types of cops to follow. You've got Russell Crowe, who's a veteran ass-beater. Then you have Guy Pearce, who is the by-the-book, climbing-the-ladder detective who wants to eventually be mayor, if not the chief of police. Then you have Kevin Spacey, who's basically a cop in name only. He does very little police work; he's all about style and he is the consultant on a popular television show about detectives. Kim Basinger won the Oscar for this role, but it feels almost underrated these days. Time forgot that movie. It came out in the same year as Titanic, and that's what sort of...no pun intended...drowned it out. It also competed with films like Good Will Hunting and As Good As It Gets.

1. Rear Window

And that takes us to No. 1, Rear Window. This is Alfred Hitchcock at his very best. James Stewart is sitting in a wheelchair for most of the movie, trying to heal from a leg injury, and he’s taken to looking at his neighbors through their windows. The conceit here is great--who doesn't watch their neighbors from time to time? This takes it to another level. What if you think you saw one of your neighbors commit a crime? What would you do? This is our all-time favorite Hitchcock movie and it's tense as hell. It’s tense because of the cinematography and writing--because there’s not a lot of action. The technique provides the tension.

Looking for more Halloween inspiration? Try these upcoming horror movies.

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