The Best Murder Mystery Movies Ever Made

Murder mysteries are a perennial favorite because not only is murder an unspeakable crime, not receiving closure by having the killer face justice can compound the horror. Plus, there’s a thrill in trying to piece together a coherent motive and suspect from mere scraps of evidence. From Agatha Christie novels—where everyone is so weird that everyone is a murder suspect—to James Ellroy’s murder mysteries set in noir-era Los Angeles, everyone enjoys the thrill of finding out whodunit.

What follows is a list of outstanding murder mysteries going all the way back to the Silent Era. Some may not be technically classified as horror, but the very act of murder is horrifying enough that we’ve included them.

They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1971)

Reprising his role as Detective Virgil Tibbs from the 1967 film classic In the Heat of the Night, Sidney Poitier now finds himself working for the San Francisco police on a case involving a murdered prostitute. It soon becomes evident that the most likely suspect is a street preacher and local political activist named Reverend Logan Sharpe, who is agitating the local city council to provide funds for an urban renewal project. Although Sharpe admits to being with the prostitute shortly before her murder, he insists it was only in his role as a spiritual counselor. Other suspects soon emerge, but all the evidence points toward the preacher, who finds a unique way to escape prosecution right before the crucial local election.

The Night Stalker (1972)

Reporter Carl Kolchak investigates a series of murders on the Las Vegas Strip. Because each victim’s body was drained of blood, Kolchak suspects the murderer is a vampire. Unable to find the killer through traditional means, local police team up with Kolchak and seemingly accept that their suspect may be a supernatural being.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

The timelessly beautiful city of Venice—the film was released in Italy as A Venetian Shocking Red December—serves as the backdrop for this masterpiece by director Nicolas Roeg (Performance, The Man Who Fell to Earth). Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie star as a married couple who’ve just lost their young daughter in an aquatic accident. After Sutherland accepts a job to restore a Venetian church, he starts noticing odd patterns and strange symbols, while at the same time the city is plagued with a serial killer.

Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

In high school, Ginny Wainwright was a shy girl who desperately wanted to belong to an exclusive clique known as the “Top Ten” but who was traumatized after all the people she invited to a birthday party wound up going to a more popular girl’s party instead. Enraged by this, Ginny’s mother confronted the other girl’s parents but died in a car crash on the way home. Now, ten years later and after experiencing an experimental brain surgery, Ginny finds herself one of the cool kids in the “Top Ten”—but she’s perplexed as to why they keep dying. This is possibly the only horror movie you’ll ever see where someone gets murdered with a kebab skewer being shoved down their throat.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

In the first of what would become a movie franchise, a shy girl named Angela goes to summer camp along with her cousin. In what becomes too common to be a coincidence, anyone who disrespects Angela winds up dead. One man gets trapped in a bathroom stall and has an entire beehive dropped on him. Someone else gets stabbed to death while taking a shower. A woman gets raped and murdered with a hot curling iron. But the only thing that makes Sleepaway Camp different from the scores of other camper/slasher movies of the 1980s is its shocking, gender-bending ending. The film was highly profitable, making back over 30 times its production costs.

April Fool’s Day (1986)

In one of three horror movies made in 1986 that took place on April Fool’s Day—the other two were Slaughter High and Killer Party—a rich debutante named Muffy invites a group of friends to enjoy spring break at her island mansion. At first it seems as if she’s playing some innocent pranks on the partygoers—a whoopee cushion here, an exploding cigar there—suddenly people start going missing. And suddenly the survivors realize that they can’t contact the mainland and are stuck on the island for the weekend. And is that actually Muffy who’s hosting the party, or is it her crazy sister Buffy?

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

This is not only the third film in history to win all top five Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay—it is also the only horror film ever to win Best Picture. Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is an FBI trainee seeking to solve the case of an autogynephilic serial killer known as “Buffalo Bill” who removes the skin of his young female victims in what is thought to be an attempt to make a “woman suit.” Starling seeks the help of an imprisoned cannibal killer named Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins), a former psychiatrist and expert in criminal profiling. The story was based on the real-life relationship between Ted Bundy and a profile named Robert Keppel, who sought Bundy’s help in trying to solve the Green River Killer case.

Color of the Night (1994)

A New York psychiatrist (Bruce Willis) becomes depressed and starts to doubt his career path after a patient jumps from his office window and commits suicide during a session. Upon viewing his victim’s bloody green dress, he suddenly develops psychosomatic color blindness and is no longer able to see the color red. He travels to LA and stays with a friend, who is soon murdered. After his friend’s death, he assumes command of a therapy group whose eccentricities—one is a nymphomaniac, one has OCD, one is a PTSD-addled ex-cop, one paints gory images, and one is a drug addict—makes them all likely murder suspects. He also starts to realize that someone is trying to kill him, too.

The Usual Suspects (1995)

A massacre onboard a ship docked in San Pedro Bay, CA left 27 people dead and two survivors: a Hungarian mobster and a a palsied con artist named Verbal Kint. A US Customs agent flies to California to interview the con artist, who recalls the events leading up to the massacre via flashback. Or is he making it all up, and is this Verbal Kint’s latest con? Kevin Spacey won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing Verbal Kint, a role that was written with him in mind. The Washington Post called the film “deliciously intricate,” adding that “this thriller is like a game of life-and-death chess, with quick double-crosses and wild gambits.”

Scream (1995)

Scream is a fun high school horror movie that is an excellent whodunit. Due to its popularity, most people know who the killer is now but it was genuinely surprising to most viewers the first time they watched. Teenager Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and friends receive menacing phone calls from a serial killer on the loose in the small California town of Woodsboro. The town’s teenagers use their knowledge of horror movies to try to figure out who the killer is before they become the next victim.

Kiss the Girls (1997)

A DC-based detective named Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) visits North Carolina after his niece is reported missing. He soon learns that she is only one of many girls in the area who’ve gone missing. The kidnapper is a man who calls himself Casanova and keeps several women chained in his house. The film was banned in central Virginia at the time of its release because the case in the movie resembled a real-life case of a serial murderer of young girls who was actively terrorizing the area at the time of the film’s release. SFGATE praised Morgan Freeman’s performance, adding, “The film is atmospherically disturbing, with much of the key action set in deep woods where shadows come alive. A kind of paranoia is added through the use of hand-held cameras during chase sequences. The blur adds cheap thrills of a disconcerting kind.”

Urban Legend (1998)

A serial killer preys on university students using a unique method—every one of his murders resembles what people normally associate with urban legends. A couple are parked in a remote area kissing but are interrupted by strange noises. After the boyfriend gets out to investigate, he is murdered and hanged from a tree above the car, where his feet begin making scratching noises against the car. Two girls attempt to invoke “Bloody Mary,” with disastrous results. Gangs drive around with their headlights off and kill the first person who flashes their headlights at them. A woman gets decapitated by a murderer who’d been hiding in the backseat, etc. One enterprising college student begins to investigate after realizing that all of the slayings are patterned after famous urban legends.

What Lies Beneath (2000)

A Vermont housewife’s husband, a university scientist, is skeptical that his wife Claire is having supernatural experiences as she claims. She says her bathtub suddenly filled with hot water and the words “YOU KNOW” were scrawled on the mirror after she conducted a seance. Claire says her computer keeps typing the initials “MEF” on her keyboard—then she finds a picture of a woman named Madison Elizabeth Frank (initials “MEF”) who is her doppelgänger. Claire begins to suspect that her own husband—the alleged skeptic—may be not only be behind all this supernatural activity, but he may be a murderer.

Identity (2003)

In the midst of an atypically vicious rainstorm in the Nevada desert, ten strangers find themselves stranded together in a remote motel. Both ends of the road are entirely flooded, so they are stuck together. And then they start getting killed, one by one. But is this what’s actually happening, or does a convicted killer who suffers from multiple personality disorder have an overactive imagination? Roger Ebert praised the film: “I’ve seen a lot of movies that are intriguing for the first two acts and then go on autopilot with a formula ending. Identity is a rarity, a movie that seems to be on autopilot for the first two acts and then reveals that it was not, with a third act that causes us to rethink everything that has gone before.”

Mystic River (2003)

Directed by Clint Eastwood and set in a working-class Irish area of Boston, Mystic River stars Sean Penn in an Academy Award-winning performance as Jimmy Marcus, an ex-con whose daughter is murdered. One of his childhood friends (Kevin Bacon) is leading the murder investigation, while another (Tim Robbins) gradually becomes the prime suspect, at least in Jimmy’s eyes. Roger Ebert praised the film, calling it “a dark, ominous brooding about a crime in the present that is emotionally linked to a crime in the past.”

Cry Wolf (2005)

A slasher movie about a group of students at an elite boarding school who enjoy antagonizing each other. Reality is blurred when the students play a game called “Cry Wolf” in which rumors about a serial killer are spread through campus. When a real student is killed, seemingly by a wolf, the students realize one of them is taking the game too far.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

A slasher whodunit starring Amber Heard as the title character. Newly popular after the boys at her school realize she is attractive, Mandy Lane attends a pool party with her best friend Emmet. Emmet is bullied and gets revenge by goading one of his tormenters, Dylan, into jumping into the pool from the roof. Dylan misses and the fall kills him. 9 months later, Mandy Lane attends another party where her classmates start dying one by one.

Perfect Stranger (2007)

Reporter Rowena Price (Halle Berry) is investigating a homophobic senator (Bruce Willis) on suspicion of having sex with his male interns. In the course of her investigation, she begins to suspect that the senator also killed her childhood friend. Perfect Stranger was filmed with three different endings, each with a different killer. Although this marked the first time Bruce Willis and Halle Berry had starred in a film together since 1991’s The Last Boy Scout, NPR panned the film, calling it “deeply imperfect.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

A wealthy Swedish businessman hires a recently disgraced journalist, Mikael (Daniel Craig). On the surface, Mikael is going to talk to the businessman’s family in order to write a biography. However, the real reason he was hired is to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of the businessman’s grandniece. As the two dig into the family’s history, they uncover more than just one murder mystery.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

A mystery film based on Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name. In 1934 a world famous detective, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), boards the Orient Express train to return to London. That evening, a fellow passenger is murdered. Poirot interrogates a star-studded cast of characters in order the solve the murder mystery.

Happy Death Day (2017)

In what is essentially a slasher-movie take on the film Groundhog Day, a college student finds herself stuck in a “time loop” where she keeps waking up with a hangover on the morning of her birthday in the bed of a boy named Carter. But at the end of each day, she keeps getting murdered. Even after barricading herself in her dorm room to avoid another repeat, she finds that the killer is already inside, and he kills her again. She is told that if she successfully identifies the killer during the next loop, she will break free of the cycle and return to life. South China Morning Post says, “Some shocks, some wild fights and some effective twists make this ripping fun.”

The film’s sequel, Happy Death Day 2 U (2019), is another great murder mystery.

Knives Out (2019)

A wealthy octogenarian crime novelist named Harlan Thrombey invites family members to his mansion for his birthday party, only for him to wind up dead the next morning. Although it was originally ruled a suicide, the uncomfortable fact is that his relationships with his relatives were toxic, and several of them had a reasonable motive to kill him: There’s the son-in-law who’s cheating on Harlan’s daughter; the son whom he fired from his book company; the daughter-in-law whose allowance he terminated after he caught her stealing; and the grandson with whom he recently clashed physically. Or maybe it was an innocent but fatal accident made by his nurse?

Uncut Gems (2019)

Technically more of a psychological thriller revolving around infidelity and high-priced jewels, this film is often classified as a murder mystery… spoiler ahead…. because two of the main characters get murdered in the end. The only real “mystery” is whether those who wind up getting murdered would have thought it was all worth it in the end. Uncut Gems appeared on many “Best Of” lists for 2019, and lead actor Adam Sandler, known mostly for goofy comedies received special praise for his adept handling of a complex dramatic role.

Seance (2021)

Camille is a new student at Edelvine Academy for Girls. She is targeted by a clique of mean girls who goad her into doing a seance to contact the “Edelvine ghost” and tell her of a former student who was killed by the ghost. Afterwards the girls involved in the seance begin to die one by one and it’s unclear if the murders are supernatural or if there is a killer in their midst.

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a murder mystery slasher movie about a group of wealthy 20-somethings who plan to shelter from a hurricane together while partying in a mansion. The friends play a game called “Bodies Bodies Bodies” where one person is assigned to be the “murderer” and pretends to murder another guest in the dark. All of the friends then come together and try to deduce who the murderer is. The game changes when the friends start dying one by one and the arguments about who is killing them off become real.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

A sequel to Knives Out (2019), one of the most popular murder mystery films of all time, Glass Onion sees Daniel Craig reprising his role as extraordinary detective Benoit Blanc. Blanc is invited to the private island of tech billionaire Miles Bron (Norton) along with a motley crew of Bron’s friends and the promise of a murder mystery to be solved. The all-star cast is rounded out by Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson and Dave Bautista.

Death on the Nile (2022)

A sequel to Murder on the Orient Express (2017), this mystery film sees famed detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed) celebrating a wedding aboard a cruise ship. After another passenger is killed, Poirot investigates the crime, questioning the other guests on board. Because each guest seems to have some kind of motive to harm the victim, Poirot’s case isn’t as easy at is seems.

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Based on Agatha Christie’s book Halloween Party, this mystery film is a sequel to Death on the Nile (2022). A retired Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is invited to a séance at a wealthy opera singer’s home in Venice to expose the fraudulent psychic involved. When someone is murdered, Poirot turns his attention to exposing the guest who committed to the murder.

More murder mystery movies:

• Chamber of Horrors (1940) was originally released in England as The Door with Seven Locks and revolves around a murder plot involving hidden jewels.
• The Night Has Eyes (1942) a woman looking to solve her friend’s murder unwittingly takes up residence with the man who may be the killer.
• Green for Danger (1946) was a man’s death during an operation accidental or intentional?
• The House in the Woods (1957) a man writing a murder mystery accidentally stumbles upon a real-life murder.
• Death is a Woman (1966) a drug-smuggling investigation turns into a murder investigation.
• The Carey Treatment (1972) a doctor winds up investigating a murder case at his own hospital.
• Black Christmas (1974) a mysterious stranger stalks sorority girls during their Christmas break.
• The Devil’s Eye (1975) a mysterious killer has a penchant for plucking out his victim’s eyeballs.
• The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1977) a killer terrorizes an Arkansas town.
• Prom Night (1980) teenagers at a prom are stalked by a masked killer.
• My Bloody Valentine (1981) a killer warns townsfolk to never throw a Valentine’s party again; they throw it anyway.
• Still of the Night (1982) is a murder mystery that’s set among the world of New York’s antique brokers.
• I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) four friends cover up a murder, only to realize someone knows their secret.
• The Faculty (1998) aliens are suspected when teachers and students start disappearing at a local high school.
• The Bone Collector (1999) a paralyzed ex-detective helps track down a New York City serial killer.
• Cherry Falls (1999) a murderer is killing virgins in a small town.
• Valentine (2001) someone is stalking women as they get ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
• Taking Lives (2004) a psychological thriller starring Angelina Jolie as an FBI profiler tasked with tracking down a serial killer.
• Zodiac (2007) a cartoonist attempts to find San Francisco’s infamous Zodiac Killer.
• Sorority Row (2009) sorority sisters who attempt to cover up an accidental death find themselves stalked by a killer.
• Detention (2012) a killer stalks a high school, but it may not be human.
• The Awakening (2012) a skeptic attempts to debunk rumors of a ghost haunting, only to find far more than she’d bargained for.
• I, Anna (2012) a man is clubbed to death, and mystery ensues.
• You’re Next (2013) a hail of crossbow arrows interrupts a rural family reunion.
• Knife+Heart (2018) this murder mystery with a soundtrack from M83 deals with a murder mystery on a gay porno shoot.
• I See You (2019) is a little boy’s disappearance linked to a previous string of abductions?
• Murder Mystery (2019) this Netflix original movie is by no means a horror movie, but it is a whimsical take on murder mysteries with a lot of action.