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11 Mystery Movies That’ll Put Your Detective Skills to Work
This list, in your queue, for your next movie night? Case closed.
By Matthew Jacobs and Erin Corbett
March 4, 2026
11 Best Mystery Movies That Will Put Your Detective Skills to Work - Netflix Tudum
Hollywood genres tend to wax and wane, but not mysteries. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Thin Man, and The Maltese Falcon introduced early moviegoing audiences to the thrills of a riddle, popularizing a model that could be tweaked for horror (Hitchcock, Se7en), comedy (Charade, Clue), noirish drama (L.A. Confidential, Memento, Gone Girl), and beyond. Today, mysteries are as popular as ever.
We all love to play armchair detective, and trying to deduce the outcome before it arrives is what keeps the genre fresh. So, whether you want an all-star laugh riot or a brooding psychodrama, here are 11 worthwhile mystery movies that’ll put your puzzle-solving skills to good use.
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Enola Holmes
Millie Bobby Brown trades her Stranger Things telekinesis for the powers of deduction with this eponymous role as Sherlock Holmes’ plucky 16-year-old sister, who got her own book series in the 2000s. Enola, far scrappier than the typical Victorian-era woman, takes after her investigative brother (Henry Cavill) when their mother (Helena Bonham Carter) goes missing. Her search leads Enola through London, where she encounters other mysteries and proves that sexist social mores won’t interrupt her quest. Brown, who won raves for her comic timing, reprised the character in a rollicking 2022 sequel that finds Enola turning her detective skills into a lucrative career.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Even before Knives Out became a monster hit in theaters, writer-director Rian Johnson started brainstorming sequels. His slick Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) could be the second coming of Hercule Poirot, the famed Agatha Christie private eye who solved mysteries across 33 novels and even more short stories. The first of Johnson’s sequels is Glass Onion, a starry comedy about a tech billionaire (Edward Norton) who invites his friends — played by the likes of Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, and Dave Bautista — to participate in a remote murder-mystery getaway that soon turns deadly. The funny, tightly plotted movie earned an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay, and you don’t have to be a sleuth to see why.
IT'S WHAT'S INSIDE
This body-swapping mystery thriller is a who’s who event, and you’ll want to be on the guest list. Reuben’s (Devon Terrell) wedding weekend is the perfect opportunity for a reunion of old college friends Shelby (Brittany O’Grady), Cyrus (James Morosini), Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), Brooke (Reina Hardesty), and Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), who plan one last wild night together before the groom’s big day. But the party quickly devolves into an existential nightmare when their estranged friend Forbes (David Thompson) shows up with a mysterious suitcase that lets each person take a walk in someone else’s shoes — literally. Whether the guests of honor ever return to their own bodies will depend on how well they can communicate with one another.
Lost Girls
This particular mystery is more harrowing than most: It’s based on the true story of an activist named Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan) who pressed law enforcement in Long Island, New York, to search for a string of dead sex workers that included her own daughter. Lost Girls was adapted from the revered nonfiction book by journalist Robert Kolker, and it’s steeped in raw details about the hunt for a serial killer believed to have murdered between 10 and 18 young women. Ryan is gripping in the lead role. She’s a passionate foil for the jaded police commissioner (Gabriel Byrne) reluctant to give the case the treatment it deserves. Lost Girls is directed by Liz Garbus, who’s also released a documentary about the real-life murders and the 2023 arrest of a suspect in the case.
Luckiest Girl Alive
Jessica Knoll’s debut novel of the same name was a hot property when it became a bestseller in 2015, three years after Gone Girl jump-started a wave of popular female-centered crime thrillers. The film adaptation stars Mila Kunis as a magazine editor who survived a school shooting and other horrific incidents as a teenager. But the past is never dead, and hers starts to rear its head when her wealthy fiancé (Finn Wittrock) suggests they relocate to London. Luckiest Girl Alive is about confronting demons, with Kunis’ Ani piecing her own history together as everything looks picture-perfect from the outside.
Murder Mystery
Just Go with It co-stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston reunited for a good cause: to solve a Murder Mystery on a billionaire’s yacht. They play a married couple — he’s an NYPD officer, she’s a hairdresser — traveling to Europe with modest means. En route, the pair meet a suave aristocrat (Luke Evans) who suggests they join his Mediterranean cruise, only to find themselves accused of killing his uncle (Terence Stamp) aboard the boat. Murder Mystery is like a rowdier Clue, with Sandler and Aniston surrounded by a rogues’ gallery of eccentric suspects. They’re so good at puzzling out the murder that they decide to start their own detective firm in Murder Mystery 2.
Velvet Buzzsaw
Jake Gyllenhaal went through a gloriously zany phase in the 2010s, starting with Nightcrawler, peaking with Okja, and concluding with Velvet Buzzsaw. In the latter, he plays Morf Vandewalt (what a name!), a pompous art critic writing a biography about a dead artist whose newly unearthed paintings kill the interlopers who try to commodify them. Gyllenhaal’s decadent, bespectacled performance in this satirical thriller rounds out a sterling cast that includes Toni Collette, Rene Russo, Daveed Diggs, John Malkovich, and Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Same sleuth, new suspects. In the third Knives Out film created by writer-director Rian Johnson, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc returns to crack his most personal case yet. Set in a small church in upstate New York, a new murder mystery unravels that pushes the boundaries of both faith and reason. Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Jeremy Renner are among some of the all-star cast who bring Wake Up Dead Man to life.
The Woman in Cabin 10
On board a lavish yacht amongst the wealthy elite, travel journalist Lo Blacklock (Keira Knightley) thinks she’s scored a dream assignment — until a sinister mystery begins to unfold. Late one night, she witnesses a woman being thrown overboard. But by morning, every passenger is accounted for. With no one believing what she saw, Lo puts her own life in danger in her search for the truth. Guy Pearce, David Ajala, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Hannah Waddingham also star in the twisty thriller directed by Simon Stone and based on Ruth Ware’s acclaimed 2016 novel.
The Woman in the Window
Another product of the Gone Girl gold rush, The Woman in the Window is adapted from a book that topped The New York Times bestseller list in 2018. Faithful to its title, Amy Adams plays a boozy agoraphobe in New York City who spies on her neighbors, specifically a troubled family that recently moved in across the street. Convinced she sees the patriarch (Gary Oldman) stab his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) one night, she keeps a watchful, paranoid eye on what may or may not be happening outside her door — which gets complicated when the man shows up with an entirely different wife (Julianne Moore). The twists in this Rear Window-esque thriller directed by Joe Wright (Atonement) and written by Tracy Letts (August: Osage County) pair well with a tall glass of red wine and all the lights turned out.
The Wonder
Florence Pugh headlines this fascinating slice of historical fiction adapted from Room author Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel of the same name. Pugh plays a 19th-century English nurse enlisted to inspect an 11-year-old Irish girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy) who says she’s been fasting for four months, subsisting on the manna God sends her from heaven. Is she a divine apostle enacting penance? A medical enigma? A strong-willed young woman seeking bodily autonomy? Pugh’s self-possessed Lib Wright is determined to find out. Sebastián Lelio, the Oscar-winning director of Gloria and A Fantastic Woman, made this sumptuous drama, which features one of Pugh’s best performances.
Mystifying Murder Mysteries To Stream NowFrom Glass Onion to Murderville, these murder mysteries will keep you guessing.
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