Have you ever imagined yourself as a Sherlock Holmes-level detective? If so, you probably enjoy murder mysteries. The genre has been around almost since the invention of movies, and it’s proven to be extremely durable. From thefilms noir of the ’40s and ’50s, to the star-studded productions of the ’70s, to the more recent Knives Out, audiences have long relished the opportunity to bring out their inner Miss Marples and solve some crimes.
If you’ve seen all the usual suspects (pun intended), the following underrated murder mysteries will give you some new fodder for your detective fantasies. Many of these are true hidden gems that never quite got the attention they deserved. Others were hits – or at least hits among a target audience – upon their initial release, yet didn’t quite break into the mainstream. And some are simply older films that younger people may not be hip to yet. Whatever the case, they offer plenty of fun and chills as you follow the clues.
Wind River
It’s a tragic fact that women often go missing on Native American reservations. That’s the idea Wind River dives into. Jeremy Renner plays Cory Lambert, a professional game tracker who assists FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) in looking for the people responsible for killing a teenage girl whose body was later found in the snow. The case leads them to make some horrifying discoveries about what’s happening on this particular reservation.
The way Wind River unfurls its mystery is riveting. You’ll pay rapt attention to every second. The movie also has something to say about crimes on reservations. Poor economic conditions, insufficient law enforcement, and a general lack of opportunity frequently combine to create the potential for bad things to happen. This is a murder mystery with real-world relevance, driven by powerhouse work from Renner and Olsen.
Zodiac
In the late 1960s, the Zodiac Killer carried out five confirmed murders, but claimed to have killed 37 people in total. He liked to taunt law enforcement by sending them impossible-to-decipher coded messages. The slayer was never caught, and although there are various theories about his identity, no one knows for sure.
Director David Fincher told the story of three men obsessed with the case in his 2007 drama Zodiac. Robert Downey Jr. plays reporter Paul Avery, Jake Gyllenhaal is political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, and Mark Ruffalo is police inspector Dave Toschi. They, along with dozens of others, try to figure out the messages and expose the person responsible, to no avail. Crucially, the film mimics the open-ended nature of the case, lasting far longer than audiences anticipated and not offering a clear resolution. Instead, the mystery is left as unresolved onscreen as it is in real life.
It may seem odd to call Zodiac underrated when it was highly acclaimed and is considered one of Fincher’s best films. It only made $33 million at the domestic box office, though, and a lot of people still avoid it, thinking that it will contain upsetting violence. In reality, the film is restrained in that regard, focusing far more on the psychological toll that looking for the culprit takes on the central trio than on blood and gore.
The Gift
In between the Evil Dead movies and the Spider-Man movies, Sam Raimi made a first-rate murder mystery called The Gift. Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a psychic who gets caught up in the search for a missing woman named Jessica King (Katie Holmes). When she turns up dead, the prime suspect is Donnie Barksdale (Reeves), a hateful man who had an affair with her. He’s arrested, but Annie’s visions suggest he might not be the person police are looking for. She tries to get to the bottom of things.
As you would expect from Raimi, The Gift is very stylish. A sense of dread is pervasive in the movie thanks to the tone he sets. You also get the pleasure of seeing Keanu Reeves in a rare bad-guy role. He knocks your socks off playing against type. Above all, using psychic visions as a plot point allows for some eerie moments guaranteed to give you a chill.
Witness
Witness was a huge hit – and an Oscar nominee for best picture – back in 1985. It’s primed to be discovered by younger audiences who didn’t get to see it at the time. A young Amish boy named Samuel (Lukas Haas) witnesses the murder of an undercover narcotics officer while visiting Philadelphia. Detective John Book (Harrison Ford) is assigned to protect him and his mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis) when the bad guys come looking to silence the boy. That means Book has to go undercover in the Amish community, living by their rules. He breaks one of those rules by starting an affair with Rachel.
This movie has everything – one of Ford’s best performances, a highly original setting for a thriller, some nail-biting action, a tender love story, and even some humor. Director Peter Weir balances all these elements in just the right fashion, creating a piece of mainstream entertainment that completely draws you in. The dramatic conclusion, set in and around a corn silo, is something you’ll never forget.
The Nice Guys
In The Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling plays shabby detective Holland March, and Russell Crowe is Jackson Healy, a goon who beats people up for money. They join forces to find Amelia Kuttner (Margaret Qualley), an adult film actress who supposedly died in a car accident but may actually be in hiding from some very bad dudes. They quickly discover that her career in erotic entertainment is not entirely what it seems.
Written and directed by Shane Black, The Nice Guys benefits from hilarious chemistry between March and Healy. In fact, they have their own distinct version of the old “odd couple” chemistry perfected by the likes of Abbott and Costello. Crowe and Gosling earn huge laughs together, while Angourie Rice steals scenes as March’s 13-year-old daughter, who’s way better at deciphering clues than he is.
The murder mystery is secondary to the interactions between the characters, but that’s what makes the movie endlessly enjoyable to watch. When it’s over, you’ll immediately want to see these people in a sequel
Presumed Innocent
Presumed Innocent was one of the best films of 1990, yet nobody talks about it anymore. Based on Scott Turow’s hit novel, it casts Harrison Ford as Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. He’s assigned by his boss to look into the murder of his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi). What his boss doesn’t know is that Rusty and Carolyn had a hot-and-heavy affair. Once this is revealed, he becomes the prime suspect and has to quickly figure out who the real killer is.
If you pay attention, it’s admittedly a little easy to spot the culprit in Presumed Innocent. As film critic Roger Ebert used to say, movies don’t have time for unnecessary characters, so the killer is always the person who is otherwise inconsequential to the plot. Nevertheless, the movie features a terrific performance from Ford, as well as several unforeseen twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Dead Again
If you like your murder mysteries tinged with a little bit of supernatural drama, Dead Again is the picture for you. This 1991 thriller stars Kenneth Branagh as private investigator Mike Church and Emma Thompson as Grace, a woman suffering from amnesia. She begins to recover her memories, but they’re from a murder that was committed in the 1940s. The more he looks into things, the more Mike suspects – to his great horror – that he and Grace might have a past-life connection to the crime.
Dead Again has a lot of cleverly conceived twists, and the inclusion of reincarnation-related themes sets the film apart from other entries in the murder mystery genre. Mike has to untangle the past if he wants to understand the present. Everything builds to a dramatic conclusion that brings the two time frames together in a startling manner. Branagh and Thompson are phenomenal, as is Robin Williams, who has a very small, uncredited supporting role as a disgraced psychiatrist who opens an intriguing door in the investigation.
The Clovehitch Killer
The Clovehitch Killer takes place in a small Kentucky town. A teenage boy named Tyler (Charlie Plummer) finds a box of troubling, sexually explicit photographs hidden in a locked shed belonging to his father Don (Dylan McDermott), a scout leader and highly respected member of the community. Tyler shares this information with friend Kassi (Madisen Beaty), and they realize there’s a possibility Don is the person behind a series of unsolved murders in their community. The victims were all tied up in an identical manner to the subjects of those photos.
Good performances and a tight script make The Clovehitch Killer a thoroughly enticing film. Every time you become convinced Don is the killer, something happens to make you doubt it. Conversely, every time you think he’s innocent, a new wrinkle arrives to have you second-guessing yourself. Aside from the mystery elements, the movie explores some provocative themes about what happens when someone you look up to may have done something that will shatter your opinion of them.
Brick
Fourteen years before making one of the best all-star murder mysteries of our time, Knives Out, director Rian Johnson made another effort in the genre. Brick stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brendan, a high school student who takes it upon himself to investigate the slaying of his ex-girlfriend. The quest takes him through various social cliques in his school, while also pitting him against “the Pin” (Lukas Haas), the resident drug dealer.
The movie is an interesting amalgamation of The Breakfast Club and the crime novels of Dashiell Hammett. That may sound like an odd combo, but it works. The characters speak in stylized dialogue right out of an old hard-boiled detective story, yet the look at issues adolescents face in high school couldn’t be more contemporary. And because the film takes its concept seriously rather than playing it as a joke, it stands apart as a true original.
Bad Times at the El Royale
Bad Times at the El Royale takes place in a rundown hotel. A guy enters a room and buries a duffel bag beneath the floor boards. Then another guy comes in and offs him. What was that all about? The movie jumps ahead a decade to show us.
An all-star cast gets caught up in the unraveling of that mystery, including Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Chris Hemsworth, Jon Hamm, and Dakota Johnson. They play people who, for one reason or another, make their way to the hotel. The less you know about Bad Times at the El Royale in advance, the better. Writer/director Drew Goddard, who also made The Cabin in the Woods, once again plays with genre conventions, whipping up a story that keeps you guessing, while simultaneously giving the central hotel a palpable vibe of menace.
The Pledge
In The Pledge, Jack Nicholson portrays Jerry Black, a detective whose planned retirement is stalled when the body of a slain 8-year-old girl turns up. Shattered by the crime, he decides to stick around a little longer to see if he can figure out who took her life and why. A suspect he believes is innocent gets arrested for the crime, leading Jerry to double his efforts.
Directed by Sean Penn, The Pledge is an atmospheric thriller that has a shocking ending. Nicholson is typically brilliant, capturing the haunted quality that Jerry feels. He can’t walk away from his job until he cracks this case. It’s a compelling mystery, but an equally compelling story about a man so obsessed with solving a crime that he quickly steps over an ethical line.
Lone Star
John Sayles’s Lone Star casts Chris Cooper as Sam Deeds, the sheriff of a small Texas border town. When the skeleton of a racist former sheriff is discovered, Sam opens a full investigation. As clues come together, he starts to believe that his father, who was also a sheriff, might be responsible for the crime.
That’s one heck of a hook for a murder mystery, and Lone Star dives deep into how it impacts Deeds. Beyond that, you also get an astute examination of racism, specifically how it festers in border towns, where Mexican immigrants cross over into the United States. Fueled by first-rate performances from Cooper and Kris Kristofferson as the deceased sheriff seen in flashback, Lone Star has substance to match the intrigue of its central slaying.
Eyes of Laura Mars
Before going on to direct The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner made an intriguing little mystery called Eyes of Laura Mars. Faye Dunaway plays the title character, a famous New York fashion photographer who specializes in provocative images that mix sexuality and violence. Laura has the strange, unexplained ability to see things through the eyes of a serial killer. Worse, this person has her friends and colleagues in their sights. Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as John Neville, the police detective working with her to identify the psycho.
This one is a murder mystery with a paranormal twist, courtesy of those visions Laura has. Kershner beautifully captures the gritty feel of NYC during the 1970s, while also making the murder scenes spooky. Dunaway and Jones are, of course, always easy to watch, which is another benefit. You even get an original Barbra Streisand song, “Prisoner,” recorded specifically for the film. What more could you ask for?
The Red Riding Trilogy
Here’s three terrific murder mysteries in one. The Red Riding Trilogy is a series centered around dirty dealings in Yorkshire over a period of many years. Red Riding: 1974 has Andrew Garfield playing a crime reporter looking into a series of child murders. Red Riding: 1980 focuses on a detective (Paddy Considine) wondering why a couple of fellow cops are trying to hinder his quest to nab the “Yorkshire Ripper.” Red Riding: 1983 follows a lawyer trying to determine whether a disabled man who confessed to the crimes is actually the guilty party.
All three installments of the trilogy received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Taken together, they paint an epic portrait of a gruesome crime streak that devastates a town. In a day and age where binge-watching TV shows has become a popular pastime, Red Riding presents a perfect opportunity to binge-watch a movie series. Viewing them in close succession drives home the core idea that Yorkshire has been utterly rocked by the slayings for a long time.
The Spiral Staircase
If you’re in the mood for a crackling murder mystery, but don’t have a lot of time to spare, check out 1946’s The Spiral Staircase. Running a tight 83 minutes, this atmospheric black-and-white thriller casts Dorothy McGuire as Helen, a mute woman who works in a Vermont mansion. Someone is killing women who have various afflictions or disabilities. She thinks it might be a good idea to get out of Dodge, so to speak, but before she can do that, she gets trapped in the mansion with the maniac responsible for the crimes.
Director Robert Siodmak packs a lot into a short running time. The Spiral Staircase is full of suspense as we watch Helen fight for her life, while simultaneously attempting to figure out the killer’s motives. As an added bonus, you get to see McGuire in one of her most captivating screen performances. This is an older film that maintains its impact decades later.
Memories of Murder
Bong Joon-ho won an Oscar for Parasite, but in 2003, he made a movie that’s just as good, and arguably even better. Memories of Murder is the story of three detectives – Park (Song Kang-ho), Cho (Kim Roi-ha), and Seo (Kim Sang-kyung). Someone is killing young women in their South Korean jurisdiction, and they try to figure out who before that person strikes again. Somehow, the culprit is perpetually a step ahead of them.
On the level of being a procedural about the search for a criminal, Memories of Murder works magnificently. It’s the second level that make it special, though. The story is really about the psychological toll this case has on the three men, Park in particular. He knows that every passing minute brings the killer closer to claiming another life, so his inability to make an arrest means an innocent life will be lost. That gives it a haunting quality that leaves you shaken by the end.
Gosford Park
Gosford Park is a murder mystery that will appeal to fans of Downton Abbey. Writer Julien Fellowes went on to create that popular television series. This 2001 drama relies on an age-old mystery formula. A group of wealthy people come together at a lush estate for a weekend getaway. When the estate’s owner, Sir William (Michael Gambon), is slain, everyone is a suspect. It’s up to bumbling Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry) to figure out whether the killer was one of the elite guests or one of the servants.
Director Robert Altman specialized in ensemble pieces, and for this film he got to work with a top-notch cast that includes Kristen Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Bob Balaban, Clive Owen, Emily Watson, and Richard E. Grant, to name just a few. Gosford Park was nominated for best picture at the Oscars, but its popularity seems to have faded over time. Anyone looking to see a who’s-who of great, mostly British actors in a good old-fashioned whodunit should definitely check this one out.
Mother
There have been several movies called Mother, but the one from 2009 is the one specifically dealing with a murder. Kim Hye-ja stars as Mother, a woman who lives in rural South Korea with her mentally challenged son. After the body of a slain little girl is discovered, haphazard police work points to her boy’s involvement. Desperate to prove his innocence, she begins her own investigation into the crime.
Director Bong Joon-ho takes this story seriously, while also infusing it with some humor. Seeing this innocent middle-aged lady using her maternal wiles to crack open a case is highly amusing. She often gets the upper hand by trading on her ordinary appearance. At the same time, Mother doesn’t minimize the seriousness of the crime at hand. There are some truly eerie circumstances our heroine finds herself in as she searches for answers. The film casts a hypnotic spell.
Tenebrae
You could blindly pick any movie out of Dario Argento’s filmography and be guaranteed that you’d at least see something interesting. Tenebrae – also known as Unsane in English-speaking countries – is no exception. It’s the story of an author named Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) who is in Rome doing a publicity tour for his new book. While he’s there, a series of gruesome murders begins taking place, all of which are inspired by and/or connected to the work he’s promoting. Neal has to figure out who is behind these terrible acts.
Fans of Italian horror movies recognize Tenebrae as one of Argento’s finest works. It is not, however, all that well known among the general public. It’s a moody, gory, sexually charged film that creates an ambiance of danger. Is it on the extreme side? Sure, but Argento is an ambitious artist, so you get plenty of compelling themes to ponder while you watch the ghastly story unfold.
Cure
Cure takes viewers into an investigation being conducted by Detective Takabe (Koji Yakusho). A string of identical murders has taken place, and he’s desperate to solve them. Several factors conspire to make this difficult. First, multiple people confess, yet each of them seems to be a little hazy about what they did and why they did it. Second, the victims all had an “X” slashed into their necks, for reasons that Takabe can’t fathom.
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure has an impressive 93% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Critics have praised its psychological underpinnings that look at how, as one character puts it, “no one can understand what motivates a criminal, sometimes not even the criminal.” The movie muses on whether there might be a cure for crime or if it’s merely an inexplicable part of nature that can’t be avoided.
