Whodunits are movies that center around a murder mystery. There’s always someone investigating the murder and attempting to find the killer before they strike again. They contain several twists and turns and keep audiences guessing. Whodunits have been around for years, but with the making of movies such asKnives OutandSee How They Run,they’re rising back into popularity.
Whether it’s through dialogue or sets, some movies cleverly give away the killer right under the audience’s nose. Some, likeMemento, secretly tell exactly what happened before the killer is officially revealed without anyone noticing.
10’Knives out' (2019)
Full of an all-star cast,Knives Outis full of twists, intrigue, and a little light murder. It follows a wealthy family whose lives are turned upside down when their father, Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), dies mysteriously. Things take a turn for the family when Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called in to investigate and starts scrutinizing the family’s stories. When it’s revealed that there was a mix-up with Harlan’s medication, the search for the killer is on.
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From the beginning ofKnives Out, the audience is told what happened to Harlan, but due to the strange nature of the case and Detective Blanc’s insistence on murder, they’re led to believe there’s something more. The simple explanation is actually true, but with some complicated background as to how it happened.
9’Murder On The Orient Express' (1974/2017)
Based on the book by Agatha Christie,Murder On The Orient Expressis about a group of people traveling on a train when an avalanche stops it in its tracks. During this, criminal Edward Ratchett is murdered. Detective Poirot takes on the case to solve it before the train reaches its destination and the murderer gets away. The case gets more complex as he uncovers more clues and interrogates his fellow passengers.
When the killer is revealed, it turns out to be not just one person, but twelve. The first indication of this is that each of the stab wounds on Mr. Ratchett are of different depths and were done by both left and right hands. One of the threatening letters Ratchett receives refers to the sender as “us” hinting at the multiple murderers. Each person has connections to Ratchett and their own reasons to want to kill him.
8’Scream' (1996)
Screamis both a slasher film and a whodunit as the characters are ruthlessly stalked and killed by the mysterious Ghost Face. At the center of it is Sidney Prescott whose mother was mysteriously killed the year prior. Reporter Gale Weathers is convinced that Ghost Face and Sidney’s mom’s killer are one and the same and launches her own investigation.
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From the boots that the characters wear to their shared love of horror movies, two of the characters inScreamshare things in common with Ghost Face. Billy and Stu can be seen in the beginning both wearing the same type of boots that Sydney sees on Ghost Face when he attacks her in the bathroom.
7’Identity' (2003)
Ten strangers with nothing in common get stranded at a remote motel during a rainstorm. All hell breaks loose when they begin to be killed one by one and have to figure out which one of them is the killer before it’s too late. Meanwhile, viewers see Malcolm Rivers, a killer who’s getting one last trial before his possible execution.
At first, audiences are led to believe that Malcolm is the one who did the killing at the motel and is on trial for it. However, none of the people at the motel exist and are in fact different personalities of Malcolm. The first clues to this are that all of their names are names of states and that they all have the same birthday, which hints at the fact that none of them are real.
6’Hot Fuzz' (2007)
Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is too good of an officer and ends up being transferred from the big city to the sleepy town of Sandford. All of a sudden, gruesome “accidents” start happening. The rest of the town brushes them off, but Nick is immediately suspicious. He ends up uncovering a town-wide conspiracy to make Sandford the greatest town.
Hot Fuzzis a movie that warrants several rewatchings to catch all the hints about the end. A lot of the clues are sprinkled throughout in witty bits of dialogue and scenery. Such examples include the mentioning of “the greater good” and how someone asks Nicholas and his partner Danny (Nick Frost) about the “killers” even though he never says anything about there being more than one.
5’Memento' (2000)
Mementois a whodunit set in reverse. Leonard Shelby suffers from anterograde amnesia, meaning he can’t form new memories. The movie is shown going backward in time except for interspersed scenes of Leonard talking on the phone that move forward in time. Leonard is attempting to solve his wife’s brutal murder and get revenge through Polaroids and tattoos that he has while having no memory of their context.
Mementogives all the clues needed to solve the mystery, but they’re given in reverse making them more difficult to piece together. Between the reversed parts of the story, Leonard tells a mysterious person on the phone the story of Sammy Jenkins, a man with amnesia Leonard investigated for insurance fraud. Sammy’s tale is true, however, Sammy was not the subject of the story, Leonard is. Leonard has been telling the real story of his wife’s death the entire time without the audience realizing it.
4’Crimson Peak' (2015)
Crimson Peaktakes the whodunit genre and adds ghosts into the mix. Writer Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) meets the rich bachelor Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and immediately takes a liking to him. The two fall in love and after her father is mysteriously murdered, she marries Thomas and moves into his house in England with his sister, Lucille. There she has run-ins with the house’s ghosts and discovers dark secrets about Thomas and their family
Throughout the movie, Lucille is very close to her brother and seems strangely jealous of Edith. Lucille also hands Edith the poisoned tea several times without Edith knowing. As Edith gets weaker, the mystery of what happened to her father and Thomas’s former wives unravels as she meets the ghosts that reside in the house.
3’Glass Onion' (2022)
The sequel toKnives Out,Glass Onionfollows detective Benoit Blanc to Greece where a group of friends has all been invited to a murder mystery party by billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton). Secrets start to come to light and things take a turn when one of the guests is actually murdered.
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There are numerous clues scattered about the film that point to Miles, such as the red squares that can be spotted throughout his mansion hinting at the fact that he is the one who now has the fateful envelope. Another main clue is that Miles can be seen handing the pineapple juice to Duke, but because of a fake flashback and Miles lying, the audience is led astray.
2’The Last Of Sheila' (1973)
A year after his wife, Sheila, is killed in a hit-and-run accident while walking home from a party, Clinton invites the party guests to his yacht to play a game. The game is a scavenger hunt designed to uncover everyone’s secrets. The game becomes real when one of them discovers Clinton’s reason for the game and one of them is murdered.
From the very beginning, Clinton tells the players that if they’re smart enough, they won’t have to move to solve the puzzle. The picture of everyone standing under the boat’s name and the secret cards that they’re handed give away the killer once the pieces are connected and all the cards are revealed.
1’See How They Run' (2022)
After the death of an important crew member on the set of the playThe Mousetrap, Inspector Stoppard and Constable Stalker must dive into the world of theater to solve the murder.
See How They Rungives away the killer through several small interactions between characters and even tells some of the killer’s motive through a line of dialogue in the play. The movie even tells you how it’ll go through the snarky narration at the beginning given byAdrien Brody’s character Leo Kopernick.
