The 25 Best Mystery Movies That Every Whodunnit Fan Needs to See

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The best mystery movies all have one thing in common: They make you feel like a detective, even if you’ve never cracked a case in real life. But let us assure you: There’s no shame in idolizing those on-screen code-breakers and clue-hunters. And while we may not all be professional private investigators, we can still put our problem-solving skills to the test when we’re streaming at home . So, from classic whodunnits to mind-warping modern thrillers, here are our favorite mystery movies, which are guaranteed to keep you guessing until the very end.

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25 Mystery Movies That Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat

Jimmy Stewart stars as a cop-turned-private-detective plagued by an intense fear of heights and the condition that this Alfred Hitchcock classic is named after. Kim Novak is the mysterious woman—his client’s wife—that he’s hired to look into. New Yorker critic Richard Brody writes that in this 1958 film, the legendary filmmaker “unfurls his own obsessions : the tragic difference between friendship and love, the seductive power of style and disguise, the proximity of lust and madness, and the inseparability of sex from suspense, danger, and death.” Are you intrigued yet?

One of the most famous detectives in the fictional realm, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was brought back to the big screen again in 2009 thanks to director Guy Ritchie . With Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role and Jude Law along for the ride as Holmes’ sidekick, Dr. Watson, the famous sleuth must solve the mystery around Lord Blackfoot ( Mark Strong ), a man who has risen from the grave with an evil plan in mind. The game is afoot, friends!

If you were suddenly suffering from almost complete amnesia, you would want to find out who you really were, wouldn’t you? That’s the question that one character faces in David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive . Laura Harring plays a woman who loses her memory after a car crash. While in a haze, she befriends an aspiring actress from the Midwest ( Naomi Watts ), who attempts to help her solve the mystery around her identity. But as they try to uncover the truth, the two women stumble into a world that’s less a Hollywood dream and more a trippy nightmare.

Writer/director Rian Johnson pays tribute to the ensemble whodunnits of the past while also turning them on their heads with his 2019 hit Knives Out . Daniel Craig gives us his best and most bombastic Southern accent to play gentleman detective Benoit Blanc, who’s hired by an anonymous client to investigate the death of mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey ( Christopher Plummer ). With a house full of relatives with bones to pick with the old man, he has plenty of suspects to contend with. But believe us when we say that Knives Out won’t deliver the kind of investigation you’re expecting.

The hunt is on in this 1993 feature adaptation of the classic TV series The Fugitive . In the film that was nominated for seven Academy Awards, Harrison Ford takes on the role of Dr. Richard Kimble, a man who is framed and convicted for the murder of his wife. Going on the run, he’s determined to track down the real killer while a relentless U.S. Marshal ( Tommy Lee Jones , who won the Oscar) stays hot on his trail.

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There are seven deadly sins that are apparently the root of all evil: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. And in 1995’s Se7en , Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman play a pair of detectives tasked with capturing a serial killer who murders based on the infamous immoral list. But beware—this crime thriller is considered a neo-noir horror film, so it can get rather gory.

Whether or not you’ve seen the original 2009 Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist , you still need to watch the American version that was released two years later. With Daniel Craig playing disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as vigilante hacker Lisbeth Salander, the story follows the two as they investigate the twisted disappearance of a woman 40 years earlier.

In this 1949 noir penned by Graham Greene , Joseph Cotten stars as an American man who travels to Vienna, Austria when a friend offers him a job. To his surprise, he’s told that his old pal Harry Lime ( Orson Welles ) is dead—but the truth behind the man’s sudden disappearance is much stranger and more disturbing than that.

In this 2006 film based on the bestselling book of the same name, a murder at the Louvre in Paris sparks an investigation that unfolds via clues hidden in the art of Leonardo da Vinci and exposes a possible cover-up that leads all the way back to the life of Jesus . You can follow your viewing of The Da Vinci Code with 2009’s Angels & Demons, which again stars Tom Hanks in the lead role, this time alongside Star Wars alum Ewan McGregor .

Released in 1995, The Usual Suspects —with its infamously great twist ending—is now a cult classic. While we’re introduced via those who’ve encountered him to the vicious crime lord Keyser Soze, we’re taken through a twisted plot that will leave you unsure of anything except for the fact that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

RELATED: The 15 Movies That Won the Most Oscars .

Leonardo DiCaprio delivers some of his best work under the direction of Martin Scorsese , and that was made obvious once again in 2010’s Shutter Island . DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshal sent to an asylum for the criminally insane along with his partner Chuck Aule ( Mark Ruffalo ) to investigate the seemingly impossible and inexplicable disappearance of a murderer. But while there, they begin to uncover facts that will leave you as desperate as Teddy is to figure out what secrets the island harbors.

Plenty of movies have been inspired by Agatha Christie ‘s 1939 classic mystery novel And Then There Were None and 2003’s Identity does it yet again. This psychological thriller stars John Cusack as a man who is stranded in an isolated motel in the middle of the Nevada desert along with a group of nine others when a storm hits. Their stay takes a deadly turn when someone starts killing the guests, one by one, just as they discover they share an unexpected connection.

If your friends can never figure out what to get you for your birthday, then you might want to ask them to watch 1997’s The Game with you. In the mystery thriller directed by David Fincher , Michael Douglas plays Nicholas Van Orton, a successful San Francisco banker who is haunted by his father’s death by suicide at the age of 48. On Nicholas’ own 48th birthday, his estranged brother ( Sean Penn ) shows up with a gift that sets off a series of wild events. Not only is there a twist at every possible turn, each one will keep you deep within the story’s puzzle until the very end.

Another mystery thriller from Fincher, Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck as a man who becomes the primary suspect in the disappearance of his wife as all the clues left behind point to him. Based on the bestselling novel by Gillian Flynn , the 2014 film also features tantalizing performances by Rosamund Pike , Neil Patrick Harris , and Tyler Perry and proves that the simplest answer isn’t always the correct one.

Kenneth Branagh works the signature mustache of Christie’s Hercule Poirot in the 2017 remake of Murder on the Orient Express . The actor (who also directs) known for his Shakespearean-level performance chops is accompanied onscreen by an all-star cast including Penélope Cruz , Willem Dafoe , Judi Dench , Johnny Depp , Josh Gad , Derek Jacobi , Leslie Odom Jr. , Michelle Pfeiffer , Tom Bateman , and Daisy Ridley as their characters board a train that will become the scene of a murder before arriving at its final destination.

RELATED: The 31 Best True Crime Shows on Netflix Right Now .

If you’ve always thought about using your sleuthing skills to become a paranormal detective, then you need to watch (or re-watch) The Sixth Sense . Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan , the film stars Bruce Willis as a child psychologist who meets a young boy ( Haley Joel Osment ) who, well, sees dead people. The film earned six Oscar nominations partially due to the unexpected ending which we definitely won’t spoil for you if you’ve somehow managed to avoid it. Simply put, it’s one of the best mystery movies of all time.

The chase is on again for Tommy Lee Jones in 1999’s Double Jeopardy , only this time he’s on the trail of Ashley Judd . When Judd’s character is convicted of her husband’s murder only to (surprise!) find out that he’s still alive and responsible for framing her, she does her time and is released fully aware of the fact that—thanks to the law that shares a name with the movie—she can shoot her ex “in the middle of Mardi Gras” and no one can do a thing about it.

You may not have thought that a political dispute over aqueducts in California could have led to one of the most acclaimed movie mysteries of all time, but that’s exactly what inspired 1974’s Chinatown . Jack Nicholson plays Jack Gittes, who gets caught up in enough political and dark family drama in one case to last a private investigator the rest of his lifetime. Faye Dunaway co-stars.

It’s not uncommon for people to use tattoos as a way to remind them of things they don’t want to forget. But 2000’s Memento takes that idea one step further with Guy Pearce’s character, a man with short-term memory loss who inks his body with clues to his wife’s death so that he can be reminded of every detail and track down her killer. The mystery thriller also stars Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano (who appeared in The Matrix together just one year earlier) and put filmmaker Christopher Nolan on the map.

One of the best mystery movies of all time is based on one of the best family games of all time. In the beloved murder mystery comedy, Colonel Mustard ( Martin Mull ), Mrs. White ( Madeline Kahn ), Mrs. Peacock ( Eileen Brennan ), Mr. Green ( Michael McKean ), Professor Plum ( Christopher Lloyd ), and Miss Scarlet ( Lesley Ann Warren ) join the butler Wadsworth ( Tim Curry ) and Yvette the maid ( Colleen Camp ) for a dinner party that begins with the murder of their host. But was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick? We’ll never tell!

A feature-length mystery told entirely through screens almost sounds too gimmicky to be any good, but Searching proves that execution is everything. John Cho plays a single dad whose teenage daughter goes missing. And, as any savvy parent in the 21st century would, he turns to her digital footprint to find out where she might have gone. Twists unfold through FaceTimes, chat boxes, and live streams, all leading to a genuinely surprising ending. Searching is a thriller for the modern age.

Clue isn’t the only mystery comedy worth watching. In Game Night , Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play Max and Annie, a competitive couple who are obsessed with their friend group’s regular game night. They’re still unprepared, however, when Max’s ne’er-do-well brother’s ( Kyle Chandler ) unsolicited contribution—his own fake kidnapping—turns out to be very real. The ensemble cast also features Sharon Horgan , Billy Magnussen , Lamorne Morris , Kylie Bunbury , and Jesse Plemons , as an unforgettably creepy neighbor.

In the Oscar-winning French film Anatomy of a Fall , a writer is found dead outside of his remote chalet—but did he fall out of a window or was he pushed? Only his wife Sandra (Best Actress nominee Sandra Hüller ), who was the only other person home at the time, knows the truth. Don’t expect a definitive conclusion from this courtroom drama, which leaves the circumstances open to interpretation— but do expect the merciless autopsy of an unhappy marriage and a crash course in France’s somewhat bonkers legal system.

More than 15 years before Parasite won Best Picture, director Bong Joon-ho delivered this thriller, in which feuding detectives investigate a string of violent rapes and murders. It’s loosely based on a real crime spree that occurred in Hwaseong, South Korea in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which remained unsolved until 2019, partially due to advancements in DNA testing that weren’t available to the real investigators—or the movie’s characters—at the time.

A desperate father, Keller Dover ( Hugh Jackman ), takes the law into his own hands after his daughter and a neighbor girl are kidnapped over Thanksgiving in this thriller from Dune director Denis Villeneuve . Frustrated by the limited power of the police, including Jake Gyllenhaal’s Det. Loki, Keller makes an incredibly rash move that may not even help them find the girls before it’s too late. Violent, unrelenting, and visceral, Prisoners is also a pretty darn good mystery.

This story has been updated to include additional entries, fact-checking, and copy-editing.

30 Travel Movies to Help Inspire Your Next Trip

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One of the great things about movies is that they can take you places without you having to squeeze into an uncomfortable airplane seat or with all the other hassles that real-life travel entails. There are lots of great movies about people setting out to see the world , so let the big screen scratch your wanderlust by checking out these 31 films.

Some of the movies on this list are romantic, following two people as they come together in that special way that happens when you’re away from home. Others are about journeys of self-discovery, showing what can happen when you hit the road solo. Some movies are uproarious comedies that will transport you away from your troubles as you laugh along to the antics on screen. There are also movies that are less of a vacation than they are an adventure, sure to get your blood pumping. And there are some scary movies about travel—the sort that might make you think, “You know, actually, maybe let’s make this one a staycation.”

Don’t bother packing your bags. All you need to do is hit “play” to embark on any one of these 30 great travel movies.

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Romantic Travel Movies

Diane Lane stars in this charming 1996 movie as a recently divorced woman who travels to Italy in an attempt to break out of her post-divorce funk. (In her defense, her husband was cheating on her and he got to keep the house, so she’s right to be miffed.) Once in Tuscany, though, she somehow becomes the owner of a villa, and as she begins to make a new life for herself, the potential for new love emerges amidst some of the most beautiful scenery and delicious-looking wine ever put to film. It’s the type of movie that will have you looking up flights to Florence.

A destination wedding counts as travel, and the breakout comedy of 2023 was shot on location in Australia. Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney play two people who left on bad terms after a one-night stand only to have to make nice when their mutual friends get married. Anyone But You is enough to make you want to take a trip Down Under, although perhaps without all the rom-com shenanigans.

Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play lovelorn women who swap homes so that they can get away from their respective heartbreaks over Christmastime. When Winslet’s Iris and Diaz’s Amanda get to Los Angeles and London, respectively, they find new love in Jack Black and Jude Law’s characters. The 2006 movie, from the great Nancy Meyers , works extra well as a travel movie because, thanks to the house-swapping premise, it’s a reminder that everyone’s home is somebody else’s trip.

The first of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy introduces audiences to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Céline as they meet on a train from Budapest and decide to spend the night together wandering Vienna. Widely regarded as one of the more romantic movies ever made, Before Sunrise will also make you want to explore Vienna with someone you’ve just met—someone who maybe you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.

Technically, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a travel movie (because Owen Wilson’s character is visiting Paris with his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams ) and a time travel movie (because he goes back in time to 1920s). It’s a romantic movie both because of the relationship Wilson’s Gil strikes up with Marion Cotillard’s Adriana and because of how it romanticizes Paris and nostalgia—and deftly interrogates that romanticism.

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Movies About Traveling Solo

Dev Patel stars in this 2016 film, which is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley , who was separated from his parents in India at a very young age and adopted by an Australian couple. Once he grew up, he went back to his birth country in an attempt to find his biological parents. Saroo’s trek through India and into his own forgotten past is a tear-jerking, emotional travel story, and Lion was rewarded with six Oscar nominations.

This 2014 adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail stars Reese Witherspoon as Strayed sets out to hike from Southern California to Washington State in an attempt to find herself. The tour of the West Coast’s trails is a tour-de-force for the actor as her character remakes her life one hiking boot-clad step at a time.

In 1977, Robyn Davidson set out on a nine-month journey across the unforgiving Australian Outback with her dog and four camels. She later wrote about her adventure in National Geographic and in her memoir Tracks . In 2013, her story was adapted into a film with the same name. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson in the movie, which features stunning cinematography of the Australian desert in all its harsh beauty.

A lot of solo travel stories are tales of self-discovery where the voyager has learned something by the time they reach their destination. Into the Wild offers no such catharsis, instead telling the true story of Christopher McCandless , a man who hiked across America and eventually ended up in the Alaskan wilderness—an environment he was not prepared for. It’s a poignant, tragic counterpart to the more common celebrations of wanderlust you tend to see in pop culture.

Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in this 2010 adaptation of her memoir of post-divorce travel and self-discovery. Feeling her life is aimless and without purpose, Liz elects to travel around the world, stopping in Italy, India, and Bali where she eats, prays, and well, you can probably guess.

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Travel Horror Movies

Ari Aster’s supremely disturbing folk horror movie stars Florence Pugh as a young woman who is begrudgingly invited by her not-great boyfriend and his friends to go to Sweden to observe a commune’s midsummer festival. Upon getting there, Pugh’s Dani soon learns that the Hårga are not all sunshine and flowers, and that there are dark rituals and sinister plots. It’s the type of movie that will make you think twice about a Nordic vacation, and you’ll never look at a taxidermied bear the same way.

This 2005 horror movie, from director Eli Roth , is one of the biggest examples of the so-called “torture porn” subgenre, but there’s more to Hostel than just blood and guts. (There are a lot of blood and guts, though.) The film follows some American backpackers who, while traveling in Eastern Europe, become the victims of a shadowy organization that lets the ultra-rich live out their most depraved fantasies by torturing and killing unsuspecting tourists. Let’s just say that Hostel is not exactly a great promotional tourism campaign for Slovakia—something that the country was actually pretty upset about .

This 2022 film, released by the horror-centric streaming service Shudder, follows a social media influencer who, when traveling in Thailand, meets and befriends a young woman. It’s the type of movie that lives or dies on its twists, but let’s just say that Influencer is what you would get if The Talented Mr. Ripley were set in the social media age and a full-on horror film instead of a thriller.

The Creator director Gareth Edward’s 2010 debut follows a photojournalist as he tries to escort a young woman through Mexico, which has been taken over by kaiju-sized alien monsters. There are moments of beauty and discovery along their journey, as well as high-stress moments of terror when they encounter these creatures, which Edwards brings to life on a shoestring budget—though you can’t tell that by watching.

It’s right there in the title: John Landis’ 1980 comedy horror is about an American in London, although he’s not a werewolf when he first arrives in the UK. No, that happens after he’s mauled by a strange beast in the moors of Yorkshire—and that same beast kills the friend he was backpacking with. When he recovers in London, things get gnarly in the light of a full moon.

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Comedy Movies About Traveling

If you like the misadventures of the Griswold family’s first vacation attempt, great news: There are five sequels to this 1983 Chevy Chase comedy. Before the European , Vegas , or Christmas Vacation , though, Clark Griswold tries to drive his family from Chicago to southern California. Their journey makes for some classic comedy, though it might hit a bit too close to home if you’ve had to endure a family vacation that went awry.

A lot of Wes Anderson’s movies are about travel, including his most recent film, Asteroid City , and The Grand Budapest Hotel . His ultimate travel movie, though, is 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited , which stars Owen Wilson , Adrien Brody , and Jason Schwartzman as three estranged brothers who agree to make a trip through India together in the hopes of reconnecting after their father’s death.

Lots of movies are about travel, but are they about a big adventure, the way Tim Burton’s directorial debut is? Paul Reubens stars as his Pee-wee Herman character, who hits the road in an attempt to recover his beloved bicycle, which has gone missing. Following a psychic’s totally legit vision of his bike in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-wee encounters a ghost trucker, biker gangs, and all the madness of a Hollywood backlot.

Netflix’s Oscar-nominated animated movie has a setup that’s not too dissimilar from that of National Lampoon’s Vacation . Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell can’t wait to get away from her family and start film school. Her dad, voiced by Danny McBride , feels his daughter slipping away and opts to have the whole fam drive her across the country rather than take a plane to school. At the same time, an A.I. gone rogue has started a robot uprising. Oops!

In addition to featuring a hall-of-fame cameo from Matt Damon as the singer of “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” Eurotrip is a classic, if not especially intelligent, teen sex romp. It’s not the movie to watch if you want to get a feel for Europe, but it is what you put on when you want to enjoy some good, dumb laughs.

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Adventure Travel Movies

Ben Stiller directed and stars in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , an imaginative adaptation of a 1939 short story about a mild-mannered man who gets lost in his daydreams. When circumstances force Walter to embark on a trip around the world, he starts living his daydreams for real, going to Greenland and the Himalayas. Featuring a fantastic soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography of some truly beautiful, off-the-beaten-path places, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the type of movie that might make you stop just thinking about taking a trip and actually buy a ticket.

William Friedkin , best known for directing The Exorcist , also helmed this 1977 thriller about possibly the worst road trip of all time. When four people, all on the run from their various sordid pasts, find themselves trapped in a remote oil village in Colombia, they are desperate to get out by any means necessary. The opportunity presents itself when the bosses need people to drive boxes of dynamite that are extremely unstable and could blow at any minute across miles of rainforest. There is one sequence in Sorcerer that’s some of the most unbelievably tense filmmaking you’ll likely ever see. (Note that it’s a remake of another classic film, Wages of Fear , should you want another movie that’ll keep you on edge.)

Johnny Depp stars as an average man who finds himself smack in the middle of an international criminal incident when on vacation in Europe after a woman, played by Angelina Jolie , tries to trick the authorities into thinking Depp’s the fugitive they’re looking for. Thrills, laughs, and a little romance ensue.

Charlie Hunnam plays real explorer Percy Fawcett in this adaptation of the book by the same name from author David Grann , who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon . The film follows the British explorer in the early 1900s as he tries, time and time again, to prove the existence of a mythical city deep in the jungles of Brazil. Think of it as a somber, reflective take on a real-life Indiana Jones, one whose obsession with traveling to hostile environments in search of knowledge may prove to be his undoing.

This gripping survival drama about the infamous 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, as documented by Jon Krakauer in the book Into Thin Air, is the type of film that will probably make you consider an all-inclusive beach resort for your next vacation rather than mountain-climbing.

RELATED: 25 Movies Like Knives Out That Will Bring Out Your Inner Detective .

Movies About Roadtrips

This biopic follows the man who would become the Che Guevara when he, as a young man in the early ‘50s, travels across South America with his friend Alberto Granado . The film, which is based on Guevara’s trip diary, is both a road movie and a coming-of-age film about an important historical figure, as we see him become radicalized by the poverty and inequality he sees on this journey.

Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star in Ethan Coen’s romp from earlier this year, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Drive-Away Dolls “ The Big Lebowski , but just the silly parts.” Set in the late ’90s, it follows two lesbian friends who learn that the car they’ve rented has a human head and a briefcase in the trunk—and that some shadowy types really, really want whatever’s in that case back.

Burt Reynolds stars in this 1977 classic, which was the second-highest-grossing movie of its release year after the original Star Wars . He plays a legendary bootlegger who accepts a job to smuggle 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in under 28 hours. Along the way, he encounters a runaway bride played by Sally Field , and Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who wants to stop the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit also features an incredible theme song, “ East Bound and Down ,” and while the lyrics describe the plot of the movie almost beat-for-beat, you’ll find that it’s a fitting song to blast on your own car stereo when you’re on the road.

Il Sorpasso , which is sometimes given the English title The Easy Life , is a masterpiece of 1960s Italian cinema. It follows a boisterous middle-aged man who decides to take a timid, bookish college student he meets under his wing for a good time out on the road—whether or not the younger man actually wants to tag along or not. Hilarious and poignant when you might not expect it, Il Sorpasso ’s well worth the watch.

This seminal adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name stars Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as they drive to Sin City under the influence of an absurd amount of drugs. In that way, it’s the ultimate travel movie. It’s about a trip, but it’s also about a trip .