Top 10 Whodunits
By Cinema Sugar
Whether with a doctor on the run, a Bay Area serial killer, or a shady rear-window neighbor, the best whodunits draw us in through compelling characters and the irresistible mysteries that entangle them.
These are the Top 10 Whodunits that have disturbed and delighted us the most.
10. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Oh, so this is just like one of the most excellent whodunit films? Ever made?? Even above its beautiful ocular effects and fantastic energy discharged just by its mere existence, it also puts out an almost Blazing Saddles vibe. Similar to Brooks’ masterpiece, this isn’t just a riff on a noir style but also belongs easily inside of that noir style. It’s a master of optic narrative, not only with its still invincible combination of live-action and animation, but with how much storyline and analysis are moved through dialogue, scenery, and additional backdrop minutiae. It draws you in toward its world as instantly as you get the cut from the Roger Rabbit animation to the real-world of the movie. It doesn’t scrimp on violence, booze, or sex, but it also contains enough comedy for kids to appreciate while simultaneously holding space for adults to be just as taken by its suggestions, fast-moving structure, and uncensored enthusiasm. It’s a dark noir fused with the slapstick cartoon comedy of an erstwhile generation and it all works together so flawlessly. —Natalie Bauer
9. The Fugitive
Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive is many things. The ultimate ‘90s sleepover movie. A quintessential Chicago movie. The only living proof of the joint powers of Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. The reason that, to this day, I grumble-yell “You switched the samples!” anytime I engage in a friendly debate. But above all, it’s a smart and riveting whodunit thriller that somehow gets better with time. Staged as a cat-and-mouse chase, what this film does so brilliantly that few movies have done before or since is it has you rooting for the cat and the mouse. Through city streets, tunnels, and railroads, this movie keeps you guessing until the very end and pays off in the best possible way. Not convinced? In the words of Deputy Marshal Samuel Gerard (what a name!): I DON’T CARE. —Kevin Prchal
8. The Long Goodbye
As more of an anti-whodunit than a procedural per se it hits all the marks. Shaggy private eye? Check. Stellar Raymond Chandler source material as it’s never been adapted before? Check. 1970s Tiger Beat heartthrob Elliot Gould giving his greatest performance against the briney, bellowing majesty of a weathered Sterling Hayden in the twilight of his career? Check. The incredible variable flashing cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond that made L.A. look and feel like a bleary-eyed fever dream from start to finish? Check and double check. One of the greatest downer endings of all time? You betcha. The Long Goodbye is the type of film that only could have been made in the ‘70s. —Dylan Stuckey
7. Brick
Writer-director Rian Johnson’s stated goal of this electrifying debut feature was to transplant the tropes of Dashiell Hammett-style noir onto a modern high school setting. He achieves this with aplomb, casting Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a laconic loner turned accidental detective when his ex-girlfriend turns up dead. The ensuing whodunit involves all the trappings of the genre you know and love—drugs, money, a femme fatale, a scheming boss figure with a tough-guy enforcer—but with the strange yet somehow fitting decision to have all this intrigue take place among teens who are acting and speaking way beyond their years. Johnson’s self-assured style and snappy dialogue would foretell his later foray into murder mystery with Knives Out, which is just as excellent in its own ways but still stands as a descendant of Brick and its straight-no-chaser gumption. —Chad Comello
6. Memories of Murder
Long before director Bong Joon Ho was quoting Scorsese to Scorsese from the stage of the Dolby Theatre while accepting his first Academy Award, he was crafting superb gems of genre fare in his native Korea. And Memories of Murder, his debut feature, was Bong’s announcement to the world that a new master of Korean cinema had arrived. This chilling whodunit serves as a cautionary tale on the depths to which obsession can drive a person in pursuit of a goal, in this case the goal being tracking down the killer of several young women in a small town in the Korean countryside. Bong’s frequent muse, Song Kang Ho, delivers his finest performance as a detective driven to the brink of madness in the unceasing pursuit of a killer, only to return to the scene of the crime decades later to find the same obsessive pangs of guilt and obsession still there, bubbling under the surface. Bong’s deft storytelling and Song’s commitment to the living, breathing truth of his character earn this whodunit its right place as one of the finest murder mysteries of all time. —Dylan Stuckey
5. Memento
The typical whodunit casts a detective type into an unfamiliar, possibly hostile, world or case and follows them through the twists and turns that eventually lead them to a conclusion. What sets Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film apart within this genre is not only its time-hopping, form-breaking narrative structure, but that the case its lead detective is investigating is his own: namely, who killed his wife. As a man unable to form short-term memories, Guy Pearce’s Leonard is the platonic ideal of an unreliable narrator, and as such everything he learns—or thinks he learns—could be at once a solid clue, a red herring, or wholly irrelevant. Nolan’s weaponizes that uncertainty to stunning effect, crafting a twisty, self-assured whodunit that gets better every time you watch it. —Chad Comello
4. Clue
Close to 30 years before Battleship was released, British director Jonathan Lynn embraced the project of adapting another Hasbro title and, against all odds, it veritably happened. Met with contempt from reviews and mediocre ticket sales, the movie’s prestige is today somewhat commensurate to the board game itself. Using the game’s fundamental arrangement—six guests are hailed to a cryptic estate, a seventh stranger winds up deceased and everybody’s a potential culprit—and fusing it with knowing gags, antagonistic insanity, and a charming Tim Curry as the distrustful servant attempting to figure it out, Clue brings about an ending that’s either highly intelligent or completely absurd. The film has established itself as more significant than anybody would have anticipated: when reviewers assert Rian Johnson resurrected the murder mystery movie with Knives Out, what they surely suggest is he just modernized Clue for a new audience. —Natalie Bauer
3. Scream
The first of the six-movie series, Scream keeps you guessing about a masked killer stalking a student at Woodsboro High and targeting the people closest to her. It starts with a creepy phone call, then the bodies start to pile up. Wes Craven throws you off the scent right from the start when the person you assume to be the heroine turns out to be the first victim. Final girl Sidney Prescott is then introduced and she’s full of her own surprises. Scream is iconic in the horror genre, but if you focus on the mystery it also stands on its own. Wes Craven called it “a thriller about kids who love horror films,” and it’s the students who discover they can use the rules of classic horror movies to anticipate what the killer might do next. The final reveal is one for the books, as it should be for a modern classic whodunit. —Natalie Pohorski
2. Rear Window
Hitchcock had already proved himself a master of suspense by the time he made Rear Window in 1954, but what I love about this one in particular is that it really makes you feel as though you’ve become Jimmy Stewart’s character, an injured photographer stuck in his city apartment for the summer who’s convinced one of his neighbors has committed murder. You feel just as trapped, helpless, and curious—even paranoid—as you desperately try to prove the murder and prevent the killer from getting away with it before he catches on to you. That takes you further into danger than you expect and makes you question your own sanity in the process. Is there even a killer at all? —Natalie Pohorski
1. Zodiac
Of the barbarities carried out by the Zodiac Killer, the most distressing is the series of indiscriminate homicides that stunned the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. Additionally, however, is the manner in which they shifted their name into sport, and it is this game that David Fincher is extremely keen on. Yes, Zodiac includes assorted cruel, tense scenes of those acts of bloodshed, incorporating the “Hurdy Gurdy Man” lead-in and the daytime slaughter of a young couple in a forest preserve. But the film’s undeniable focal point—and what makes it the preeminent whodunit—is the maelstrom the murderer accelerated with the exasperating brain-teasers and hints they left in their wake. Everyone got in on the case, mostly against their will. And it was no dinner-party murder mystery but instead one of the most haunting still-unsolved crime sprees in the last century. The Zodiac, and the film that documents his depravity, is still speaking. —Natalie Bauer