Top 12 Thrillers And Crime Stories:
There’s no doubt that the murder story is back. The classic whodunit mystery is back in style after being out of style for decades. This is mostly due to the unexpected success of 2019’s Knives Out as well as its even bigger follow-up, Glass Onion.
At this point, it looks like you can’t look closely without seeing a dead body that was found in a strange way, either in movies or on TV.
Here at Empire HQ, we’ve put on our tan raincoats and started looking into the best movies in this genre. We’re getting ready to bring enough champagne to fill the, er, canals of Venice alongside us to see Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot movie, A Haunting in Venice.
Below is a list of what we think are the best murder-mystery movies ever made. It includes classics from the golden age to the present day, hard-boiled noirs to funny parodies. There’s one thing for sure: every pick is great.
Clue:
Jonathan Lynn’s Clue came out in theaters with three different ends. It may not be the best murder mystery ever, but it might be the best murder mystery movie ever. In Lynn’s film, six people who have been blackmailed by Mr. Boddy get together in his house to deal with their problems.
The plot is full of twists and turns, and the comedy is out of this world. When Mr. Boddy dies, the six of them have to figure out who the killer is while the number of bodies keeps going up.
Tim Curry, who plays the cheesy butler Wadsworth with such energy that the actor later said Empire had “blood pressure through the roof!” Christopher Lloyd as well as Madeline Kahn are also in the cast, and they take turns stealing scenes from each other as they land zinger shortly after zinger.
And even though everything is crazy, the whole thing is still a really interesting whodunit. “Fire upon the side of my face!” Very old.
The Hound Of The Baskervilles:
On the moors of Devon, Hammer Films director Terence Fisher got his Dracula stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, to work together on the biggest Sherlock Holmes story ever.
If you don’t know, there is a wild dog wandering Dartmoor, as well as Watson and Holmes are supposed to find out who it is going to devour next and why. The dog is likely the heir to a big country pile. It’s a lot like Scooby-Doo, but the Great Dane was the bad guy.
As they sort through all the red herrings, Cushing’s Holmes is a sassy and smart version of Conan Doyle’s character, and Morell’s Watson is a less dowdy version of the character. The outcomes are very sad.
Charade:
A murder mystery that commences with Audrey Hepburn having an affair with Cary Grant within Aspen before going back to Paris—talk about glitzy!
Well, that’s about the end of the fun. She soon goes back home to find her spouse killed as well as herself dealing with the effects of his stolen money. Charade is the right mix of thrills and romances, and it has another great score by the famous musician Henry Mancini.
The Pink Panther:
People were worried about this remake or revival of The Pink Panther, just like they were about any other remake as well as revival. This quickly became one of the most remembered comedies of the early 2000s when people saw how funny Steve Martin looked to be Inspector Jacques Clouseau as well as how hard it was to understand his accent.
The way the story is told makes it a very interesting murder mystery with some funny parts, even though it sounds easy. Shawn Levy put together a great group. Each person brings something funny to the table, which makes the movie better as a whole.
Memories Of Murder:
A lot of people know Bong Joon-ho from his movie Parasite, but many still consider Memories of Murder to be his most important work.
The movie is based upon one of the initial serial killings during South Korea’s history, but it doesn’t follow the usual rules of the genre. Instead, it’s about Park Doo-man as well as Seo Tae-yoon, two young agents who are supposed to catch the killer.
The hauntingly beautiful camerawork in Memories starts with a shot of a corn leaf hanging like a body under a golden sky. This shot shows how events like these change everything and everyone.
And while Park, who is quick to anger, and Seo, who is getting more and more desperate, stomp, beat, and hold on to every possible lead they discover, Bong bravely goes up against a way of running the justice system that ends more lives than it saves.
When the movie came out, the Hwaesong killer hadn’t been caught yet. This makes the movie as well as its all-time great finish even more powerful, as Bong Joon-ho dares to look evil in the eye.
Rear Window:
Some people call Alfred Hitchcock the “master of suspense” for a reason. He was able to make a heart-pounding movie that takes place largely within one room with a single point of view.
Because LB Jefferies can’t leave his house because he broke his leg, he starts to notice the people who live in the nearby apartment complex and finally comes to believe that one of them has committed a horrible crime.
Before seeing 1948’s Rope, Hitchcock had tried working with simple, play-like settings, but Rear Window may have been his best work overall because it showed he could create almost unbearable levels of tension and anxiety even when working with the tiniest story constraints.
Its themes of urban isolation as well as voyeurism hit even harder within the world after the pandemic, when we’ve all been stuck at home with nothing to do but stare out the window for too long.
Knives Out:
The murder mystery style of Agatha Christie is brought back to life by director Rian Johnson as well as his all-star ensemble cast in this whodunit regarding a wealthy family whose crime writer father has mysteriously died. Millions of dollars are at stake in this fun, twisting story that combines parts of Succession and Clue. Everyone is a suspect.
Murder Mystery:
An NYPD officer and his wife take a trip to Europe to get their marriage back on track. However, they get falsely accused of killing an old billionaire and are now on the run.
In this fun Netflix original movie, Adam Sandler as well as Jennifer Aniston work together again in a murder mystery that is both funny and strange.
One of the good murder mystery films is written by James Vanderbilt. An American cop uses his training and skills to become a detective on his own, but there’s something off about it.
This is what makes the puzzle so much fun to figure out, and the comedy is great, especially between Aniston as well as Stone. Since a lot of people are involved within the murder mystery, it gets very chaotic as people try to figure out who did it.
Laura:
Otto Preminger’s film Laura is an exciting mix of swooning romance, sultry noir, and a murder mystery. It follows Detective Mark McPherson as he tries to find the killer of the title character, who is beautiful, loved, and coveted.
Laura, played by Gene Tierney, was the kind of woman that everyone falls in love alongside, even Detective McPherson. This means that many people could be responsible for her death.
The beautiful black-and-white cinematography and creepy, swelling musical theme more than make up for the plot holes. So do the performances by the cast, especially Clifton Webb as the jealous columnist as well as narrator Waldo Lydecker in his first major film role and Vincent Price as Shelby Carpenter, Laura’s fiancée.
Cure:
In Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s famous scary movie, a bunch of murders are done by people who are mind controlled and don’t know they are doing it.
Bong Joon-ho has said that he was influenced by it, and you can see the link between his movies and this cold, almost supernaturally charged procedural as it looks at how murder can claim victims even while they are still alive.
In this case, detective Kenichi Takabe finds a possibly guilty person: the very scary Mamiya. He then tries to figure out if Mamiya is responsible for all the bodies found with a “X” carved into their necks.
Gone Girl:
What a movie! Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling book of the same name, leaves you speechless when it’s over. Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a college professor as well as writer whose marriage to his beautiful wife Amy seems to be going well until Amy suddenly vanishes.
Nick is quickly seen as a suspect, and as the story goes on, different points of view change, making it hard to know what to believe. It’s a scary and dark story regarding love, respect, sex, violence, as well as marriage in the United States today.
Death On The Nile:
Based on Agatha Christie’s 1937 book of the same name, Death upon the Nile was a mystery story with a lot of big names. Kenneth Branagh directed, co-produced, and starred as the imaginary detective Hercule Poirot in the follow-up to 2017’s Murder upon the Orient Express.
Poirot looks into the murder of rich heiress Linnet Doyle while she was on her vacation. The movie is mostly about Poirot’s complicated trip as he questions the people on the cruise ship S.S. Karnak.
When he finds out that some of them have clear reasons for killing the victim, but one is hiding the darkest secret of all, things get hazy. Many people will still enjoy the movie’s twists and turns, even though it’s not a good version of the famous book and not a good follow-up to the initial movie.
