Hollywood genres tend to wax and wane, but not mysteries. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon introduced early moviegoing audiences to the thrills of a riddle, popularizing a model that could be tweaked for horror (Hitchcock, Se7en), comedy (Charade, Clue), noirish drama (L.A. Confidential, Memento, Gone Girl) and beyond. Today, mysteries are as popular as ever. 

We all love to play armchair detective, and trying to deduce the outcome before it arrives is what keeps the genre fresh. So whether you want an all-star laugh riot or a brooding psychodrama, here are 12 worthwhile mystery movies that’ll put your puzzle-solving skills to good use. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Even before Knives Out became a monster hit in theaters, writer-director Rian Johnson started brainstorming sequels. His slick Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) could be the second coming of Hercule Poirot, the famed Agatha Christie private eye who solved mysteries across 33 novels and even more short stories. The first of Johnson’s sequels is Glass Onion, a starry comedy about a tech billionaire (Edward Norton) who invites his friends — played by the likes of Kate Hudson, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn and Dave Bautista — to participate in a remote murder-mystery getaway that soon turns deadly. The funny, tightly plotted movie earned an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay, and you don’t have to be a sleuth to see why. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

2022

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Murder Mystery

Just Go With It co-stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston reunited for a good cause: to solve a Murder Mystery on a billionaire’s yacht. They play a married couple — he’s an NYPD officer, she’s a hairdresser — traveling to Europe with modest means. En route, the pair meet a suave aristocrat (Luke Evans) who suggests they join his Mediterranean cruise, only to find themselves accused of killing his uncle (Terence Stamp) aboard the boat. Murder Mystery is like a rowdier Clue, with Sandler and Aniston surrounded by a rogues’ gallery of eccentric suspects. They’re so good at puzzling out the murder that they decide to start their own detective firm in Murder Mystery 2. 

Murder Mystery

2019

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Missing

Technology has long been central to the horror genre, most notably in the found-footage fad and the newer screenlife trend, in which action unfolds on computers, smartphones and similar devices. Thrillers like Unfriended, Searching and Host have filtered characters’ frights through screens, proving what a terrifying place the internet can be. Missing is an anthology sequel to Searching, meaning it borrows the same technique with different characters. A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid plays an 18-year-old convinced her mother (Nia Long) has been kidnapped after she fails to return home from a vacation with her boyfriend (Ken Leung). Fast-paced and full of twists, Missing is an absolute adrenaline rush. 

Missing

2023

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Enola Holmes

Millie Bobby Brown trades her Stranger Things telekinesis for the powers of deduction with this eponymous role as Sherlock Holmes’ plucky 16-year-old sister, who got her own book series in the 2000s. Enola, far scrappier than the typical Victorian-era woman, takes after her investigative brother (Henry Cavill) when their mother (Helena Bonham Carter) goes missing. Her search leads Enola through London, where she encounters other mysteries and proves that sexist social mores won’t interrupt her quest. Brown, who won raves for her comic timing, reprised the character in a rollicking 2022 sequel that finds Enola turning her detective skills into a lucrative career. 

Enola Holmes

2020

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The Nice Guys

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are a perfect odd couple in Shane Black’s groovy noir comedy about a hapless private eye and a tough-guy enforcer teaming up to find a supposedly dead porn star whose aunt (Lois Smith) swears she’s still alive. Gosling squeals his way through the funniest performance of his career thus far, with Crowe serving as his gruff foil. Their mission leads the men to one of the actor’s colleagues (Margaret Qualley), who’s involved in an elaborate activist scheme befitting the film’s ’70s setting. The Nice Guys, which felt like a welcome throwback when it was released in 2016, is the epitome of a fun hang. 

The Nice Guys

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The Wonder

Florence Pugh headlines this fascinating slice of historical fiction adapted from Room author Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel of the same name. Pugh plays a 19th-century English nurse enlisted to inspect an 11-year-old Irish girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy) who says she’s been fasting for four months, subsisting on the manna God sends her from heaven. Is she a divine apostle enacting penance? A medical enigma? A strong-willed young woman seeking bodily autonomy? Pugh’s self-possessed Lib Wright is determined to find out. Sebastián Lelio, the Oscar-winning director of Gloria and A Fantastic Woman, made this sumptuous drama, which features one of Pugh’s best performances.

The Wonder

2022

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Luckiest Girl Alive

Jessica Knoll’s debut novel of the same name was a hot property when it became a bestseller in 2015, three years after Gone Girl jump-started a wave of popular female-centered crime thrillers. The film adaptation stars Mila Kunis as a magazine editor who survived a school shooting and other horrific incidents as a teenager. But the past is never dead, and hers starts to rear its head when her wealthy fiancé (Finn Wittrock) suggests they relocate to London. Luckiest Girl Alive is about confronting demons, with Kunis’ Ani piecing her own history together as everything looks picture-perfect from the outside. 

Luckiest Girl Alive

2022

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The Woman in the Window

Another product of the Gone Girl gold rush, The Woman in the Window is adapted from a book that topped The New York Times bestseller list in 2018. Faithful to its title, Amy Adams plays a boozy agoraphobe in New York City who spies on her neighbors, specifically a troubled family that recently moved in across the street. Convinced she sees the patriarch (Gary Oldman) stab his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) one night, she keeps a watchful, paranoid eye on what may or may not be happening outside her door — which gets complicated when the man shows up with an entirely different wife (Julianne Moore). The twists in this Rear Window-esque thriller directed by Joe Wright (Atonement) and written by Tracy Letts (August: Osage County) pair well with a tall glass of red wine and all the lights turned out. 

The Woman in the Window

2021

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Velvet Buzzsaw

Jake Gyllenhaal went through a gloriously zany phase in the 2010s, starting with Nightcrawler, peaking with Okja and concluding with Velvet Buzzsaw. In the latter, he plays Morf Vandewalt (what a name!), a pompous art critic writing a biography about a dead artist whose newly unearthed paintings kill the interlopers who try to commodify them. Gyllenhaal’s decadent, bespectacled performance in this satirical thriller rounds out a sterling cast that includes Toni Collette, Rene Russo, Daveed Diggs, John Malkovich and Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer. 

Velvet Buzzsaw

2019

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Prisoners

Gyllenhaal is much more no-nonsense in Prisoners than he was in Velvet Buzzsaw, but he still turns in a twitchy, idiosyncratic performance. This time, he plays a detective investigating the kidnapping of two young girls belonging to a distraught father (Hugh Jackman) in small-town Pennsylvania. The search brings Gyllenhaal’s gumshoe face-to-face with various suspects played by Viola Davis, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano and an unrecognizable Melissa Leo. The reason the girls disappeared leads to a shocking third-act twist that makes Denis Villeneuve’s movie a chilling thrill. 

Prisoners

2013

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Where the Crawdads Sing

When it hit theaters in 2022, Where the Crawdads Sing was a mammoth hit, grossing $144.4 million worldwide. No surprise there: It’s based on one of the bestselling novels of the 2010s, brought to the big screen courtesy of Reese Witherspoon’s production company. The story kicks off with a dead body found in the marshland of North Carolina — primo mystery fodder. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays an orphan accused of committing the murder, seeing as the corpse belongs to her former fiancé (Harris Dickinson). Part swampy thriller and part courtroom saga, Crawdads is a Southern Gothic melodrama. 

Where the Crawdads Sing

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Lost Girls

This particular mystery is more harrowing than most: It’s based on the true story of an activist named Mari Gilbert (Amy Ryan) who pressed law enforcement in Long Island, New York, to search for a string of dead sex workers that included her own daughter. Lost Girls was adapted from the revered nonfiction book by journalist Robert Kolker, and it’s steeped in raw details about the hunt for a serial killer believed to have murdered between 10 and 18 young women. Ryan is gripping in the lead role. She’s a passionate foil for the jaded police commissioner (Gabriel Byrne) reluctant to give the case the treatment it deserves. 

Lost Girls

2020

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Mystifying Murder Mysteries To Stream NowFrom Glass Onion to Murderville, these murder mysteries will keep you guessing.