The 50 Best Mystery Movies of All-Time

The 50 Best Mystery Movies of All-Time

April 8, 2025

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Mystery films are typically known for their most recognizable elements and tropes: there is a crime, a series of clues, an investigation, and a long explanation for how everything actually fits together in the end. This makes the genre a reliable source of entertainment but it also threatens to restrict the kinds of stories that these films can tell. So here at agoodmovietowatch, we want to expand your understanding of mystery movies beyond these tropes, with the films listed below. Here, you can see that different stories across various other genres still possess the real heart of mystery: a desire to understand the unknowable and to find justice when things seem hopeless.

41. Election (1999)

best

8.3

Genres

Comedy, Drama, Mystery

Director

Alexander Payne

Actors

B.J. Tobin, Chris Klein, Colleen Camp, Delaney Driscoll

Starring Matthew Broderick and a young Reese Witherspoon as, respectively, Jim McAllister, a high school teacher and Tracy Flick, a notorious ‘that girl’ in his class. When Tracy decides to run for class president, we see the floodgates open as all sorts of bizarre and insane behavior pours out of the two. Quickly, it becomes clear that Tracy will do nearly anything to win, and as circumstances spiral out of control, madness descends – along with hilarity!

42. The Whistleblower (2010)

best

8.3

Genres

Crime, Drama, Mystery

Director

Female director, Larysa Kondracki

Actors

Adriana Butoi, Alexandru Potocean, Alin Panc, Anca Androne

Moods

Challenging, Touching, True-story-based

Based on a true story, The Whistleblower is the biography of a once Nebraskan police officer who volunteers for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in post-war Bosnia. Once there, she uncovers a human trafficking scandal involving peacekeeping officials, and finds herself alone against a hostile system in a devastated country. Rachel Weisz plays the whistleblower in a powerful lead role, but the true star of the movie is its director, Larysa Kondracki, who thanks to near documentary-style film-making delivers a perfectly executed political thriller with utmost authenticity.

43. Raw (2017)

best

8.3

Genres

Comedy, Drama, Horror

Director

Female director, Julia Ducournau

Actors

Alexis Julemont, Alice D'Hauwe, Amandine Hinnekens, Benjamin Boutboul

Moods

Raw, Weird

One of the sharpest horror films of the last decade, Julia Ducournau’s Raw follows in the footsteps of films like Carrie by translating coming of age anxieties into visceral full-throated terror. Justine is a beginner veterinary student leaving home for the first time. After a brutal hazing ceremony forces this young vegetarian to eat meat, she develops an insatiable hunger for flesh that begins to consume her.

Raw is as much an intense body-horror (not for the squeamish) as it is an astute psychological drama. Underneath its nightmarish sheen, Ducournau layers social commentary on sexuality, patriarchy, and deviance using the school’s sadistic initiations as metaphors for larger structures. All of this depth is paired with striking cinematography, crisp pacing, and an unforgettable performance from Garance Marillier as Justine.

44. The Drop (2014)

best

8.2

Genres

Crime, Drama, Mystery

Director

Michael R. Roskam, Michael Roskam

Actors

Alex Ziwak, Ann Dowd, Chris Sullivan, Danny McCarthy

Moods

Character-driven, Easy, Suspenseful

One of The Drop’s many strengths is its dark, clever, yet compassionate script. It will take you into the heart of the Brooklyn crime scene through the characters and their respective more or less fragile lifestyles. The extremely good performances, however, soon become the focus and attire of the film. James Gandolfini couldn’t be more at home in this context and excels with his usual menace, yet somehow relatable presence. Tom Hardy, however, surprises in unfamiliar grounds, sharply portraying a vulnerable character, whose vulnerability you will keep doubting. The Drop is consistent from start to finish, and with jaw-dropping moments here and there, it is both an interesting and enjoyable film.

45. Foxcatcher (2014)

best

8.2

Genres

Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Director

Bennett Miller

Actors

Alan Oppenheimer, Anthony Michael Hall, Brett Rice, Brian Baumgartner

Moods

Dramatic, Slow, Suspenseful

From the director of Moneyball, Foxcatcher is a true-story-based thriller centered around Olympic wrestlers and brothers Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) and multimillionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell). When the latter invites both brothers to move to his estate and train there, with seemingly patriotic motives, only Mark accepts. As training for the 1988 Olympic Games starts, and Du Pont’s motives become clearer, tragedy hits. This film is a slow-burning celebration of the exceptional talent it features, both Ruffalo and Carell received Oscar nominations for their roles.

46. Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

best

8.2

Genres

Documentary, Drama, Mystery

Director

Ed Perkins

Actors

Alex Lewis, Andrew Caley, Evan Milton, Kathleen Rainey

Moods

Challenging, Depressing, Discussion-sparking

This documentary starts with Alex Lewis, who gets into a motorcycle accident and wakes up in the hospital not knowing who he is. He doesn’t remember anything (not even what a bicycle or a TV is, or who his mother or father are), but he remembers his twin brother, Marcus. When Alex gets back into his childhood home, he’s full of questions, and Marcus is full of answers. However, slowly, Marcus realizes his power to reshape Alex’s version of their past. Marcus leaves one important detail from Alex’s life that makes this documentary (as if it wasn’t already) such an insane story. I know I said it’s a sad movie, but it’s also fascinating and, ultimately, humanizing of the brothers’ experience.

47. Leave the World Behind (2023)

best

8.2

Genres

Drama, Mystery, Science Fiction

Director

Sam Esmail

Actors

Alexis Rae Forlenza, Charlie Evans, Erica Cho, Ethan Hawke

Moods

A-list actors, Challenging, Character-driven

The key to what makes this apocalyptic thriller from Mr Robot and Homecoming showrunner Sam Esmail so unnerving is how resolute it is about not taking place in an alternate timeline. Making references to memorable events in recent history and namechecking real brands and cultural touchstones (like Tesla and Friends), Leave the World Behind is uncannily familiar — which, when combined with the film’s meticulous crafting of tension, makes it all the more unsettling.

Though taking place amidst an ambiguous national emergency, the film is largely set in one house — a claustrophobic setting that puts the characters’ self-conceits and prejudices under a microscope and forces them to confront their own impotence in an analog world. If it all sounds a bit “we live in a society,” be assured that Leave the World Behind cleverly manages to avoid the pitfalls of seeming like a bad Black Mirror ripoff by sidestepping expectations and deploying all the atmospheric tools in its arsenal. Withholding key plot and character information to increase our own paranoia means the movie always runs the risk of disappointment when explanations are finally given, but its focus on the human drama and its well-set-up ending ultimately eclipse any niggling frustrations.

48. Queen and Slim

best

8.1

Genres

Crime, Drama, Mystery

Director

Female director, Melina Matsoukas

Actors

Andre De'Sean Shanks, Andy Dylan, Benito Martinez, Bokeem Woodbine

Moods

Action-packed, Thrilling

On their drive back from a Tinder date that was only average, a couple are pulled over by a racist police officer. Things escalate unexpectedly and the couple, one of whom is a lawyer aware of the corruptedness of the system, start a life on the run together. This thrilling set-up mixing social commentary and romance is a movie that’s actually many movies in one. And almost as if to cut in-between the different tonalities, there are so many quiet and beautiful shots of the couple: silent, still or dancing – these moments are true cinematic magic. 

49. Decision to Leave (2022)

best

8.1

Genres

Crime, Drama, Mystery

Director

Park Chan-wook

Actors

Ahn Seong-bong, Cha Seo-won, Choi Dae-hoon, Choi Sun-ja

Moods

Gripping, Thought-provoking, Weird

A twitchy, uncomfortable noir film for the digital age, Decision to Leave blends the trappings of a restless police procedural with an obsessive forbidden romance. Here, director Park Chan-wook flips every interrogation and piece of evidence on its head, pulling us away from the whodunit and towards the inherently invasive nature of a criminal investigation. It’s a movie that remains achingly romantic even if everything about the central relationship is wrong. For detective Hae-jun and suspect Seo-rae (played masterfully by Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, respectively), the attraction between them is built entirely on distrust and suspicion—illustrating the danger of falling for the idea of someone rather than the person themself.

50. The Royal Hotel (2023)

best

8.1

Genres

Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Director

Female director, Kitty Green

Actors

Alex Malone, Barbara Lowing, Baykali Ganambarr, Bree Bain

Moods

Character-driven, Discussion-sparking, Gripping

The Royal Hotel sees Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) resorting to take up a dire live-in job behind the bar in a remote desert part of Western Australia. Although they’re warned that they’d “have to be okay with a little male attention” in the outcast mining town, their financial precarity overrides the potential fear. Curiously enough, the fiction film is based on a real story, already told in the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie by Pete Gleeson, but The Assistant director Kitty Green pulls no punches when representing how suffocating it must feel to be encircled by such unmediated male aggression. The brawls, the spilled beer, the c-word as a greeting all form the unnerving paraphernalia of life then and there. For Australian independent film devotees, there is actor Toby Wallace, who reprises his bad boy role from Babyteeth, and he’s joined by the ranks of Herbert Nordrum (The Worst Person in the World) and an utterly terrifying Hugo Weaving (The Matrix).

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