400 Best Mystery Movies to Watch (Page 27)

Feeling investigative? If you’re not sure which movie to go for, allow us to clue you in. From detective stories and whodunnits to suspenseful dramas, here are the best mystery-themed movies and shows to stream now.

Read also:

391. In Your Dreams, 2023

	
There are some very interesting, culturally specific touches to In Your Dreams that tease a much more interesting adventure beyond the first two episodes watched for this review. Unfortunately, these first two installments can be a real test of patience—not necessarily because of a slower pace than expected, but because of how little the main plot moves forward. The series seems to want to establish its characters before anything else, which makes it even stranger that their development is made up primarily of cheesy comedy and confusing decisions made for the sake of kickstarting the plot. And when danger finally rolls around (in disappointingly short bursts), these characters just don't have the depth to inspire any concern over their well-being.Genre: Action & Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Anthony Oseyemi, Didintle Khunou, Jesse Suntele, Kiroshan Naidoo, Thando Thabethe
Director: Fred Wolmarans, Gareth Crocker

Read also:

392. Marry My Dead Body (2023)

Fifteen minutes into Marry My Dead Body, it becomes clear where this supernatural crime dramedy is going; the only question is if the two-hour runtime is worth it. It has “don't drop the soap" bits that will cause severe whiplash, and sporadic mentions of misogyny that are just as offensive. As an action film, there's nothing notable or memorable about it, and as a drama, there isn't enough emotional substance to overshadow the childish antics of our protagonists. If anything, Greg Hsu as Wu Ming-han and Austin Lin as Mao Pang-yu have a chemistry that somehow survives everything thrown its way. But don’t let curiosity get the better of you—as absurd as it sounds, the film isn’t nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Genre: Action, Comedy, Mystery

Actor: Austin Lin, Gingle Wang, Greg Hsu, Ma Nien-Hsien, Tsai Chen-Nan

Director: Cheng Wei-Hao

Rating: R

Read also:

393. Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch, 2024

	
Even if Crimes of Fashion: Killer Clutch faithfully sticks to the general template of a mystery film, that doesn't guarantee its quality. It may have structure and suspects and motive but it doesn't inject its own color into the expected story beats. Maybe it's a consequence of the film being made for a network that only really shows "safe," sanitized programming, but there isn't a particularly strong sense of danger here despite the threat of violence being established from the very beginning. And while the movie has fun with individual outsized characters meant to show off how outlandish and how expressive high fashion can be, they fall to the background and are unfortunately diluted in the rest of the film's bland tropes.Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, TV Movie
Actor: Alain Van Goethem, Brooke D'Orsay, David Bowles, Gilles Marini, Harry Szovik, Martin Budny, Mohamed Belhadjine, Paloma Coquant
Director: Felipe Rodriguez
Rating: PG

Read also:

394. Linlang, 2023

Many telenovelas and soap operas make a bid for the ridiculous, and in general the world is better off for it. But if a soap can't stick the landing when it tries to manufacture conflict, it just ends up becoming infuriating to watch. Such is the case with Linlang, a Filipino drama that already sets itself up weakly from the outset through the idea of cheating as a plot device, and fails to give us anything crazy enough to earn its sudden bursts of action and perpetually intrusive score. It's almost impressive how none of these characters seem to be capable of communicating with each other like adults—which can be fun in small doses, as these people leap to conclusions with full aggression at the drop of a hat. But these misunderstandings also just stretch out plot points unnecessarily, ultimately reinforcing very tired, very traditional family values.

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Soap, Thriller

Actor: JM de Guzman, Kaila Estrada, Kim Chiu, Maricel Soriano, Paulo Avelino

Director: FM Reyes, Jojo Saguin

Read also:

395. 10 Days of a Good Man (2023)

The fact that 10 Days of a Good Man feels so similar to many other hard-boiled detective stories still means there are reliable thrills to be had here for fans of the genre. But twists and turns and a suitably gruff lead performance by Nejat Isler can't make up for how the film seems so convinced of its own coolness. The more that they emphasize that Sadik is really a modest kind of tough guy with a big heart and an energy that just seems to draw women and dangerous people towards him, the more insincere it comes across. And as the convoluted central mystery continues to pile on details without engaging in much actual investigation, the more the whole thing feels like posturing to champion a very traditional and superficial idea of masculinity that Sadik embodies.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Nejat İşler, Nur Fettahoğlu, Şenay Gürler

Director: Uluç Bayraktar

Rating: R

Read also:

396. Hard Broken, 2023

Netflix is no stranger to murder mysteries, having a whole catalog of films and series in the genre from around the world. Because of this, it can be hard for lesser known, non-English titles from the streamer to get their work noticed, and we at A Good Movie to Watch try to find the best of these hidden gems. Unfortunately, Hard Broken is not one of them. The latest six-episode Lebanese series feels rushed, often containing plot points that don't make sense, with stock characters that feel so one-dimensional. With the quality of other murder mysteries on the platform, it’s strange that Netflix decided to produce this series.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery

Actor: Elie Mitri, Muhanned Al Hamdi, Rasha Bilal, رودريغ سليمان, طلال الجردي

Director: Elie F. Habib

Rating: TV-MA

Read also:

397. Confidential Informant, 2023

Despite a solid premise that should lead to compelling drama—about men scarred by war and the morally grey inner workings of the police—Confidential Informant devolves into a half-baked thriller that's as dull as its title. Flat direction, a lack of connective tissue between scenes, and an unfortunately visible lack of production resources suck the life out of the script and from the actors' performances. There's clearly a foundation to be built upon here, but the film makes a crucial mistake in trying to have its cake and eat it too: it wants to deliver all the (unsatisfying) thrills of an antihero police procedural, but it just doesn't have the money or the creativity to do this, on top of being a character drama. And so any tension that it tries to build up deflates by the end, its characters nothing but hollow shells, stuck in a story that that never gives them a chance to be anything more interesting.

Genre: Action, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Arielle Raycene, Camila Savia, Dominic Purcell, Erik Valdez, Jon Lindstrom, Kate Bosworth, Meadow Williams, Mel Gibson, Nick Stahl

Director: Michael Oblowitz

Rating: R

Read also:

398. Gilded Newport Mysteries: Murder at the Breakers, 2024

	
Hallmark movies aren't automatically bad if they're cheesy and on the cheaper side; there are ways to make these characteristics work, of course. But these qualities definitely don't help if the story they're telling is uninteresting and if the actors in front of the camera couldn't be compelled to deliver convincing emotions if their lives depended on it. Watching Gilded Newport Mysteries: Murder at the Breakers kind of feels like watching people rehearse a family-produced parody of an Agatha Christie novel, or like visiting Westworld and seeing the robots play-act a fictional scenario. Every line over-explains everything that happens on screen, and the mystery elements just aren't coherent enough for them to lead to a satisfying conclusion or interesting statement about the characters and their world.Genre: Drama, Mystery, TV Movie
Actor: Aisling Goodman, Alissa Skovbye, Amira Anderson, April Telek, Ava Telek, Cesare Scarpone, Danny Griffin, David Beairsto, Geoff Gustafson, Gillian Barber, James Drew Dean, John Prowse, Katherine Evans, Madeleine Kelders, Mark Humphrey, Nathan Witte, Sebastian Greaves
Director: Terry Ingram
Rating: PG

Read also:

399. 10 Days of a Bad Man (2023)

At first it really seems like 10 Days of a Bad Man has learned from the mistakes of its unoriginal, self-satisfied predecessor. This sequel has a more distinct personality in general, with a better overall look and a more unique central mystery that doesn't only deal with edgy underground trafficking rings. But it doesn't take long to realize that this film still has the exact same attitude towards its protagonist Sadik, who refuses to develop in any meaningful way and whom the movie still lionizes as some impossibly charming but sexily flawed example of masculinity.

And throughout this ultimately pointless and hastily resolved mystery that makes no impact at the end, this 50-year-old man can't even confront his grief in an interesting way—choosing instead to strike up a relationship with an 18-year-old girl whose only function in the story is to try and seduce him. Because nothing says getting over the death of a loved one than grooming the young woman whom you've known since she was a minor.

Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery

Actor: Erdal Yildiz, Ilayda Akdogan, Nejat İşler, Nur Fettahoğlu, Şenay Gürler

Director: Uluç Bayraktar

Rating: R

Read also:

400. Tyler Perry's Divorce in the Black, 2024

	
If you’re reading this, I can only assume you’re looking to hate-watch something laughably terrible with your friends. If that’s the case, then you’re in luck: this is the film. Like Mea Culpa before it, Tyler Perry’s Divorce in the Black is filled with caricatures, cliches, and just generally awful filmmaking. In one scene, to show the passage of time, Perry literally keeps the camera on the clock and fades it into the next hour. But also like Mea Culpa, Divorce in the Black features an otherwise great performance from its leading woman—in this case, it’s Meagan Good. Good lends her abused character more complexity than the film deserves. Like plenty of victims, she’s both afraid of and in love with her despicable husband, though the film, unfortunately, refuses to dive into that nuance and instead chalks everything up to bad and good, Christian and un-Christian. Neither domestic abuse nor general filmmaking is taken seriously here, so there’s no reason to give this film the time of day too.Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Actor: Cory Hardrict, Debbi Morgan, Joe Komara, Joseph Lee Anderson, Meagan Good, Richard Lawson, Taylor Polidore
Director: Tyler Perry
Rating: R

Read also:

1 … 23 24 25 26 27