[Editor’s note: this list was originally published September 2023, and has since been updated.] There was a time not too long ago when whodunnits seemed to be a dusty relic of cinema’s past . Mysteries about a cast of colorful characters at the center of a murder case, and the intrepid detective investigating them, were far and few between in movie theaters for what felt like decades, and the rare films to feature those plots seldom attracted much attention.
But nowadays, the genre is back, baby. In 2017, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred as the iconic detective Hercule Poirot in “Murder on the Orient Express,” based on one of mystery writer Agatha Christie’s most famous novels. It was the first high-profile Christie adaptation to hit theaters in ages, after 1988’s “Appointment with Death.
” The movie was highly successful, and Branagh has returned to that Poirot mustache with “Death on the Nile” and “A Haunting in Venice,” the latter of which opened in theaters this month. The movies have had mixed success critically, but “Haunting” has been received as the best yet, and it’s a thrill to see the satisfying formula of filling out a suspect list with a cast of movie stars back on the big screen again. And for a more critically successful whodunnit franchise, look for Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” a modern, often subversive take on the Christie formula.
A rare original film to massively triumph at the box office during the 2010s, “Knives O.