Best Whodunit Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of whodunit cinema — measured across 3,892 indexed frames from 55 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Whodunit films over-index on telephone, fedora and trench coat — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
John HustonDP Arthur EdesonIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.7See in full on FrameThrower →
Spade and Archer is the name of a San Francisco detective agency. That's for Sam Spade and Miles Archer. The two men are partners, but Sam doesn't like Miles much. A knockout, who goes by the name of Miss Wonderly, walks into their office; and by that night everything's changed. Miles is dead. And so is a man named Floyd Thursby. It seems Miss Wonderly is surrounded by dangerous men. There's Joel Cairo, who uses gardenia-scented calling cards. There's Kasper Gutman, with his enormous girth and feigned civility. Her only hope of protection comes from Sam, who is suspected by the police of one or the other murder. More murders are yet to come, and it will all be because of these dangerous men -- and their lust for a statuette of a bird: the Maltese Falcon.
- 2
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Alfred HitchcockDP Robert BurksIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →
While attending a medical conference in Paris, an American physician, Dr. Ben McKenna, along with his wife, retired musical theater actress and singer Jo McKenna née Conway, and their adolescent son, Hank McKenna, decide to take a side trip to Marrakesh, French Morocco. On the bus to Marrakesh, they meet a Frenchman, Louis Bernard. The following day at the market, Louis is masquerading as an Arab and approaches Ben with a knife plunged in his back. Before dying, Louis cryptically whispers into Ben's ear that there will be an attempted assassination in London of a statesman. Ben is reluctant to provide any information of this news to the authorities because he learned Hank was kidnapped by a British couple, Edward and Lucy Drayton. The people the Draytons were working for threatened to kill Hank if Ben divulged any information told to him by Louis Bernard. With what little information they have on hand, Ben and Jo head to London to try and thwart the assassination attempt and more importantly find Hank alive and safe. Scotland Yard is aware of some pieces to the puzzle, including the fact that Louis Bernard was a French secret service agent and that there will be an assassination attempt on someone. They will have to work together as they hit a diplomatic roadblock, one that may be overcome with a special Jo Conway song.
- 3
Shutter Island (2010)
Martin ScorseseDP Robert RichardsonIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.2See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1954, up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he thinks he's been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
- 4
Chinatown (1974)
Roman PolanskiDP John A. AlonzoIMDb 8.1TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1937 Los Angeles, private investigator Jake 'J.J.' Gittes specializes in cheating-spouse cases. His current target is Hollis Mulwray, high-profile chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, whose wife suspects him of infidelity. In following Mulwray, Gittes witnesses some usual business dealings, such as a public meeting for construction of a new dam to create additional water supply for Los Angeles, as fresh water is vital to the growing community during the chronic drought; Mulwray opposes the dam. Eventually Gittes sees Mulwray meeting with an unknown young woman who isn't his wife. Once news of the supposed tryst between Mulwray and this woman hits the media, additional information comes to light that makes Gittes believe that Mulwray is being framed for something and that he himself is being set up. In his investigation of the issue behind Mulwray's framing and his own setup, Gittes is assisted by Mulwray's wife Evelyn, but he thinks she isn't being forthright with him. The further he gets into the investigation, the more secrets he uncovers about the Mulwrays' professional and personal dealings, including Mulwray's former business-partnership with Evelyn's father, Noah Cross. The identity of the unknown woman may be the key to uncovering the whole story.
- 5
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Robert ZemeckisDP Dean CundeyIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →
'Toon star Roger is worried that his wife Jessica is playing pattycake with someone else, so the studio hires detective Eddie Valiant to snoop on her. But the stakes are quickly raised when Marvin Acme is found dead and Roger is the prime suspect. Groundbreaking interaction between the live and animated characters, and lots of references to classic animation.
- 6
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Curtis HansonDP Dante SpinottiIMDb 8.2TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
1950's Los Angeles is the seedy backdrop for this intricate noir-ish tale of police corruption and Hollywood sleaze. Three very different cops are all after the truth, each in their own style: Ed Exley, the golden boy of the police force, willing to do almost anything to get ahead, except sell out; Bud White, ready to break the rules to seek justice, but barely able to keep his raging violence under control; and Jack Vincennes, always looking for celebrity and a quick buck until his conscience drives him to join Exley and White down the one-way path to find the truth behind the dark world of L.A. crime.
- 7
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Brian De PalmaDP Ralf D. BodeIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →
While taking a shower, Kate Miller, a middle-aged, sexually frustrated New York City housewife, has a rape fantasy while her husband stands at the sink shaving. Later that day, after complaining to her psychiatrist Dr. Robert Elliott about her husband's pathetic performance in bed, she meets a strange man at a museum and returns to his apartment where they continue an adulterous encounter that began in the taxicab. Before she leaves his apartment, she finds papers which certify that the man has a venereal disease. Panicked, Kate rushes into the elevator, but has to return to his apartment when she realizes she's forgotten her wedding ring. When the elevator doors open, she's brutally slashed to death by a tall blonde woman wearing dark sunglasses. Liz Blake, a high-class call girl, is the only witness to the murder and she becomes the prime suspect and the murderer's next target. Liz is rescued from being killed by Kate's son Peter, who enlists the help of Liz to catch his mother's killer as Detective Marino, who's in charge of the case, is uncooperative in the investigation.
- 8
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
Joel Coen, Ethan CoenDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 6.3TMDB 5.9See in full on FrameThrower →
This movie follows a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer for Capitol Pictures in the 1950s, who cleans up and solves problems for big names and stars in the industry. But when studio star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears, Mannix has to deal with more than just the fix.
- 9
Tenebre (1982)
Dario ArgentoDP Luciano TovoliIMDb 7.0TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
With Argento's trademark visual style, linked with one of his more coherent plots, Tenebrae follows a writer who arrives to Rome only to find somebody is using his novels as the inspiration (and, occasionally, the means) of committing murder. As the death toll mounts the police are ever baffled, and the writer becomes more closely linked to the case than is comfortable.
- 10
MaXXXine (2024)
Ti WestDP Eliot RockettIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.3See in full on FrameThrower →
In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.
What whodunit films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a whodunit frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — telephone is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- telephone3.1×
- fedora2.9×
- trench coat2.7×
- blood2.4×
- tie2.0×
- necktie2.0×
- suit jacket1.9×
- skin1.7×
How whodunit films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate whodunit from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 28%closeupvs 21% baseline
- 51%low keyvs 40% baseline
- 34%naturalvs 43% baseline
- 33%dayvs 42% baseline
- 54%nightvs 43% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Glass Onion (2022) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 3,892 frames from 55 films carrying the whodunit label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/whodunit
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