The 6 Best Mystery Movies Released Since 2010, Ranked

Image via Paramount Pictures Published Sep 23, 2026, 7:36 AM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Calling a mystery movie brilliant is always a little risky, because the whole thing can fall apart the second the reveal feels cheap, the clues stop making sense, or the final answer turns out to be less interesting than the questions. A great mystery has to keep the audience curious without cheating them. It has to make every detail feel like it belongs to a larger design. That kind of control is hard to pull off, especially in modern movies where audiences have seen every obvious twist coming from a mile away. The films on this list avoid that problem. They understand mystery as more than a puzzle. Let's count down the six movies that actually pull it off in my opinion. 6 'The Handmaiden' (2016) Image via Amazon Studios/ CJ Entertainment The Handmaiden takes the old con-artist setup and turns it into something far richer, stranger, and more intoxicating. The plot kicks off when Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) arrives at Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee)'s isolated estate pretending to be a naive maid, but she is really there to help Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) manipulate Hideko out of her fortune. At first, the manor feels like a beautiful trap, all private rooms, heavy fabrics, locked desires, and conversations where everyone seems to be measuring everyone else. However, this trap is an illusion. The film pulls the floor out from under its own story. The intimacy becomes real. Every touch carries danger. The bath scene, with the thimble scraping against Hideko’s sharp tooth, says more than a whole confession could. Just when you think you've got it figured out, the movie hits rewind and flips the whole perspective. Suddenly, you're piecing it all together from a totally different angle, watching a dirty hustle turn into a deeply satisfying jailbreak. 5 'Decision to Leave' (2022) Image via CJ Entertainment Usually crime stories start with a dead body and end in handcuffs. On the other hand, Decision to Leave begins like a murder investigation and slowly turns into a wound that neither person knows how to close. The film follows Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il), an insomniac investigator defined by his red eyes, his constant use of eye drops, and a professional calm that looks increasingly fragile. Then the exact wrong case lands on his desk. An experienced climber falls from a mountain peak. But, his widow, Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), doesn't shed a single tear. That calmness pulls Hae-jun in. The interrogation room becomes intimate. The late-night surveillance outside Seo-rae’s apartment feels less like police work and more like a man teaching himself how to want the wrong thing. It nails that weird modern feeling of being deeply connected to someone through a translation app or a recorded whisper, wrapping both of them in a private bubble. As a result, desire eventually overrules the badge. He destroys evidence just to keep her in his orbit, willingly protecting the woman he was supposed to put away. Sometimes, the real mystery is why we look the other way. 4 'Shutter Island' (2010) Image via Paramount Pictures Shutter Island is the kind of mystery that instantly makes the setting feel guilty. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives seasick and war-haunted at an offshore asylum with Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), searching for a missing patient who has somehow vanished from a locked institution. The rain-lashed grounds, suspicious psychiatric staff, barred rooms, and leaking corridors of Ward C all seem designed to keep the viewer uncomfortable before the case even deepens. Once that initial discomfort sets in, the movie itself starts losing its grip on reality. Continuity errors, strange edits, patient interviews, missing files, migraine flashes, and notes about “The Law of 4” keep nudging Teddy and the audience toward paranoia. The storm outside is nothing compared to the one inside Teddy's mind. Hallucinations of fire, ash, and his wife's yellow dress keep halting the investigation. The missing-patient case is just bait. The real mystery is the lengths a shattered identity will go to avoid looking at its own tragedy. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Coen Brothers Movie Would You Thrive In? Lebowski · O Brother · Fargo · No Country Nobody writes people like the Coen brothers. The decent ones. The talkers. The ones who stopped trying years ago. And the ones who can already see how bad this is going to get. Four films, four completely different ways of handling trouble. Eight questions decide which one you would actually walk out of. 🎳Lebowski(1998) 🎸O Brother(2000) ❄️Fargo(1996) 🪙No Country(2007) FIND YOUR FILM → 01 A bag of money lands in your lap. What happens next? Every Coen film starts roughly here. It never goes smoothly. AI do not overthink it. Rent is paid, evening is free. BI have a plan for this. It involves other people. CI hand it in. Somebody is looking for this. DI am gone before anyone knows I have it. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Somebody is being completely unreasonable with you. How does it go? Coen dialogue is mostly people failing to understand each other. AI let it go. It is not worth the energy. BI talk. At length. Until they are on my side. CI stay polite and repeat myself until they hear me. DI stop talking. Talking has not been working. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What is your actual relationship with work? Everyone in these films is either working far too hard or not at all. AI have arranged things so I do as little as possible. BI would rather chase one big idea than hold a steady job. CI do it properly, including the boring parts. DIt pays. I do not need it to mean anything. NEXT QUESTION → 04 Long drive, bad weather, nobody else on the road. How are you? There is always a drive in these films. It is never a good drive. AMusic on, in no hurry, perfectly content. BTalking the whole way, whether anybody answers or not. CBoth hands on the wheel, checking everyone is warm enough. DQuiet, watching the mirrors. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You are offered a shortcut that is not quite legal. This is the moment where the Coens find out who you really are. ANo, but not on principle. It sounds like effort. BYes, and I will make it sound like a great idea. CNo. And I would probably say something about it. DOnly if I am certain nobody finds out. NEXT QUESTION → 06 The plan has fallen apart completely. What is your move? In a Coen film the plan always falls apart. That is the genre. AOrder a drink and let things settle down. BImprovise loudly and hope momentum carries it. CStart again from the beginning and do it right. DCut my losses and leave before it gets worse. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Nobody writes a line quite like the Coens. Which one is yours? AIt is really not that serious. BTrust me, I have thought about this. CI just think we could all be a bit kinder. DThat was always going to happen. NEXT QUESTION → 08 How does your film end? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your movie. ANothing is resolved and I am completely fine with it. BA ridiculous piece of luck saves everybody. CQuietly, at home, with somebody I love. DSomebody older admits they no longer understand the world. REVEAL MY FILM → The Verdict Is In Your Coen Film Is…Four films, four completely different ways of handling money, trouble and other people. This is the one you would survive, why it suits you, and what it would cost you to be there. The Big LebowskiYou have quietly arranged your life so that very little can get to you, and a surprising number of people find that infuriating. You would be completely at home here. The Dude is the only person in the film with no ambition, and the only one who comes out the other side undamaged. That is not an accident. You do not chase things. You let situations arrive and you deal with them at your own pace, which is a genuine skill however lazy it looks. This is a full crime plot happening around a man who mostly wants his rug back, and that is exactly the energy you would bring to it. Everything goes wrong. You abide. The film ends. O BrotherYou talk your way through life and it works far more often than it should. Give you a bad situation and an audience and you will find a way out of both at once. Everett never has a plan that survives contact with reality. He has something better, which is the ability to keep talking until a new one turns up. You are the optimist in the group, the one who makes a ridiculous idea sound reasonable at two in the morning. This is the warmest film the Coens have made. It is a chase, a comedy and a musical at once, and nobody in it is quite beyond saving. You would end up famous entirely by accident, and act like you planned it all along. FargoYou would survive Fargo because you are the only kind of person who does: patient, decent, and completely unimpressed by anybody trying to be clever. Marge Gunderson solves the whole case by being polite, thorough and unhurried while everybody around her panics. That is the entire argument of the film. You do the boring parts of the job, which is precisely why you would notice the thing everyone else walked straight past. Fargo is about ordinary greed causing enormous damage, and about one person who simply refuses to be corrupted by any of it. You would go home at the end of it, have dinner, and sleep perfectly well. No CountryYou do not expect the world to be fair and you stopped being surprised about it a long time ago. That clear-eyed quality is exactly what this film asks for. No Country is the Coens at their coldest: a film where being smart, fast and careful might still not be anywhere near enough. You plan for the worst, you keep your own counsel, and some part of you is already working out the exit. Llewelyn Moss is competent, prepared and resourceful, and the film is honest about whether any of that is ever sufficient. You would see it coming. Whether that helps is the one question the film refuses to answer. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 'Gone Girl' (2014) Image via 20th Century Studios Long before it became a pop-culture blueprint for toxic suburban warfare, David Fincher’s Gone Girl turns a failing marriage into a crime scene and then lets the whole country contaminate it. The story starts with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returning home on his fifth wedding anniversary to an open door, a shattered living room table, and Amy Elliott Dunne (Rosamund Pike) gone. Consequently, when Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) walks in, the mess feels completely staged. Soon after, diary entries, resentment, and awful timing start building Nick into the perfect monster. The trap is set with ice-cold, vicious humor. Nothing escapes notice. Even Nick’s sideways half-smile beside the missing poster becomes its own piece of evidence once the cameras catch it. Luminol reveals cleaned blood in the kitchen. Cable news turns grief into performance. Every jaw clench, rehearsed smile, and passive-aggressive memory becomes part of the trial before the trial. Finally, Amy takes ownership of the story, and the film becomes a masterclass in weaponized image-making. The mystery is brilliant, but the satire is even sharper. 2 'Prisoners' (2013) Image via Warner Bros. Prisoners hits hard because it turns a normal Thanksgiving into panic almost immediately. It starts with Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman), who is with family and neighbors when two young girls vanish from the street, and the whole movie tightens from there. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes the case, but when Alex Jones (Paul Dano) is released for lack of evidence, Keller decides to take the matter in his own hands. The film moves with a nasty, rain-soaked urgency. Every new lead feels like a breakthrough. Every dead end makes Keller more dangerous. Meanwhile, Loki’s twitchy focus keeps the collapsing investigation alive. Keller keeps spiraling into total darkness, yet the movie never lets the search lose momentum. Then that distant whistle echoes from the pit, and the entire movie just locks its grip on your chest. 1 'Knives Out' (2019) Image via Lionsgate Knives Out locks down the top of the list because it makes the old mansion murder mystery feel alive again without treating the genre like a museum piece. The film begins with Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who is found with his throat cut after his 85th birthday party, and the family instantly turns grief into theater. Everyone talks about love, loyalty, and legacy. Meanwhile, they are all quietly measuring their distance to the inheritance. The house helps sell that pleasure too, with its staircases, hidden corners, strange antiques, and that absurd wheel of knives looming behind Harlan like the whole room is waiting to accuse someone. The film is special because Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) is stuck at the center of the mess. She is scared. She is decent. And she is carrying a secret so dangerous that every casual question from Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) feels like a steel trap snapping shut. Her vomiting reflex turns lying into physical suspense, which is such a perfect murder-mystery device. Marta outlasts a family that completely underestimated her kindness. That balcony shot with the mug? Ridiculously satisfying. It is clever, funny, mean when it needs to be, and built to be watched on repeat. Knives Out Release Date November 27, 2019 Runtime 131 minutes Cast Chris Evans Ransom Drysdale