Mad Over Stories Team Rian Johnson’s Knives Out reminded everyone how much fun a proper whodunit can be: a great house, a worse family, a brilliant detective, and clues that actually add up. If you’ve watched it (and Glass Onion) twice and want more of that stylish, clever, slightly comic murder-mystery energy, these are the films to queue up next.
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The Modern Whodunits
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) — The obvious next stop: Benoit Blanc on a tech-billionaire’s Greek island, skewering the exact kind of people who deserve it. Sharper and sillier than the first.
See How They Run (2022) — A meta 1950s London whodunit set backstage at an Agatha Christie play, with Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan. Knowing, playful, and unafraid to poke fun at the genre it loves.
The Classics That Invented the Template
Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile — Kenneth Branagh’s lavish Poirot films are the closest thing to Knives Out‘s DNA, because they share its source: Agatha Christie, who wrote the rules everyone else follows. If the films leave you wanting the originals, that’s the point:
Murder on the Orient Express
The most famous whodunit ever written — a murder aboard a snowbound train and the only detective who can solve it. Read it before you think you remember the ending.
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And Then There Were None
Ten strangers, one island, a killer among them and no way off. The best-selling mystery of all time, and the blueprint for every 'trapped with a murderer' story since.
The Ensemble Farce
Clue (1985) — The board-game adaptation that flopped in cinemas and became a cult classic. Multiple endings, perfect comic timing, and the funniest cast a whodunit has ever assembled.
Gosford Park (2001) — Robert Altman’s upstairs-downstairs country-house mystery is where Julian Fellowes first tried out the world he’d later turn into Downton Abbey. Slower and sharper than Knives Out, and every bit as well-observed.
Keep going
If you want the books that started it all, our guide to the best mystery and thriller books is the place to go — and for more screen picks, see the best true crime documentaries.
