Something to keep in mind: there’s a difference between a movie being a whodunit and having whodunit elements. For example, IMDb categorizes Heart Eyes as a whodunit, but if you were looking to have a nice mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes, all the gory kills might not really be for you.

So, this is specifically about whodunits, movies where the focus is specifically on gathering clues to figure out who did a crime. Sometimes the protagonist is a detective, private or otherwise, sometimes they are counselors, sometimes journalists. The key is that the victim or the crime is not really that important. We don’t really care about that. We care about the process of figuring it all out and even in that case we don’t necessarily care that much about the logic of all of it. We just want to see someone smart figure it all out. There is a certain levity to all of this, which lead me to cut out some great movies, because they are just too dark.

Well, I like dark movies, but to me they just are not part of this specific genre. There are some great South-Korean mysteries I like very much, but have a very different feel from these lighter takes. There’s Mother and Decision to Leave and Burning and so forth, but while they do share some elements, they just miss on the comedic takes (or at least I don’t find them to be comedic which might just be a cultural thing). This does mean that this list became less international than it was in the beginning. Well, a lot less international.

In no specific order.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Yes, I prefer the American version to the Swedish one. Not necessarily that much, but the higher budget did give them an opportunity to be more stylistic. Of course, the presence of David Fincher didn’t hurt.

I was wondering whether I should put this on the list, because it isn’t very light. Often quite the opposite. Yet, this feels like a very traditional whodunit in many ways: We have a limited number of suspects and there is a lot of family secrets being dug up. There is just something very Christie-like about all of this.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

This felt like Shane Black’s comeback, but it is likely that he was working behind the scenes as a screenwriter throughout, but just did it uncredited (as many screenwriters do). This was his first directing gig, though, after a couple of decades of working in Hollywood.

We have an actor learning to play a detective having to be a detective. An interesting premise which Black uses nicely.

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Ooh, Billy Wilder direct a screenplay based on an Agatha Christie play. How can I not?

Also stars Marlene Dietrich, another true icon, who, besides a great career, helped Jewish people escape Germany in the late 30s and often played with gender in ways that wasn’t really allowed in her days. She was also bisexual. Here, she’s 55 and still playing the femme fatale and I don’t think anyone really minded.

Knives Out (2019)

Probably the most famous movie of this kind from the recent history. I haven’t seen the third one at this point, but I have liked both of the first two. Also, this one is better and I think it’s well served by focusing on someone other than the detective, as we mostly follow a nurse who thinks she accidentally killed the victim.

Gosford Park (2001)

A huge family comes together for a hunting party. Many of them don’t want to be there, but feel they need to in order to suck up to the patriarch. It just happens that the patriarch is murdered and the police are unable to figure it out, so a servant starts her own investigation.

A huge cast of famous people here. I guess working with Robert Altman was a big deal back in the day. However, I did wonder whether I should put this on the list, because the focus is so much more on the relationships within the family and their servants. On the other hand, this does follow the Christie-model except that it opens it up and dissects it and it’s inherent classism.

The Kid Detective (2020)

A smart kid solves a lot of crimes and thus ends up being a private detective as an adult. Except that it doesn’t really pay very well, nor are there really cases in this small town. Except now.

This is very darkly comedic in a way most of these movies are not (although many others are darkly comedic as well). It’s a funny movie, but it doesn’t take away from the mystery in anyway. Actually, these kind of work together nicely.

The Last of Sheila (1973)

A wife of a high-profile movie producer dies in a car accident. Exactly a year later he invites six of his friends to a cruise of sorts, where they all try to solve his riddles, except that he is murdered and that becomes the mystery.

There are problematic elements here (such as homosexuality being contrasted with pedophilia), but it is fun.

Komisario Palmun Erehdys (Inspector Palmu’s Error, 1960)

There’s a series of these films (four, to be precise, with one of them having being remade) around a character created by Mika Waltari, a Finnish writer, but this kind of stands in for the first three. This was actually the very first one and still the best in my eyes, although the differences weren’t huge. Except that the fourth one, which took them quite a long time to make, was quite bad and didn’t really know what it was trying to do.

These are very much in the tradition of Christie, except that the protagonist is a cop and the class differences are not as extreme as in Christie’s world, so these are kind of a budget version of those.

Clue (1985)

Famous for having multiple endings depending on which theater you went to. Maybe the idea was to get repeat viewing, but it flopped on release. However, this does kind of give away a secret: There isn’t really any logic to what’s going on in these kinds of movies.

This is very much based on the game of the same name. The characters, rooms and weapons are there. Then we just get a zany comedy with a lot of the famous people of the day doing the roles.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

We have a counselor who isn’t really that interested in the job, getting an important case. So, he and his alcoholic friend try their best at defending the suspect.

One of the controversies regarding this film was that it included such words as “contraceptive”, “bitch”, “slut” and “panties”. While this is funny, it becomes less funny when you realize some of the words, like “rape”, are still often censored.

The weird thing is that the thing I remember the best is the credit sequence, as it was designed by the legendary Saul Bass and has a very unique feel (except that Vertigo has a very similar one also made by Bass).