Six sliders. No stars.
Nothing on this site is recommended because people liked it. Films are described by what they are (how heavy, how fast, how far from the real world), and you get the ones closest to what you asked for.
Neither of these is the better film. They are just at opposite ends.
75 films tagged mystery, showing 50
Move a slider to sort by what films are like.
2014 · Comedy
A famous hotel concierge between the wars takes on a new lobby boy, inherits a painting from a wealthy guest, and is accused of her murder. It is told as a story inside a story inside a story, at speed.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Science fiction
Twelve alien craft arrive without explanation, and a linguist is brought in to work out how to ask them what they want. Most of it is the slow business of translation.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Horror
A young Black photographer goes with his white girlfriend to meet her parents at their country house for the weekend, where everyone is a little too welcoming. The discomfort arrives well before anything else does.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Thriller
An FBI agent is recruited onto a cross-border task force going after a cartel, and is told very little about who she is working for or what the job actually is. She spends the film trying to find out.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Science fiction
A police officer whose job is retiring old synthetic humans turns up a buried secret and goes looking for a man who disappeared thirty years earlier. Slow, very large, and mostly quiet.
AI estimate, not yet described
1996 · Crime
A car salesman short of money hires two men to kidnap his own wife, and the plan goes wrong immediately. A very pregnant small-town police chief works it out at her own pace.
AI estimate, not yet described
2015 · Drama
The Boston Globe's investigations desk works a story about abuse in the Catholic church, and keeps finding it is bigger than the last version of it. Mostly documents, doorsteps and phone calls.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2013 · Science fiction
Eight friends at a dinner party start noticing odd things the night a comet passes overhead, beginning with the phones. Almost all of it happens in one house, with the cast working from an outline.
AI estimate, not yet described
2000 · Thriller
A man who can no longer form new memories hunts his wife's killer using notes, photographs and tattoos. The scenes run in reverse order, so at the start of each one you know as little as he does.
AI estimate, not yet described
2010 · Thriller
Two US marshals travel to an island asylum in 1954 to find a patient who has vanished from a locked room, and a hurricane closes the way back. Nobody on the staff answers a question straight.
AI estimate, not yet described
2016 · Thriller
A woman wakes from a car crash in a locked underground bunker, where the man who put her there says the air outside will kill her. Nearly all of it is three people in a few small rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2007 · Science fiction
A man spots something through binoculars behind his new house, walks into the woods to look, and ends up somewhere he cannot easily explain. Almost all of it happens on one hillside over a single afternoon.
AI estimate, not yet described
2009 · Comedy
Two friends go looking for the classmate who vanished after they survived a brutal engineering college, and the search takes them back through their student years. Broad jokes and songs, then it turns serious.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Mystery
A retired Poirot living quietly in post-war Venice is talked into sitting in on a seance at a crumbling palazzo, and the night ends with a body. Mostly one dark house, with the storm outside doing a lot of work.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
1998 · Comedy
A very relaxed man in Los Angeles is mistaken for a millionaire with the same name, and would like a new rug. What follows is a kidnapping plot he keeps wandering out of.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Mystery
A cheerful mom who runs a small parenting vlog befriends the glamorous mother of her son's classmate, and then that friend doesn't come back from a work trip. A mystery played with jokes and very good clothes.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2023 · Drama
A man falls from the top floor of a chalet in the Alps and his wife goes on trial, with their partly sighted son the only other person in the house. Most of it is courtroom argument about a marriage.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Science fiction
A biologist joins an all-woman expedition into a stretch of coastline sealed off behind a shimmering wall, where the plants and animals have gone strange. It moves slowly and gets stranger the further in they walk.
AI estimate, not yet described
2019 · Mystery
A wealthy crime novelist is found dead the morning after his birthday party, and a private detective with an odd accent turns up uninvited to work through a house full of relatives who all needed money. Everyone is lying about something small.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Mystery
A tech billionaire flies his oldest friends out to a private Greek island for a murder mystery weekend he has written himself. The detective from the previous case arrives without an invitation.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2025 · Mystery
A young priest arrives at a small parish where a death in a locked room looks impossible, and the same private detective is called in. The third of these mysteries, and the most sombre in tone.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
1995 · Thriller
Five criminals meet in a police line-up and agree to work together, and the only man left standing after the job tells the story to a customs agent. Almost all of it is that interview.
AI estimate, not yet described
1982 · Science fiction
A retired policeman in a permanently raining Los Angeles is brought back to hunt four artificial humans who have come to Earth looking for their maker. Slow, wet, and more interested in the question than the chase.
AI estimate, not yet described
2017 · Mystery
A famous Belgian detective boards a train across Europe, and by morning a passenger is dead and the train is stuck in a snowdrift. Everyone on board is a suspect and nobody can leave.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2014 · Thriller
A man's wife vanishes on their fifth wedding anniversary, and the television coverage turns him into a suspect well before any evidence does. Told from both sides, his present and her diary.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Thriller
Seven strangers check into a faded hotel on the Nevada state line in 1969, none of them there for the reason they gave at the desk. It plays out room by room, in chapters, mostly at night.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Horror
A group of rich twenty-somethings ride out a hurricane at a family mansion and start a party game where one of them is secretly the killer. Mostly one house, in the dark, with a lot of bickering.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2018 · Thriller
A young man getting by on delivery work runs into a girl from his old neighbourhood, and when she comes back from a trip abroad she has a rich, easy-going friend with her. Very slow, and it holds a lot back.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Thriller
The Pope dies and the cardinals are locked inside the Vatican to choose the next one, while the man running the vote keeps learning things about the candidates. Whispered talk in beautiful rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Mystery
A Belgian detective on holiday joins a wedding party cruising the Nile, where nearly everyone aboard has a reason to resent the bride. Once the boat leaves, the suspects are all in the same few rooms.
AI estimate, not yet described
2022 · Mystery
A detective who cannot sleep looks into a man's fall from a mountain, and spends more and more of his time watching the dead man's wife. It moves slowly, and much of it is two people being careful about what they say.
AI estimate, not yet described
2001 · Science fiction
A teenager in 1988 sleepwalks out of his bedroom, and a jet engine falls through the roof into it. A figure in a rabbit suit tells him the world ends in 28 days, and the film is in no hurry to explain.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Crime
A London midwife has the diary of a girl who died in childbirth translated, and it points her at a Russian family who run more than a restaurant. Quiet and slow, then suddenly not, more than once.
AI estimate, not yet described
2013 · Thriller
A tired history lecturer in a yellow-lit Toronto spots a bit-part actor who looks exactly like him, and sets out to find him. Slow, quiet, and confusing on purpose.
AI estimate, not yet described
2018 · Comedy
A couple who take their weekly game night seriously turn up for a murder-mystery party thrown by his brother, and the fake kidnapping goes wrong. It runs fast and is played for laughs throughout.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Mystery
Two private investigators from a working-class Boston neighbourhood are hired to look for a missing four-year-old in the places the police cannot reach. A detective story that keeps turning into an argument about what is right.
AI estimate, not yet described
2004 · Fantasy
In his third year at Hogwarts, Harry learns that the man who broke out of the wizard prison is looking for him. Greyer and rainier than the first two, and it moves quickly for a long film.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Comedy
London's best policeman is promoted sideways to a village where nothing happens and paired with a partner raised on action films. Jokes come thick and fast, and it gets very loud towards the end.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
2010 · Drama
Twins in Montreal open their mother's will and find two letters: one for a father they thought was dead, one for a brother they never knew about. They go looking, and it keeps cutting back to her life.
AI estimate, not yet described
2024 · Horror
A new FBI agent with a knack for hunches is put on a decades-old case of families killed in their own homes, all tied together by coded letters signed with one name. Slow and quiet, with the scary parts kept just out of frame.
AI estimate, not yet described
2003 · Mystery
In 1986 a rural Korean province gets its first serial killings, and two local detectives who work by instinct and beatings are joined by a careful man from Seoul. It is often funny, and the case runs for years.
AI estimate, not yet described
2007 · Thriller
A law firm's fixer is sent to clean up after their star litigator falls apart in the middle of defending a chemical company. Grown-ups in offices talking, and it tightens slowly.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2016 · Science fiction
A father takes his eight-year-old son and runs, chased by the church the boy was raised in and by the government. It explains very little, and much of it happens on back roads at night.
Sits near the middle on every axis.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2002 · Science fiction
In a Washington where murders are stopped before they happen, the cop who runs the unit is named by the system as a future killer and has to run from his own team. It is a chase with a mystery underneath it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2009 · Science fiction
A man three years into a solo contract mining the far side of the Moon, with a talking computer for company, has two weeks left before he goes home. One man, one base, and hardly anyone else in it.
AI estimate, not yet described
Little-known
2009 · Mystery
When her son is arrested for a girl's murder and nobody will look any further, his mother starts working the town herself. It moves slowly, and the funny bits arrive at strange moments.
AI estimate, not yet described
2001 · Mystery
A woman with no memory after a crash on a Los Angeles road, and a bright new arrival in town who decides to help her find out who she is. It does not run on normal rules and does not explain itself.
AI estimate, not yet described
2003 · Mystery
Three men who grew up on the same Boston street are pulled back together when one man's daughter is found dead and another is the detective on the case. Heavy and slow, and mostly about the three of them.
AI estimate, not yet described
2003 · Thriller
A man is locked in one room for fifteen years without being told why, then let out with a few days to find whoever did it. Violent and strange, and it moves like something is chasing it.
AI estimate, not yet described
2006 · Animation
A machine that lets therapists walk into their patients' dreams is stolen, and the team behind it has to chase it while dreams start leaking into waking life. Animated, very fast, hard to hold on to, in Japanese.
AI estimate, not yet described