What if the stabby maniac was your best friend? Or your ex-wife? What if it was you? These murder
mysteries were all about the killer twist. And of course we're talking spoilers for these movies.
In 2021's "Last Night in Soho," Edgar Wright teamed up with stars Anya Taylor-Joy
and Thomasin McKenzie to tell a twisted tale of broken dreams and painful pasts.
Ellie is an aspiring fashion student who feels she belongs to the 1960s rather than
present times. Ellie's wish appears to come true when she gets transported in
her dreams into the past. Ellie finds herself sharing a body with Sandie,
an aspiring '60s singer who's manipulated into forced sex work.
After investigating, Ellie believes Sandie was murdered by her pimp,
and she sets out to uncover the truth. In the end, it's revealed that Sandie never died. Instead,
she turned into a serial killer, murdering the men who abused her,
and eventually became the landlady of the very building where Ellie lives in the present day.
"A girl did die up there I supposed. The young me."
The "Murder on the Orient Express" stars its director, Kenneth Branagh, in the lead role
as one of the most famous fictional detectives, Hercule Poirot. On board a lavish train in the
middle of nowhere, Poirot must grapple with an unexpected murder that occurs during the journey.
The venerated detective takes his time examining the motives of each passenger
on the train. He discovers that everyone aboard has a past link to the victim and
a plausible reason for wanting him dead. So who was the killer? Well,
it's every single passenger on the train except for Poirot. Turns out they'd all
pooled their resources together and killed him as a group to allay suspicion over any one person.
In 2019's "Knives Out," filmmaker Rian Johnson gave the world a new detective named Benoit Blanc,
a gentleman sleuth played by Daniel Craig sporting an outrageous Southern accent.
"That fateful night seems, at first glance,
to fill that hole perfectly. A donut hole in a donut's hole."
The movie hinges on the murder of famed novelist Harlan Thrombey and the many
family members who stood to gain from his death. Halfway through the movie,
another twist is thrown into the proceedings when it's revealed that Harlan's death was
a medical accident at the hands of his nurse, Marta, played by Ana de Armas.
But then it turns out a new mystery person is blackmailing Marta in connection to the
murder. The only point of support for Marta is Harlan's handsome and debonair grandson, Hugh,
played by Chris Evans. Marta's trust turns out to be misplaced in the end when it's revealed
that Hugh was the person who'd been secretly blackmailing her, was also the killer of Harlan's
housekeeper, and set up the medical scenario resulting in Harlan's death. The twists and turns
served up by "Knives Out" make it one of the most entertaining entries in the murder mystery genre.
Following the success of "The Da Vinci Code," the 2009 sequel "Angels and Demons," saw Tom
Hanks return as symbologist Robert Langdon on a mission in the Vatican.
The movie opens with the murder of a reputed scientist and priest who'd
made a groundbreaking new scientific discovery. The discovery led to the
creation of a bomb with massive destructive capabilities. It falls to Langdon and his
allies to locate and dispose of the weapon before it detonates.
Among the people helping Langdon is Father Patrick McKenna, played by Ewan McGregor,
the deceased pope's right-hand man. After coming across as a messianic figure throughout the movie,
Langdon discovers near the end that McKenna is responsible for the previous pope's death.
In 2010, Martin Scorsese delivered a mind-bending investigative thriller with "Shutter Island."
Set in the 1950s, the story takes place on a lonely island that houses an institution for
the mentally ill. Two U.S. marshals, Leonardo DiCaprio's Teddy and Mark Ruffalo's Chuck,
arrive at the island to investigate the disappearance of a woman. Teddy
suspects it's somehow connected to a missing patient named Andrew Laeddis.
As Teddy draws closer to the heart of the mystery surrounding the island and its inhabitants,
he comes to realize a shocking truth. His real name is Andrew Laeddis,
and "Teddy the U.S. marshal" was an identity he'd created to cope with the reality of having
murdered his wife after she killed their three children during a manic episode. Everything that
"Teddy" sees and does throughout the movie is his therapist's attempt to let him play
out a fantasy and then return to the real world after putting his delusions to rest.
In the movie "Orphan" Kate and John Coleman adopt a 9-year-old Russian girl named Esther
from a local orphanage. The arrangement seems to work out well for a time ... until Esther
starts showcasing violent behavior and an unusual degree of possessiveness towards John.
After a series of tragic events befall the family, all revolving around Esther,
Kate discovers the truth of the matter. Esther is in reality a 33-year-old woman
named Leena Klammer who suffers from a medical condition that stunts her physical growth and
keeps her looking unnaturally young. Meanwhile, Esther is plotting to get
Kate and her two other children out of the way so she can have John all to herself.
"The Invitation" follows Will, a man still struggling with grief after a terrible tragedy.
To make things more complicated, he's attending a dinner party being hosted by his ex-wife Eden
and her new partner, David, complete with friends he hasn't seen in years. Things are
awkward from the get-go, and a bigger wrench is thrown into the proceedings following the
revelation that certain members of the party are participants of a cult called "The Invitation."
It's later revealed that Eden and David are acting on orders from the cult and intend to
kill the other guests as a way to alleviate all their pain and grief and move on to the
next plane of existence. Not only does the plan work to a large extent, it's indicated at the end
that other members of the cult all over the city are carrying out similar plans on a massive scale.
The psychological horror film "Secret Window '' follows Johnny Depp as mystery writer Mort Rainey,
whose life is crumbling around him following a brutal divorce. Trying to
escape his personal pain, Mort holes himself away in a cabin for weeks to work in peace,
although he struggles to write. That's when a man named Shooter arrives to confront
Mort over claims that the author plagiarized Shooter's short story.
As everything falls into place in the film's finale, it's revealed that Mort suffers from a
mental disorder, and he created the alternate personality of "Shooter" as a way to cope. It
was always Mort's intention, acting as Shooter, to kill his ex-wife and her new
husband. He succeeds in doing so by the end of the film and happily goes back to work.
In "Primal Fear" Richard Gere plays Martin Vail, a hotshot defense attorney obsessed
with money and fame. However, Vail is attracted to the case of the murder of an archbishop,
with the chief suspect being 19-year-old altar boy Aaron Stampler, played by Edward
Norton. The court case becomes a matter of convincing the jury that meek little Aaron,
with his stutter and his violent split personality of "Roy," was
not in his right mind when he killed the archbishop, a man he loved and admired.
After a hard-fought battle, Vail wins his case and gets Aaron acquitted using the
insanity plea. In one of the most shocking twists in cinema history, Aaron reveals to
Vail at the end that he'd been acting the whole time. He had in fact been responsible
for killing the archbishop in cold blood, and "Roy" was his true personality the whole time.
"There never was an Aaron, counselor."
The original "Saw" in 2004 pretty much became the poster child for "hiding the killer in
plain sight." The breakout success of that film meant a sequel was released only a year later,
and the twist this time was…well, it used the same twist. In "Saw 2," a new batch of victims are
imprisoned by Jigsaw, including Amanda Young, a woman he'd captured once before. The group is then
made to solve a series of bloody and horrifying "escape rooms" with the promise of a painful
death if they fail to follow the instructions or try to cheat. You know the story by now.
After playing the game almost to the end, Detective Matthew's son, Daniel, appears
to be one of the last players standing. Daniel was targeted because Matthews was a corrupt cop,
who's ruined many lives by planting false evidence. This leads the detective to race
towards Daniel's location only to be captured, and it's revealed that Amanda has become an accomplice
of Jigsaw's.She'd been working alongside the killer the whole time, and in the end,
she leaves Matthews to die alone in a room while Jigsaw watches the whole thing with satisfaction.
In the film "Gothika," Halle Berry plays the role of Dr. Miranda Grey,
a psychiatrist who suffers a car crash one night. Waking up in the penitentiary where she works,
Miranda is shocked to find out that she's been charged with killing her husband,
although she can't recall the events of the day he died.
As Miranda travels deeper down the road to solving the mystery of her incarceration,
it's revealed that her late husband had been a serial killer. To make matters worse,
Miranda also realizes at the last moment that Sheriff Bob Ryan, who seemed to be helping
clear her name, was actually her late husband's accomplice who planned to kill her off as well.
The movie "Scream" follows Sidney Prescott,
who's friends are being targeted by the masked Ghostface killer who likes to
make taunting phone calls to his victims before attacking them in their most vulnerable moment.
As the plot unfolds, Sidney becomes convinced that her boyfriend, Billy,
is the killer. But getting him jailed still doesn't stop the killer from finding another
victim. Things come to a head during the third act of the movie when Billy's best friend,
Stu Macher, throws a party to celebrate the early closure of their school. Amidst
fresh murders at the party, Sidney finally learns that both Billy and
Stu took turns becoming Ghostface to avoid suspicion falling on either one of them.
One of Christopher Nolan's earlier films, "Memento," is one of the best thrillers
in Hollywood history. The film opens with Guy Pearce's Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from
anterograde amnesia, which means that he forgets new memories after 15 minutes. What caused the
amnesia? According to Leonard, two thugs broke into his home, assaulted him, and killed his
beloved wife. However, the cops don't believe there were two criminals involved in the crime.
So Leonard embarks on a solo crusade to bring the second thug to justice, whose name Leonard
believes to be "John G." After finally tracking down and killing the man he thinks to be John G,
Leonard learns the startling truth. He'd already killed the person he was after a year ago,
and he's been killing different men since then to keep up his confused crusade.
"Come on, you got your revenge. Enjoy it while you still remember."
The 1960 psychological horror thriller classic "Psycho" opens with a woman named Marion Crane
on the run from the law in connection with a crime. Looking for shelter for the night,
Marion stops at the nondescript Bates Motel run by a timid and nervy manager Norman Bates, a man
who resides in a house near the motel along with his angry, abusive mother. That night, Marion is
violently killed by a woman thought to be Norman's mom suffering from some sort of criminal mania.
Marion's disappearance at the motel attracts the attention of her sister, Lila, and local
authorities. Lila conducts her own search that yields the mummified corpse of Norman's mother.
It's then revealed that Norman had killed his mother many years ago and developed a split
personality that prompted him to dress up like her and kill any woman he became attracted to.
2003's neo-noir slasher "Identity" follows 10 random travelers that are drawn to a
deserted motel one night to escape a rainstorm. Over the night, one by one,
each of the travelers are killed off. Meanwhile, in a different location, Malcolm Rivers has been
accused of committing a mass murder, and the only way to get him acquitted is with the
help of a journal that may contain major clues regarding the truth about what really went down.
Amid a lot of twists and turns, it's revealed that all the characters at the motel are split
personalities belonging to Malcolm's fractured psyche. The purpose of imagining the motel is a
way to help Malcolm kill off one particular alternate personality, which is a murderous
psychopath. While Malcolm succeeds in killing off the personality he thinks is the killer,
it's eventually revealed that the real threat all along had been "Timmy," a
10-year-old personality that had actually been responsible for the carnage at the hotel.