Best Mystery & Detective Movies of 2026, Ranked (So Far) — From The Rip to The Samurai and the Prisoner

FilmRated score 64 (Rotten Tomatoes 73%, Metacritic 55). A whodunit. Haifaa al-Mansour, whose Wadjda was the first feature directed by a Saudi woman, returns home with a murder mystery. Noelle, played by Mila Al Zahrani, is 29, newly divorced and obsessed with true-crime podcasts. She takes a job digitizing old files at a police station. When the body of a young woman is found in the desert, the officers need a woman present to investigate, and Noelle volunteers. Then she keeps going on her own.

The setting is the reason to watch. An amateur investigator who is allowed into the case only because of rules about who may be present with a female victim is a premise no American film could use, and it gives a familiar structure a different kind of tension. The scores are the lowest on this list, and they rest on few reviews, 37 on Rotten Tomatoes and 10 on Metacritic, so read them as an early indication. It is in Arabic with subtitles, rated PG-13 and runs about 100 minutes. Sony Pictures Classics opened it in limited release on June 19.

FilmRated score 70 (Rotten Tomatoes 77%, Metacritic 63). A police thriller. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play officers in a Miami-Dade narcotics unit who find millions of dollars in cash in a derelict stash house. Word of how much there is gets out, and the members of the team begin to wonder which of them is planning to take it. Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor and Kyle Chandler co-star. Joe Carnahan wrote and directed, and the story is inspired by a real Miami-Dade police captain, Chris Casiano.

The mystery here is not who committed a crime but who is about to, and for an hour that is enough. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus credits "Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's classic chemistry" and calls the film "compulsively watchable." The audience summary on the same page is blunter about the weakness: the "second half slips into gratuitous action." That matches the scores, which are solid and no more. It has been on Netflix since January 16, is rated R and runs 113 minutes, which makes it the easiest film on this list to watch tonight.

FilmRated score 71 (Rotten Tomatoes 78%, Metacritic 63). A small-town conspiracy with a body count. Bob Odenkirk plays Ulysses, an interim sheriff posted to the quiet town of Normal, Minnesota, to recover from trouble in his marriage and on the job. A botched bank robbery exposes a secret the whole town has been keeping, and he starts pulling at it. Henry Winkler and Lena Headey co-star. The script is by Derek Kolstad, who created John Wick and wrote Odenkirk's earlier action film Nobody, and the director is Ben Wheatley.

Be clear about what this is: an investigation for the first act and a shootout after that. The consensus on Rotten Tomatoes praises "Bob Odenkirk's gruff yet playful presence" and Wheatley's "over-the-top carnage," and concedes the "familiar premise." If you want clues and deduction, look higher on the list. If you liked Nobody, this is more of it with a better setting. It runs a tight 91 minutes, is rated R, and opened on April 17 through Magnolia Pictures.

FilmRated score 74 (Rotten Tomatoes 81%, Metacritic 67). A whodunit, and the closest thing here to a classic amateur-sleuth story. Jodie Foster, acting in French, plays Lilian Steiner, a well-known psychiatrist in Paris. When one of her patients dies, she becomes convinced it was murder and starts investigating herself. Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira and Mathieu Amalric co-star, and Rebecca Zlotowski directs.

The tone is lighter than the premise suggests. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus describes a mix of "Hitchcockian suspense, glossy aesthetics, and a playful streak of camp" and calls the result "an entertaining if somewhat slight mystery that's held together by Jodie Foster's captivating presence." Foster is the attraction, and "slight" is the consensus's own word for the plot. It premiered at Cannes in 2025 and opened in the U.S. on January 16 through Sony Pictures Classics. It is rated R and runs 103 minutes.

FilmRated score 78 (Rotten Tomatoes 88%, Metacritic 68). Detective against thief. A jewel thief, played by Chris Hemsworth, has pulled a string of robberies along the 101 freeway in Los Angeles without leaving the police anything to work with. One detective, played by Mark Ruffalo, is sure he has found the pattern. Halle Berry plays an insurance broker the thief needs for his biggest job, and Barry Keoghan co-stars. Bart Layton, who made American Animals, wrote and directed, from a novella by Don Winslow.

This is the big studio crime film of the year, and the one to pick if you miss Heat. The consensus says it "has studied the greats of L.A. Noir closely and shows its homework," which is praise with a caveat built in: it is skilled and not especially new. At 140 minutes it is also long. Audiences who saw it liked it, with an 83% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but not many did. It grossed $72.9 million worldwide against a $90 million budget. Amazon MGM opened it on February 13; it is rated R.

FilmRated score 79 (Rotten Tomatoes 91%, Metacritic 67). True crime, told from inside the crime. On February 8, 1977, in Indianapolis, a man named Tony Kiritsis, who believed his mortgage company had cheated him, took one of its executives hostage with a sawed-off shotgun wired to the man's neck, so that it would go off if the hostage tried to escape or the police shot his captor. Gus Van Sant's film follows the standoff that came next. Bill Skarsgård plays Kiritsis and Dacre Montgomery the hostage, with Colman Domingo and Al Pacino in support.

There is no puzzle to solve, since the film shows who did it from the start. The suspense is in how it will end, and in the uneasy sympathy the film has for a man with a real grievance. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it "brilliantly offbeat and tinged with a darkly humorous edge" and singles out "Bill Skarsgård's fearless performance." The 24-point gap between its two scores says critics liked it more often than they loved it. It opened on January 9, is rated R and runs 106 minutes.

FilmRated score 83 (Rotten Tomatoes 90%, Metacritic 75). Lovers on the run. Samara Weaving plays Caroline Daniels, who wants out of her small West Texas town badly enough to leave with a con man, played by Kyle Gallner. Their confidence tricks across the American South grow into bank robberies, and she becomes the notorious one. Kyra Sedgwick co-stars. Adam Carter Rehmeier, who made Dinner in America, directs.

This is the entry furthest from a detective story, and we include it because the genre has always had room for Bonnie and Clyde. The consensus calls it "a classic crime formula" given "an invigorating shot of adrenaline," and praises the leads' chemistry. Its Metascore comes from only 15 reviews, so the ranking is less settled than the number looks. It had a small release through Magnolia Pictures on June 5 and has been available to stream since June 23. It runs 106 minutes.

FilmRated score 84 (Rotten Tomatoes 95%, Metacritic 72). A whodunit, for all ages. George, a shepherd played by Hugh Jackman, reads detective novels to his flock every night. When he is found dead, the sheep, who were paying attention, decide to solve the murder themselves, and begin investigating the humans around the farm. Craig Mazin, the writer of Chernobyl, adapted Leonie Swann's novel Three Bags Full. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston and Patrick Stewart voice members of the flock.

It would be easy to dismiss as a children's film, and that would be a mistake. It is built as a proper mystery, with suspects, clues and a solution, and the audience summary on Rotten Tomatoes calls it "a splendid whodunnit." The critics consensus adds that it "bundles disarmingly profound themes in a cozy package." Its audience score of 96% is the highest of any film here. It is rated PG, runs 109 minutes, and grossed $133 million on a $75 million budget. It also places fourth in our ranking of the year's best comedies.

FilmRated score 85 (Rotten Tomatoes 94%, Metacritic 75). A caper. Niki, played by Leo Woodall, is a piano tuner in New York with hyperacusis, a condition that makes his hearing painfully acute. His own career as a musician is over. His hearing also means he can listen to the mechanism of a safe. When his mentor, played by Dustin Hoffman, runs up medical debts, Niki starts opening safes for people he should not be working for. Havana Rose Liu plays a composition student he grows close to.

Daniel Roher won an Academy Award for the documentary Navalny, and this is his first fiction feature. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says it "enhances its nifty caper setup with a smart sense of humor and vivid characterizations" and announces Woodall "as a compelling star talent." Critics and audiences match exactly, at 94% each, which is rare. It is the most purely enjoyable film on this list and a modest hit, with $14.5 million from a $7 million budget. Black Bear opened it on May 22. It is rated R and runs 107 minutes.

FilmRated score 91 (Rotten Tomatoes 97%, Metacritic 84). A whodunit, and the best film of any kind on this list by six points. In 1579 the lord Araki Murashige has rebelled against the warlord Oda Nobunaga and is under siege in Arioka Castle. Inside the walls, a series of crimes that no one can explain begins to break his court apart. To solve them, he goes down to the dungeon and consults a man he has imprisoned there: Kuroda Kanbei, a brilliant and dangerous strategist with no reason to help him.

The lord and the prisoner are real historical figures, and the film is adapted from Honobu Yonezawa's novel. The director is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, best known abroad for the thriller Cure. The structure is close to a locked-room mystery: crimes in the castle above, and conversations in the dungeon below. Masahiro Motoki plays Murashige and Masaki Suda plays Kanbei. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it "an elegant mystery" made "with an intelligence as sharp as a katana's edge."

Two cautions. It runs 147 minutes and is in Japanese with subtitles, and it is a mystery first and a samurai film second. It also had a limited U.S. release, through Janus Films from July 31 after a premiere at Cannes in May, so you may have to look for it. It is worth the effort. No other mystery this year is close to it on either score.

Put side by side, the ten show how the genre has changed. The traditional detective film, with a professional investigator and a puzzle, is almost absent: the sleuths in the four true whodunits are a psychiatrist, an office clerk, a feudal lord and a flock of sheep. The top of the list is also notably international. The best-reviewed film is Japanese, and two more of the ten are in French and Arabic. And the money went elsewhere. The one expensive studio production, Crime 101, lost money in theaters, while Tuner, made for $7 million, doubled its budget.

Some notable titles are missing for a reason. Wake Up Dead Man, the third Knives Out film, and Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice both opened in the U.S. in late 2025 and belong to last year. The Weight, with Ethan Hawke, scores 82 on our math but is a survival thriller with no mystery to it, and the prison drama Wasteman, at 88, is not a crime story in this sense. Mercy, in which Chris Pratt plays a detective on trial before an AI judge, sits at 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Verity, which we reviewed when it opened on October 2, was at 34% at the time.

Which should you watch first? For a real puzzle, The Samurai and the Prisoner, or A Private Life if you want something lighter. With the family, The Sheep Detectives. For a fun night, Tuner. For stars and a big screen, Crime 101. And if you only want to press play on something tonight, The Rip is on Netflix. We will update this ranking in December, when the year's last releases have been reviewed.