Entertainment
The 6 Best Mystery Movies of the Last 6 Years, Ranked
There’s nothing quite like a great mystery film. Pretty much any and all movies revolve around not knowing what’s going to happen next, but history’s best mystery movies take that concept to a whole other level, telling stories that revolve entirely around a central enigma that the main characters must proceed to investigate and solve. It’s tough to truly nail the mystery genre, but over the course of the last six years, there have been six particular mystery movie masterpieces which have proven to perfectly understand everything that makes fans of the genre click.
Whether it’s a family detective movie like The Sheep Detectives or an award-winning thriller like It Was Just An Accident, the best mystery films that the big screen has seen since 2020 are all bound to go down in history as some of the best movies of the decade by the time 2030 rolls in. What’s even better is that, as delectably diverse as the mystery genre can be, these six masterpieces offer something for virtually everyone. Some of them are intense, others are funny, others take themselves entirely seriously, and others are willing to have some silly fun with their central mystery. Regardless, they’re all masterfully suspenseful and all-around essential viewing for fans of the genre.
6
‘The Sheep Detectives’ (2026)
Leonie Swann‘s German mystery novel Three Bags Full is one of the most inventive and freshly original detective stories that literature has ever seen, if only because its main detectives aren’t humans at all, but rather a group of sheep. It’s an idea that lent itself flawlessly to a family-friendly cinematic adaptation, but even then, the trailers for Kyle Balda‘s The Sheep Detectives made it seem like little more than a silly romp. In the end, not only did the movie end up being one of the biggest surprise hits of 2026 so far, but genuinely one of the best mystery flicks the world has seen since the 2020s rolled in.
Just like its trailers showed, The Sheep Detectives knows precisely when to have some goofy fun with its premise, offering plenty of elaborate gags and delightfully effective family-friendly humor. When things get more serious, however, they get surprisingly serious, with the movie being one of the most unexpected tear-jerkers of the last six years. It’s a beautiful, life-affirming ensemble piece about the importance of grief and mortality for the human condition, a movie so wonderfully mature and complex that it can easily be counted among the best family movies of the last 10 years.
5
‘The Batman’ (2022)
With The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan completely changed the game, both when it came to Batman movies and to superhero and comic book cinema as a whole. And if there’s any film worthy of competing with it for the title of best Batman film to date, it’s undoubtedly Christopher Reeves‘ The Batman, one of the best thriller movies of the last five years. Yes, it’s primarily a superhero action flick, but its status as a true detective mystery movie is undeniable—and it’s one of the best that we have seen over the course of the 2020s, at that.
With an absolutely perfect Robert Pattinson in the lead role and some of the strongest production values the superhero movie genre has seen in years, The Batman only continues to get better as the years pass. Its many action sequences are absolutely enrapturing, and its take on the Batman mythos and the character himself is as unique as it is riveting; but the best part is that it mainly succeeds as a nail-biting mystery movie. Never before had the big screen seen the Caped Crusader engaging in true detective work this intensely, and the result is one of the most deliriously entertaining blockbusters that the world has seen throughout the last six years.
4
‘Decision to Leave’ (2022)
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Few countries produce mystery thrillers quite as engrossing as those produced in South Korea, and few South Korean filmmakers have ever produced more consistently phenomenal work than Park Chan-wook. One of the hyper-acclaimed auteur’s latest is Decision to Leave, a neo-noir romantic mystery where a married detective takes on a murder investigation that leads him to slowly develop feelings for the murdered man’s wife. The absolute masterpiece that ensues takes full advantage of every second of its nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
Indeed, Decision to Leave is one of the best neo-noir mystery movies of all time, a testament to everything that defines Park as a universally lauded director. The film wears its Alfred Hitchcock influences on its sleeve (Vertigo being an abundantly clear point of comparison), but feels like an entirely unique subversion of usual romance thriller and mystery thriller tropes nonetheless. It’s intelligent, psychologically complex, visually gorgeous, perfectly acted, and all around just another piece of evidence that Park Chan-wook is one of the greatest mystery filmmakers currently working.
3
‘Monster’ (2023)
Another exceptional auteur who has altogether re-defined Asian cinema as a whole over the course of the 21st century is Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose coming-of-age psychological drama and mystery thriller Monster is the only mystery movie from the 2020s on Letterboxd’s Top 500 highest-rated movies for a reason. All in all, it’s one of the only true thriller masterpieces from the 2020s, the sort that only a master like Kore-eda could have possibly crafted.
Structured much like Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, it’s a cinematic study of truth itself.
Absolutely perfect for those who love mystery movies that are as twisty as possible, Monster toys around with and cleverly subverts audience expectations in order to deliver a story all about the toxicity of prejudice and judgments. Structured much like Akira Kurosawa‘s Rashomon, it’s a cinematic study of truth itself, and though that may sound like an idea too ambitious for any director to execute satisfyingly, Kore-eda is no normal director. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, this absolutely timeless masterpiece is not only one of the most thematically complex mystery movies of the last six years, but downright one of the best movies of the 2020s in general, regardless of genre.
2
‘It Was Just An Accident’ (2025)
Powerhouse films delivered by powerhouse Asian filmmakers have been in no kind of short supply over the course of the last six years, as proven by the Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident by Jafar Panahi, one of the greatest Iranian filmmakers in history. Panahi, since he was under an official government filmmaking ban, produced the movie in secret using a real shoestring budget and completely bare-bones filmmaking techniques. It’s a cinematic miracle delivered to humanity straight from the movie gods that the result actually came to see the light of day, because this is truly one of the most stunning artistic achievements that cinema has delivered in decades.
Starting with an instantly engrossing hook and leading all the way to one of the most perfect final movie shots of the 21st century, It Was Just An Accident is a revenge mystery thriller and moral drama all about the devastating psychological toll of the trauma and endless cycle of violence generated by authoritarianism. Despite being full of gorgeous visuals and perfect performances that would have never had you believe this was a low-budget production, It Was Just An Accident‘s low-key nature allows the riveting narrative and its thematic meditations to lead the way.
1
‘Anatomy of a Fall’ (2023)
Winner of the 2023 Palme d’Or, Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fall is nothing short of one of the best legal thrillers of all time. Far from just being any ol’ legal thriller, though, this enrapturing mystery drama is also about the elusiveness of objective truth, exploring the theme that has always fascinated the legal drama movie genre: How does people’s subjective perception shape reality itself? Brilliantly metatextual and impeccably written (which earned the movie a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award), it’s one of the best international movies of the 2020s so far.
If you’re a mystery movie fan, what’s not to love about Anatomy of a Fall? Its cast is absolutely phenomenal, Sandra Hüller in particular delivering what’s perhaps the best performance the genre has seen this decade; Triet’s direction is perfectly paced and visually stunning; and the ambiguity of the narrative keeps the film consistently nail-bitingly suspenseful from start to finish. For anyone who loves this genre, Anatomy of a Fall should be considered essential viewing.
Anatomy of a Fall
- Release Date
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May 22, 2023
- Runtime
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151 Minutes
- Director
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Justine Triet
- Writers
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Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
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