Deciding on the best mystery movies of all time may be a mystery unto itself. Devotees of suspense, thrillers, whodunits, and horror films will no doubt have their own solutions to such a puzzle.
Stacker compiled data on all mystery movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. To qualify, the film had to be listed as a mystery on IMDb, have a Metascore, and have at least 2,500 votes. Ties were broken by Metascore, and further ties were broken by IMDb user rating. Every movie on the list has been considered according to the history and development of mystery films.
Some of the best are based on true crime, like “Zodiac,” about a killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and was never found. “Sicario” is based on the real-life U.S.-led war on drugs on the United States-Mexico border, and “Reversal of Fortune” draws from the story of Claus von Bulow, accused of…
