The newest movie in the Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man, starts streaming on Netflix on December 12 (and released in select theaters before that, although not in nearly enough). Wake Up Dead Men is the latest in a long line of Netflix movie mysteries designed to puzzle and perplex you before the final twist hits, and you leave shell-shocked and surprised. Maybe you can figure out the endings to some of these mysteries ahead of time, but it’ll be a challenge.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
The original return of Benoit Blanc
The Knives Out movies revolve around Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a Hercule Poirot-esque detective who travels the globe solving mysteries. The first movie is set at a country manor house owned by the patriarch of a wealthy family, who has just been murdered. The sequel, Glass Onion, was the first movie in the series to be made under the Netflix banner, and upped the scale considerably: it’s set on a private island owned by an Elon Musk-esque tech billionaire named Miles (Edward Norton) who invites all of his rich friends to participate in a murder mystery game. Obviously, the game turns real, and it’s up to Benoit Blanc to figure out what happened. If you want to prepare for Wake Up Dead Man, this is the obvious place to start.
The Knives Out movies are very traditional mysteries gussied up in 21st-century trappings. The idea of a large group of people, each with their own motive to kill, gathered in one location feels straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, but the references are up-to-the-minute. Glass Onion has a bigger cast and a more complicated plot than the first movie, so you’ll be kept guessing up to the final frame.
- Release Date
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November 27, 2019
- Runtime
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130 minutes
- Director
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Rian Johnson
- Writers
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Rian Johnson
- Sequel(s)
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
- Franchise(s)
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Knives Out
The Woman in the Window (2021)
Gone Girl meets Rear Window
Anchored by a great performance from Amy Adams, The Woman in the Window is a tightly plotted thriller that takes more than a few cues from Rear Window, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best movies. Like that movie, it’s about a person who’s trapped in their home and who thinks they have witnessed one of their neighbors get murdered. In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart is confined to his apartment because of a broken leg, while Amy Adams’ character Anna refuses to leave her home because of depression and agoraphobia. The Woman in the Window is a lot heavier than Rear Window, but just as exciting.
The complication in The Woman in the Window is that Anna has a history of delusional behavior, so neither she nor the people around her can fully trust her story. Is everything in Anna’s mind? If it isn’t, can she be sure that what she saw happen was what actually happened? And if it was, who did it? There are lots of layers to peel back before we get to the truth.
- Release Date
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October 25, 1944
- Runtime
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99 minutes
- Director
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Fritz Lang
- Writers
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Nunnally Johnson
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Edward G. Robinson
Professor Richard Wanley
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Raymond Massey
Dist. Attorney Frank Lalor
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Edmund Breon
Dr. Michael Barkstane
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Sherlock Holmes meets Edgar Allan Poe
We’re back to detective stories with The Pale Blue Eye, about a burnt-out detective named Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) who comes out of retirement to investigate the suspicious death of a West Point cadet. Landor enlists the help of a young Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling), of all people, to help him. More dead cadets pile up as they look into a sordid cult of black magic users who may be behind the killings.
That description kind of makes The Pale Blue Eye sound like a campy fantasy, but it plays things very straight, and the final twist is grounded and unexpected. Obviously, I won’t spoil it here, but The Pale Blue Eye almost breaks one of the cardinal rules of detective fiction in the end, but this period drama is so stylish that it gets away with it.
Watch The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix
Shimmer Lake (2017)
Memento meets The Office
Let’s lighten things up a bit with Shimmer Lake, a crime thriller that’s also a mystery that’s also a comedy. This movie has a lot of hooks, starting with the fact that it’s told in reverse chronological order, not unlike Christopher Nolan’s classic thriller Memento. Shimmer Lake begins with Sheriff Zeke Sikes (Benjamin Walker) investigating what looks like a bank robbery gone wrong. As we turn the clock back, we’ll eventually learn that everything we assumed to be true about those opening moments is wrong. To say any more would be to spoil things, and the movie is well-written enough for the specifics to be worth discovering for yourself.
Shimmer Lake takes itself seriously, but it also has a wry sense of humor that keeps things lively. The presence of Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) should tip you off that this isn’t a straightforward crime caper.
Watch Shimmer Lake on Netflix
The best binge-worthy thrillers on Netflix right now
Just one more episode, I promise.
The Wonder (2022)
I wonder how this girl is able to do that…
The Wonder is a well-made period drama with a juicy mystery at its center. Florence Pugh plays Lib Wright, an English nurse sent to investigate how a young Irish girl named Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy) could have gone four months without eating food. The mystery is whether Anna’s four-month fast is a holy miracle, as she claims, or if she and her family aren’t faking it somehow, as Lib suspects. In digging into it, the movie also raises questions about faith vs. science and examines the cultural wounds left by the Irish Potato Famine, which had wrapped up about 10 years before the film’s events.
So The Wonder has more on its mind than just mystery, but that’s the hook that will get people watching.
Watch The Wonder on Netflix
Netflix won’t stop making mystery movies anytime soon
The mystery genre has been incredibly kind to Netflix, resulting in lots of subscriptions and (when Netflix allows it) healthy returns at the box office. Wake Up Dead Man is the final Knives Out movie director Rian Johnson is contracted to make for Netflix, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix signs him up for more, in addition to continuing to crank out other films, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Not every mystery movie will have an ending that actually surprises you, but when Netflix makes this many, a few are bound to hit.
There are lots of great mystery-themed TV shows out there, too, some on Netflix and some elsewhere. What’s the best mystery movie out there? That’s one mystery we never want to solve for good.
