15 Movies Like Knives Out If You Loved the Whodunit Twist

15 Movies Like Knives Out If You Loved the Whodunit Twist

Last updated: March 2026

Knives Out pulled off something that almost no mainstream film manages: it gave you the solution to the mystery in the first act, then found a completely different way to keep you on the edge of your seat for the next two hours.

Rian Johnson’s 2019 mystery-comedy works because it understands what makes a whodunit satisfying — and then flips the formula without losing what made it fun. The all-star ensemble, the crumbling estate, the eccentric detective with an inexplicable accent, the victim whose wealth made everyone a suspect. Knives Out had all of it, and then it had something extra: genuine wit and a story worth caring about.

If you’ve already watched Knives Out (and its sequel Glass Onion) and you’re looking for more, this list is organized by what made the original click for you.

1. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

The direct sequel is the obvious place to start, and it earns its place rather than coasting on the original’s reputation. Benoit Blanc goes to Greece. The setting is a tech billionaire’s private island. The mystery is structured differently — where Knives Out revealed early and redirected, Glass Onion hides and reveals with more traditional thriller mechanics. Daniel Craig is funnier here. The satirical target (Silicon Valley disruptor culture) is sharper. And Edward Norton hasn’t been this watchable in years.

Streaming: Netflix

2. Clue (1985)

The original murder-mystery-as-comedy, based on the board game, and still one of the funniest films in the genre. Tim Curry as Wadsworth the butler is a masterclass in controlled chaos. The gimmick — three alternate endings, one of which is the real one — works because the film’s energy is so anarchic that any ending feels earned. Watch this and Knives Out back-to-back and you’ll understand exactly what Johnson was drawing from.

Streaming: Paramount+, Pluto TV (free)

3. Gosford Park (2001)

Robert Altman’s ensemble murder mystery is what happens when a great director takes the Agatha Christie country house format seriously. The film splits attention between the aristocratic guests upstairs and the servants below — and the murder, when it comes, is almost secondary to the social satire. Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Emily Watson all vie for the same attention without anyone losing. If Knives Out scratched an itch for class dynamics done well, Gosford Park is the next level.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

4. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie adaptation is more straightforward than Knives Out — it’s not subverting the whodunit, it’s executing one as beautifully as possible. The all-star cast (Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe, and roughly a dozen others) has the same energy as the Thrombey family gathering. Branagh’s Poirot is a character study as much as a plot vehicle. The ending is genuinely surprising if you don’t know the Christie novel.

Streaming: Disney+

5. The Prestige (2006)

Christopher Nolan’s magician rivalry film is structured like a magic trick — it tells you it’s going to deceive you, then deceives you in ways you didn’t see coming. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as competing magicians in Victorian London, with Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, and David Bowie filling out one of the best casts Nolan ever assembled. If you love mysteries that use their structure as a weapon, The Prestige is essential. The trick isn’t the ending. The trick is the whole film.

Streaming: Netflix

6. Ready or Not (2019)

Same year as Knives Out, same setting (wealthy estate, extended family gathering), wildly different genre. Samara Weaving marries into a board game empire dynasty, and her new in-laws try to hunt her down. It’s horror-comedy rather than mystery-comedy, but the DNA overlap is substantial: an outsider protagonist, a family hiding secrets, and a script smart enough to know exactly how ridiculous its premise is. If you liked Marta’s navigation of the Thrombey family, you’ll like this.

Streaming: Hulu

7. Brick (2005)

Rian Johnson’s debut film is worth knowing if Knives Out made you a fan of his work. Brick transplants the hard-boiled detective noir into a contemporary California high school — complete with femme fatales, a criminal underground, and a protagonist whose dogged intelligence makes everyone underestimate him. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is remarkable. The dialogue is its own language. It’s the clearest proof that Johnson understood detective fiction as a genre before he decided to play with it in Knives Out.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

8. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Wes Anderson’s hotel mystery isn’t primarily a whodunit, but it shares Knives Out’s key quality: it’s a story about a complicated death, a disputed inheritance, and an outsider protagonist navigating a world of eccentric wealthy people. Ralph Fiennes as Gustave H is one of the great comic performances of the decade. The mystery plot is a frame for something more melancholy and beautiful. If you want the ensemble wit of Knives Out with more visual formalism and less genre mechanics, this is the film.

Streaming: Disney+

9. Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution (2016)

The BBC two-part adaptation of Christie’s celebrated courtroom drama is the best pure thriller on this list. A London barrister takes on a murder case that everyone tells him he can’t win. The twist, when it comes, is one of Christie’s most devastating — the kind where rewatching the film immediately becomes necessary. Toby Jones and Kim Cattrall are exceptional. This is Knives Out for viewers who want the mystery stripped of comedy and played completely straight.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

10. Knives Out (2019) — Re-watch with Director Commentary

If you haven’t watched it with the commentary track, Rian Johnson’s breakdown of the structural choices is itself a small film education. He explains exactly which classic mystery conventions he’s following, which he’s inverting, and why the Marta-as-detective inversion works ethically as well as narratively. Available on the physical media release.

11. Rian Johnson’s Brothers Bloom (2008)

Johnson’s second film is a con-artist movie — Knives Out without the murder and with more European travel. Adrian Brody and Mark Ruffalo as brothers whose final con involves Rinko Kikuchi’s eccentric heiress. The film is looser and more romantic than Knives Out, but it shares the same pleasure in intelligent characters doing something illegible to the people around them. Also: Rachel Weisz is spectacular.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

12. The Mousetrap (1974)

If Agatha Christie matters to you, the film adaptation of her longest-running play is the foundational text. A group of strangers are snowed in at a country inn when a murderer strikes. The theatrical origins show — this is essentially a filmed stage production — but the mechanics of its twist ending are so carefully constructed that the British theatrical community held a decades-long pact not to reveal the solution to prevent the play from losing ticket sales. That’s how good the mystery is.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

13. Death at a Funeral (2007)

British dark comedy about a funeral that goes catastrophically wrong. A relatively modest ensemble — a family gathering to inter their patriarch — that escalates into chaos when secrets emerge. Funnier than it has any right to be, with Frank Oz directing a script that finds the genuine menace inside polite British family dysfunction. The 2010 American remake with Chris Rock exists but watch the British original first.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

14. See How They Run (2022)

A 1950s West End murder mystery that’s also a meta-commentary on murder mysteries. When a Hollywood producer is killed during the production of an Agatha Christie adaptation, a harried inspector and an eager constable investigate. Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan are the detective duo. The film knows it’s a pastiche, winks about it constantly, and manages to be genuinely charming anyway. If you like your mysteries self-aware, this one knows exactly what it’s doing.

Streaming: Disney+, Hulu

15. And Then There Were None (2015)

The BBC adaptation of Christie’s most relentless murder mystery — ten strangers on a remote island, dying one by one, with no obvious murderer and no way out. It’s dark in ways that Knives Out carefully avoids being, but the structural brilliance is unmatched. Christie wrote the solution to her own puzzle as almost an act of aggression toward readers who thought they’d figured it out. Watch this and you’ll understand why Knives Out had to work so hard to subvert the genre: this is the genre at its absolute extreme.

Streaming: Available to rent/buy

FAQ

What should I watch after Knives Out and Glass Onion?
Start with See How They Run (2022) for something tonally similar — meta, self-aware, and genuinely funny. Then Gosford Park for ensemble country-house mysteries with more social commentary, and The Prestige if you want the structural trickery pushed to its limit.

Is there a Knives Out 3?
Rian Johnson confirmed a third Benoit Blanc mystery is in development at Netflix. No release date announced as of early 2026.

What makes Knives Out different from other whodunits?
The film reveals the “solution” to the mystery early and then complicates it. Most whodunits withhold information — Knives Out gives you more than you expect, then uses that surplus to generate a different kind of suspense. It’s structurally unusual even by genre standards.

Are there other Agatha Christie adaptations worth watching?
Yes — specifically the BBC adaptations. Witness for the Prosecution (2016), And Then There Were None (2015), and the Branagh-directed Death on the Nile (2022) are all worthwhile. The 1974 theatrical Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney remains the definitive film version.

If you liked this list, check out our guides to the best Korean horror movies for a completely different kind of suspense, our best thriller movies of all time for the broader genre landscape, and our best crime thriller movies for the sub-genre deep-dive.