10 Best Whodunit Films From Unusual Genres

5. The Wailing (Supernatural Horror)

In a remote village in the mountains of South Korea a bumbling local detective Jong-goo has to solve a series of murders that are brought on by villagers becoming ill and then murdering their entire families. His best suspect is a mysterious Japanese man who just moved to town, and Jong-goo has to solve the mystery as his own daughter begins exhibiting the same symptoms as those other villagers who previously went mad.

Writer-director Na Hong-jin’s 2016 South Korean film was released to critical acclaim. What starts out to be a whodunit quickly runs off the rails serving up multiple courses of red herring for the detective who is in over his head. Toss in some religious mysticism and Korean lore and you’ve got not only a real cooker of a suspense story, but also a horror film that will mess with your mind.

The film blew critics away at Sundance, many of whom saw it as an act-topping to Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil (2010). As one critic put it, The Wailing has “a sense that absolutely anything can happen next (and always does).”