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- Identity
- Sony Pictures Releasing
The horror genre can encompass however many subgenres you can throw at it. Scary movies, specifically slasher films, are uniquely suited to telling whodunit stories that are as bloody as they are mysterious. Thanks to various horror booms in the '80s, '90s and 2010s, there's a glut of slasher whodunits out there, making it hard to figure out which movies are actually worth your time.
The following films are some of the most underrated whodunits in the horror genre, and it's up to you to let us know which of them is the best based on their twists. Each of these horror movies takes a different approach to their inherent mysteries - some of them are straightforward, others require the audience to pay close attention to guess the killer, and still others have twists that just can't be guessed.
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Identity has a star-studded cast featuring John Cusack, Ray Liotta, and Rebecca De Mornay as strangers stuck in a motel during a rainstorm. Aside from those three, we've got a former cop, a waitress, a sex worker, newlyweds, a young boy, and a murderer.
As members of this motley crew are taken out one by one, all suspicions are placed on Robert Maine, the convicted serial killer, but as this is based on an Agatha Christie novel, the audience knows it can't be that easy.
Things get weird as the numbers dwindle and bodies start disappearing. Finally, the former police officer realizes that one of the surviving members of his crew is actually the killer, and the two men shoot one another. And then? The movie jumps over to a mental institution, where it's revealed that the entire murder mystery took place inside a serial killer's mind.
Spooky surprise?There's something supremely weird about Sleepaway Camp that differentiates it from the rest of the Friday the 13th copycats released in the '80s. It's not just the bonkers twist or the unhinged performances - it's the film's entire being.
In the movie's opening scene, a dad and his two kids (Peter and Angela) are in a speedboat accident. Only one of the children survives. Eight years later, Angela now lives with her aunt, who drops her and her cousin off at Camp Arawak for a few weeks of fun and sun - and that's when the bodies start piling up.
Where most whodunits have red herrings, Sleepaway Camp has a dead giveaway as to the killer's identity. Every time the movie cuts to the killer's POV, it's from a low angle looking up at the victims. There's no way the killer is anyone but Angela, but that's not really the twist.
The actual out-of-nowhere twist in Sleepaway Camp occurs in the movie's final frames: After Angela cuts the head off her final victim, Paul, the film cuts to her, completely nude, revealing that she has biologically male anatomy - meaning Angela was actually Peter when she survived the opening scene's accident. Even if you've already seen the movie, the ending remains shocking.
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When Tree Gelbman wakes up hungover on her birthday, the last thing she expects is to be murdered. Over the course of at least 10 days, Tree is killed in various ways by an assailant wearing the mask of her school mascot. Each traumatic death brings her closer to discovering the killer's identity, but not until she starts paying attention to the little things does she uncover exactly who her assailant is.
Tree realizes that Lori, one of her sorority sisters, is her killer after Lori offers her a cupcake in her final loop. She concludes that the cupcake is poisoned since she died in her sleep during a previous loop, and she then uses the same cupcake to take out her frenemy - well, she tries the cupcake, then throws Lori out a window.
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There's nothing scarier than meeting the in-laws, especially when there's a killer on the loose. Things get underway pretty much immediately after Erin and her boyfriend, Crispin, arrive at his family's Missouri vacation home.
Joining them are Crispin's wealthy parents, his brothers, sister, and their respective partners. If that sounds like a lot of cast members, don't worry - as the family sits down to dinner, arrows fly through the windows and take out ancillary characters.
Animal mask-wearing killers make their way into the home, which initially makes the family seem completely innocent; however, it quickly becomes apparent that the killers were hired by Crispin, his brother Felix, and Felix's partner, Zee. This reveal sets up a brutal and bloody finale that audiences will never forget.
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Urban Legend is one of a glut of slashers that takes its cues from Scream, but this movie elevates a simple premise to pure camp by its whacky finale. When a killer begins stalking Pendleton University, they use a series of urban legends as their M.O. A young woman is hacked to death when she fails to check the backseat of her car, and another victim chugs Pop Rocks and soda before succumbing to a fizzy end.
Thanks to the Scream of it all, every character in Urban Legend is a red herring, from the freaky goth roommate to overly critical journalism student Paul. However, the real killer - best friend Brenda - waits until the rain-soaked finale to reveal the truth: She's taking out her classmates because her fiancé was killed when - prior to the events of the film - the final girl was driving with her headlights off to carry out the classic “gang initiation” urban legend.
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6Devil
Devil is the one movie that dares to ask the question: What if there was a devil? When five people are stuck in an elevator - a security guard, a mechanic, a salesman, a pretty woman, and an older woman - they're offed one by one by the devil himself with no one to help them.
At a smooth 80 minutes, Devil never outstays its welcome, even if it's pretty obvious that the little old lady is the devil in disguise. The film attempts to paint Tony, the mechanic, as the demonic presence in the film, but there's so much focus on him that there's just no way he's killing people in an elevator.
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It's the early 2000s at UCLA, and a group of young women are being stalked by a killer wearing a Cupid mask. The film points its finger directly at Jeremy Melton, a junior high student in 1988 who faced horrible repercussions after a false sexual assault claim placed him in a mental institution.
As the Cupid-faced killer takes out college girls left and right, the only real clue as to who's behind the mask is their uncontrollable nose bleeds. The girls, their friends, and journalist Adam Carr try to track down the killer, but that's easier said than done.
When the film comes to an end, it looks as though the whole thing was rich girl Dorothy's plot from the beginning, but in a nose-bleeding final twist, it's revealed that journalist Adam Carr is actually Jeremy Melton, who's looking to ruin Dorothy's life.
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In the small Canadian mining town of Valentine Bluffs, a madman is on the loose, and it's all because the mayor decided to reinstate the Valentine's Day dance 20 years after a local tragedy. In 1961, a mine explosion killed a group of workers, and only Harry Warden survived. By "survived," we mean he became a cannibal and cut out the hearts of his former supervisors before placing them in candy heart boxes.
He threatened to do even more damage if the dances continued, which is why it's a big deal that they're back in swing two decades later. As bodies (and hearts) pile up, no one is sure if Warden is back to deliver on his promise or if there's a copycat in their midst.
It turns out that while Warden isn't back, the killer picking up where he left off watched Warden murder his father 20 years prior. If only Valentine Bluffs would have kept their dances on ice, none of this would have happened.
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Black Christmas is ground zero for the slasher boom of the 1970s. Its moody visuals, unique performances, brutal kills, and engrossing mystery make this a film that's often imitated but never replicated. Taking place during Christmas break in a sorority house, each of the sisters is taken out in increasingly gruesome ways while the killer calls in to taunt the survivors.
Once the police get involved, they reveal that the calls are coming from inside the house. Even with that information, the real killer (a complete rando named Billy) survives the film, and the audience never learns why he's offing sorority sisters - which is exactly why it's so scary.
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April Fool's Day is a wild ride of a whodunit. The film takes place over the weekend leading up to April Fool's Day (everyone's favorite government holiday) and follows a group of college friends as they party at the mansion of Muffy St. John.
Here's the rub: Muffy's criminally insane twin, Buffy, is running around the mansion killing students and leaving whoopee cushions on seats. It's madness - or is it?
Shortly after final girl Kit finds herself on the business end of Buffy's curved butcher knife, the film reveals there was never a Buffy, and the entire evening of bloody murder has all been a goof.
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11What is it with elite prep school students playing mysterious games of death? In Cry Wolf, a group of well-to-do students creates a fake email chain about a serial killer wearing an orange mask who goes from school to school offing students.
As the email spreads across campus, a seemingly real "Wolf" begins stalking the students who created the original email. The students disappear one by one, leaving behind little besides blood and various piercings. As the cast dwindles, the focus is left on Owen, a young man having trouble keeping his grades up; Dodger, a girl who's having fun with the whole "Cry Wolf" thing; and one of their professors.
When Owen finds an orange mask in the professor's belongings, he takes the professor out, but it's only when blood is spilled that the students reveal the whole thing was a big prank. There was no Wolf, at least not until Owen hauled off and popped a cap in his teacher.
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Another elite prep school, another whodunit where the blood flows nonstop. Happy Birthday to Me concerns the deaths of the "Top Ten," a clique of well-off students who have clearly made some enemies during their time in school. Is it someone that the group burned? Or is the killer within their ranks?
Our final girl, Ginny, believes that she's killing her friends during psychosis-induced blackouts, but the real killer is none other than her friend Ann, who's gone so far as to wear a mask that looks like Ginny when she goes into berserker mode.
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Things are a little different in Cherry Falls, VA. A killer is carving their way through the town, targeting virgins in particular, leading high school students to hook up at alarming rates. It's believed that the killer is the notorious "Lora Lee Sherman," a lonely high school student who disappeared after multiple athletes sexually assaulted her.
As students continue to hook up en masse, the local sheriff and teacher Leonard Marliston attempt to get to the bottom of the crimes. Well, at least the sheriff is trying to solve the crimes, because Marliston is the one who's been offing his students. After kidnapping the sheriff and his daughter, Marliston explains that he's Sherman's son, and she gave birth to him after the horrendous assault.
Even though Cherry Falls is just one of the many Scream-influenced horror films of the early 2000s, it's a really interesting slasher that completely flips the perceived rules of the genre on their head.
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Based on the multiplayer VR game about a small town being ravaged by a werewolf, the film moves the action to Beaverfield, a town where a proposed pipeline is pitting neighbor against neighbor and where a werewolf seems to be ripping people apart.
When new forest ranger Finn Wheeler arrives in Beaverfield, he not only has to stop the townspeople from fighting one another, but he also has to figure out if there's a werewolf responsible for the gruesome deaths that just won't stop. Werewolves Within does an amazing job balancing the mystery of whether or not the hidden killer is an actual werewolf with a well-earned handful of red herrings.
There's bubbly mail person Cecily, angry isolationist Emerson Flint, anti-pipeline environmentalist Dr. Ellis, wine drunk Trisha, and wealthy couple Devon and Joaquim Wolfson; out of all those suspects, things finally come to a head when Cecily reveals she's a werewolf who wanted to keep Beaverfield's residents at each other's necks to make feeding easier.
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There's Someone Inside Your House is an incredibly intense horror whodunit that not only introduces one of the coolest killer masks ever but also has some really inspired deaths. Seriously, an entire football team is set on fire inside a corn maze, and a teen has their mouth filled with fentanyl pills before their throat is slit. It's a wild ride.
In this film, the killer's M.O. is taking out students who have secrets to hide, like secret drug addictions, hazing their fellow students who are gay, or pushing another student into a large fire. The large cast of characters leads to plenty of red herrings, but final girl Makani focuses on her ex-boyfriend Ollie because, well, he's her ex, and she finds the taser used to assault someone in the trunk of his car.
Of course, Ollie is not the killer. The real killer is Zach Sanford, a rich teen who believes he's been bullied for being privileged. That checks out.
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From the guys who brought you Super Troopers comes a pretty intense whodunit that follows the staff at a resort in Costa Rica where a slasher is on the loose. The murders are happening at a thinly veiled version of Margaritaville, complete with an aging rock star named "Coconut Pete."
It quickly becomes clear that staff members are the only people being targeted at the resort, which leads the ragtag crew to investigate the crimes while watching their backs. Everyone in this movie is a red herring, from Lars the pacifist masseuse, to the former FBI agent who now works as a bodyguard, to Coconut Pete himself.
The crew investigates the resort's guests, but the killer turns out to be a member of the core crew when Machete Sam (AKA the resort's activities manager) finally reveals himself to be the killer because he wants to take control of the island so he can make it profitable. The reveal comes as a surprise, but anyone who's paying attention should be able to figure out that the character nicknamed "The Fun Police" is the machete-wielding killer at the heart of the film.
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It's graduation day at a small high school in Southern California and, uh-oh, someone is offing students one by one. Could it be Laura, the school's track star who may or may not have died during a track meet? Is it Laura's coach, who pushed her too hard? How about Kevin, Laura's ex-boyfriend who's very sad? Or is it one of her many friends who've been driven to madness by her premature death?
Student bodies fly in a series of fun and exciting ways (Spikes on a pole vault mat! Decapitations! Locker suffocation!), but the really cool thing that this movie does is show exactly who the killer is through some clever production design. Around the end of the second act, a photo of the track team is shown with everyone's face crossed out except for Kevin's.
That photo could be both a clue and a red herring, which is why it's such a great piece of filmmaking. Eventually, Kevin reveals himself as not only the killer but also as a true maniac who's keeping Laura's corpse in his bedroom. It's a real chef's kiss of a finale.
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Maggie Butler is a simple college student who just wants to help her classmates pull off an all-night horror movie marathon to raise funds for the film department. Besides that, she'd also like the menacing phone calls to her house to stop.
One of the films that the students decide not to show is Possessor, filmed by a man named Lanyard Gates who killed his entire family while shooting the movie's final scene before burning down a theater. As the marathon gets underway, film students are taken out in rapid succession, and while all signs point to Gates as the killer, the truth isn't so cut and dry.
It turns out that one of Maggie's classmates, Toby, is actually behind the killings. He was only a child when Gates filmed Possessor, but he was in the theater when it was set on fire, and now he wants revenge for being horrifically scarred.
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Can you imagine a worse place for a serial killer to ply their trade than a camp for cheerleaders? The cast of characters is pretty straightforward: You've got a bunch of type-A cheerleaders, a couple of boyfriends, and Cory, a girl who wants to be a cheerleader but can't because she's saddled with being a mascot.
Initially, the girls are offed in ways that makes it look like they did the job themselves, but by the time of the big competition, it's clear that someone is after them. The film's climax sees sweetheart Allison shoot her boyfriend Brent before she's taken away by the police.
Audience members paying attention will note that every time Cory the mascot disappears with someone, they end up dead, something that works out for her because, with no one in her way, she's able to take on the spot as head cheerleader of this suddenly under-attended camp.
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20One of the few slashers to take place in a grocery store, Intruder is an intense whodunit that follows night-shift workers who are being picked off one by one. A red herring is set up early on when a cashier's ex-boyfriend is kicked out of the store for starting a fight.
The ex-boyfriend, Craig, spends much of the movie skulking around outside the store and making angry phone calls to the cashier, but the real terror is coming from inside: The real killer is a floor worker named Bill who never really gives a reason for his killing spree. It's not even obvious that Bill is the killer until he's caught literally red-handed after a cashier sees blood all over his hands.
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21This Canadian whodunit proposes that the most frightening place to be is a director's mansion while he's auditioning actresses. Patti the comedian, Lauren the dancer, Christi the ice skater, and three other actresses audition for a gangbusters part in Audra as they're picked off one by one.
It should be easy to figure out which one of these gals is wearing the creepy old lady mask, but it's not that kind of slasher. As the character count dwindles down to two, things finally come to a head when Patti just straight-up admits that she killed all of the women to get the part in Audra. Then she stabs the sole survivor while she drinks champagne.
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