The films closest to Knives Out are Glass Onion, Wake Up Dead Man, Sleuth, The Last of Sheila, Murder on the Orient Express, The Thin Man, Gosford Park, Clue, See How They Run, Brick, The Nice Guys and Bodies Bodies Bodies. Knives Out worked because it took the whodunit seriously and itself lightly. Rian Johnson built a mystery that plays fair, where every clue is on screen and the solution is earned, and then filled the house with actors who understood the assignment: a Southern-fried detective who loves his job, a family of monsters in cable knit, and a nurse who cannot lie without vomiting. The films below share some part of that recipe. A few are the ones Johnson was openly imitating. A few came after and learned from him. All of them are a better night than another search through the thriller row.
If you would rather watch a mystery unfold over several hours, the best limited series to binge has the long-form version. They are grouped by what they have in common with Knives Out, so you can pick by the part you liked most: the detective, the tradition, the ensemble, or the wit.
What did Knives Out get right?
Two things most modern mysteries get wrong. First, it tells you who did it halfway through, then makes the second half about whether she will get away with it, which turns the audience from spectators into accomplices. Second, it is generous: to the genre, to the actors, to the audience. Nobody is being smug about the whodunit's conventions. Benoit Blanc believes in the donut hole, and so does the film. Look for that generosity in everything below.
More Benoit Blanc
Glass Onion (2022)
A tech billionaire invites his old friends to a private Greek island for a murder-mystery weekend, and Benoit Blanc turns up uninvited. Glass Onion is bigger and brighter than the first film, a satire of the very rich told as a puzzle about a puzzle, and it uses the same trick of rewinding the story halfway through to show you what you missed. Janelle Monáe carries the second half. It is the loudest film on this list and the most purely entertaining.
Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
The third Blanc mystery trades the sunlit island for a church and a priest, played by Josh O'Connor, whose faith is put on trial alongside the case. It is the darkest of the three, closer in mood to the gothic mysteries the genre came from, and the most interested in why people confess. If Knives Out was about a will and Glass Onion about a billionaire, this one is about belief. Blanc is still Blanc, which is to say the best company in modern movies.
The classics Rian Johnson borrowed from
Sleuth (1972)
Two men, one country house, one very long game. Laurence Olivier plays a crime novelist who invites his wife's lover, Michael Caine, to his manor and proposes a scheme. What follows is the purest cat-and-mouse film ever made, a two-hander in which every scene reverses the last, and Johnson has pointed to it as a direct model for the Thrombey house. The 2007 remake is fine; the 1972 original is the one.
The Last of Sheila (1973)
A film producer invites six Hollywood friends onto his yacht for a week of party games, each built around a secret one of them is keeping, a year after his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, who used to stage real puzzle hunts for their friends, it is the film Johnson most often names as the source of Knives Out's spirit: cruel, clever, and delighted with itself. Hard to find for years, it is now the easiest recommendation here.
Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Sidney Lumet's version, with Albert Finney as Poirot and a train carriage full of movie stars, remains the definitive Agatha Christie adaptation. It is a film about the pleasure of interrogation: each suspect gets a scene, each scene is a small performance, and the solution, which everyone knows by now, still lands because of how the film arrives at it. The 2017 remake is handsome and hollow. Start with this one.
The Thin Man (1934)
Nick and Nora Charles, a retired detective and his heiress wife, solve a murder between cocktails. The Thin Man is the reason a mystery can be a comedy: William Powell and Myrna Loy have the best married chemistry in film history, the dialogue is faster than anything made since, and the case, when it finally gets solved at a dinner party, is almost beside the point. It is ninety minutes and eighty years ahead of its time.
Keep the whole list
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The country-house ensemble
Gosford Park (2001)
Robert Altman's take on the Agatha Christie weekend, written by Julian Fellowes before Downton Abbey, with a house party of English aristocrats upstairs and their servants below, and a murder somewhere in between. The mystery is real but the film cares more about class, gossip and the sound of thirty people talking at once. It is the film Knives Out's Thrombey family are descended from, and Maggie Smith gets the best lines.
Clue (1985)
The board game, as a farce, with Tim Curry as the butler and three different endings that were shown at different cinemas on release. Clue flopped in 1985 and has been beloved ever since, because it understands that the whodunit is at heart a party game. It is the silliest film here and one of the most quotable, and the pace of its final ten minutes has never been matched by a comedy since.
See How They Run (2022)
London, 1953. A film producer planning to adapt The Mousetrap is murdered backstage, and a weary inspector, Sam Rockwell, and an eager constable, Saoirse Ronan, are sent to sort it out. See How They Run is a whodunit about whodunits, forever winking at the conventions it uses, and it works because Ronan is so funny that the winking feels like affection. Ninety-eight minutes, a perfect length for the genre.
The same wit, a different mystery
Brick (2005)
Rian Johnson's first film and a genuine hidden gem, made for almost nothing: a hard-boiled detective story transplanted, dialogue and all, into a Southern California high school. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's loner investigates his ex-girlfriend's death by talking to the vice principal like a police captain and to the school's drug kingpin like a mob boss. It is the seed of everything Johnson does with genre, and it shows how much of Knives Out was already there.
The Nice Guys (2016)
Not a whodunit but the closest thing to one in spirit: two mismatched investigators in 1977 Los Angeles, Russell Crowe's enforcer and Ryan Gosling's hopeless private eye, stumbling through a conspiracy involving the porn industry and the auto business. Shane Black writes the funniest detective dialogue in the business, and Gosling's physical comedy is a revelation. If the banter was your favorite part of Knives Out, this is your film.
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
A hurricane party at a mansion, a group of rich twenty-somethings, a murder-in-the-dark game that turns into the real thing. Bodies Bodies Bodies is the whodunit as a horror-comedy about people who cannot stop performing for each other even while they are dying, and its solution is the funniest on this list. Shorter and nastier than Knives Out, and just as sharp about the young and wealthy.
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Where to start
If you have not seen the sequels, Glass Onion is the obvious first stop. If you want to see where Knives Out came from, watch The Last of Sheila and Sleuth on consecutive nights and notice how much of the Thrombey house is already in them. For a group, Clue or See How They Run; for a date, The Thin Man, which is the most charming film on the list. And if you simply want more of the wit, The Nice Guys.
Save the ones you skip. Limelight keeps a watchlist that syncs across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, shows where each film is streaming in your country, and pulls in ratings from IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, so the next rainy evening already has a shortlist.
Frequently asked questions
Glass Onion, since it is the sequel with the same detective and structure. Among films that are not sequels, The Last of Sheila is the one Rian Johnson has named as the model for its spirit, and Gosford Park is the closest ensemble country-house mystery.
Release order: Knives Out (2019), Glass Onion (2022), then Wake Up Dead Man (2025). Each is a standalone case, so you can watch them in any order, but Benoit Blanc's jokes land better once you know him.
It is the third Benoit Blanc mystery, with a new case, a new cast and a church setting. Only Blanc carries over, as with Glass Onion.
Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Sleuth (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973) and The Thin Man (1934) are the four on this list, and they cover the genre's range: the interrogation film, the two-hander, the party game and the comedy.
Clue is broad and silly enough for older children, and The Thin Man is a 1934 comedy. Bodies Bodies Bodies and Brick are adult in content.
Each title above links to a page showing where it is streaming right now, and Limelight shows the same for your country, with a watchlist and ratings from four sources. Availability changes by country and by month, so check before you plan a night around one.
