Demystifying the Mystery Genre in Film and TV

At the heart of each entry in the mystery TV and mystery film genre is an unknown event (usually a crime) that must be solved before the credits roll. “[The murder mystery] gives the audience some expectations and the appearance of a puzzle to solve,” director Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Poker Face) told Tudum. “You can take that and put it over other genres, and have a lot of fun and play with the form.” 

You’ll notice a similar structure across these projects:  

Note that the puzzle is central throughout, and that mysteries conclude only once it is solved.  

The genre is eternally popular. The term “mystery” may evoke images of 1940s detective films, but a whole new generation is bringing a fresh angle to the genre’s conventions. 

“The murder-mystery renaissance really is in full effect right now,” Jordan King writes for Empire, citing such examples as Poker Face, The Afterparty, Decision to Leave, and See How They Run.

The investigator  

Mysteries need central characters who are invested in solving the puzzle and finding its resolution through skilful investigation and deduction. They’re often a kind of audience surrogate, able to draw viewers into the investigation by receiving information as we do and posing questions that help us crack the case.  

“There could not be a scene in which Sam did not appear,” director John Huston said of The Maltese Falcon’s protagonist. “The audience was to know nothing Sam didn’t know. And they meet the other characters only when Sam does.”  

Some mysteries (such as the police procedural) portray law enforcement’s criminal investigations, but many protagonist-investigators are private detectives (such as Sherlock Holmes) or amateur sleuths (such as Oliver, Charles, and Mabel in Only Murders in the Building). Most display idiosyncratic personalities and investigative procedures that make them outsiders capable of seeing things from a fresh perspective. 

Just consider Jonathan Creek as the magician with an understanding of illusion or the eccentric Hercule Poirot with his mania for order and focus on logic and psychology.  

Suspects and criminals

Audiences and investigators alike uncover a mystery’s who, why, and how, typically by working through a field of suspects to find the wrongdoer.  

Suspects are often a linked group of characters who each have a plausible motive and opportunity to commit the crime. The guests and servants at a country house where a murder takes place are one of the most common mystery genre characteristics, as seen in Gosford Park and Magpie Murders.  

Motives, alibis, and backstories are probed, often revealing minor mysteries incidental to the plot, until the criminal is unmasked.  

The central villain should actively attempt to outfox and mislead their investigators and possess their own well-developed reasons for wrongdoing. Explaining who did it isn’t enough. Their method and motivation should ultimately make sense, at least to themselves, even when dealing with serious real-world crimes.  

“It was intriguing that in order to truly understand one’s enemy, one had to develop even for short periods of time – even if they were faking it – empathy for people who heretofore would have been beneath our contempt,” director David Fincher told Time magazine about the real-world criminals of Mindhunter.  

Clues and misdirection

“I like the relationship between telling a story on the screen and a card trick,” Johnson told IMDb. “I’m always really interested by that analogy, because there are a lot of similar elements that are at play and one of the big ones is misdirection.” 

If clues are necessary to make mysteries solvable, red herrings are needed to keep the audience off balance. Well-crafted mysteries steadily introduce both elements to ensure that audiences are never totally sure which answers are right, prompting them to consider alternate solutions that eventually turn out to be dead ends.  

Investigators and audiences take stock of clues to build their cases. Once resolved, the best mysteries fit all those clues and red herrings together in solutions that make perfect sense but still take you by surprise.  

That’s why mystery writer Sophie Hannah holds Murder on the Orient Express in such high regard. “It has a solution you’d never guess in a million years, but … it makes perfect sense,” she told AgathaChristie.com 

Return to order  

Justice in a mystery is about more than bringing criminals to trial. The protagonists have a fundamental desire to reinstate order in a world thrown off balance by unexplained events, says Bob Levy, of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. 

“The mystery, and specifically the murder mystery structure, begins with a place of disorder,” Levy says. “The order of the universe – the order of justice – has been shattered with a murder, and the skilful investigator who answers the mysteries restores order.” 

It may simply involve removing a dastardly criminal from law-abiding society, as in most police procedural and detective movies, or a confinement of supernatural evil within its own realm, as in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.  

Consider how Lynch’s neo-noir mystery Blue Velvet makes the restoration of normality one of its central symbols. Its first scene represents the world’s seedy underbelly with bugs swarming beneath a well-kept suburban lawn, while the final sequence’s interweaving of idyllic suburban scenes with a robin eating a bug portray a conventional paradise restored once the aggressive and sadistic antagonist has been identified and killed.