Deep Water was recently released, and it had fans guessing for the whole 2 hour and 33 minute length, with viewers trying to find out where Melinda’s love affairs had gone. Throughout the video, the audience was encouraged to make educated guesses, transforming them into actual detectives. Many films like these encourage viewers to join the main character as a detective to solve the riddles. Here are a few examples of similar films.
1. Game Night (2018)
Director(s)- John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Max and Annie, a married competitive gamer couple, are trying to start a family, but they are having trouble due to Max’s worry about his thoughts of inadequacy in comparison to his successful, gorgeous brother Brooks. Brooks shows up Max by arriving in a Corvette Stingray and telling an embarrassing childhood story about Max during Max and Annie’s normal weekend game night with their friends Ryan and married couple Kevin and Michelle. While in town, Brooks offers to host the next gaming night at a property he’s renting. Meanwhile, Max and Annie are attempting to keep their gaming nights hidden from their next-door neighbour Gary, an awkward cop who recently divorced their mutual friend Debbie.
2. Knives Out (2019)
Director- Rain Johnson
Except for Harlan Thrombey’s weird and unexplainable death, nothing could mar the otherwise magnificent birthday party at his opulent mansion. The sharp knife in the silver-haired deceased’s hand is now a dead giveaway that something, or someone, was worrying Harlan; but, Benoit Blanc, the cryptic investigator, isn’t completely sure. Indeed, more than one member of the successful author’s attached family has been sparing with the truth thus far—and as Blanc tries to untangle a complex web of half-baked leads and white lies, all eyes are on the main prize: Harlan’s tremendous legacy.
3. Escape Room (2019)
Director- Adam Robitel
Six daring individuals visit a mysterious location to participate in an escape room game, in which players compete to solve a series of puzzles in order to win $10,000. As the four men and two women learn, each area is an elaborate trap that is part of a macabre game of life or death, what begins as seemingly innocent fun quickly turns into a living nightmare.
4. Non-Stop (2014)
Director- Jaume Collet-Serra
Bill Marks, an alcoholic and disgraced air marshal, is a former cop who is still mourning the death of his eight-year-old daughter, who died of leukaemia. He is assigned to a flight from New York to London, and Jen Summers is seated next to him in first class. Bill receives text messages while the plane crosses the Atlantic Ocean, telling him that one passenger will die every twenty minutes until the TSA air flight firm transfers $150 million to an offshore account. Bill contacts his superior, who is sceptical of his claims. They also notice that the bank account is in Bill’s name. With just Jen and flight attendant Nancy to help him, Bill must now find the terrorist, and he quickly discovers a bomb on board. The TSA agent, on the other hand, thinks Bill to be the terrorist.
5. Searching (2018)
Director- Aneesh Chaganty
David Kim, of San Jose, California, looks through old photos and videos of his daughter Margot and his late wife Pamela, who died over two years ago from lymphoma, after which David and Margot grew estranged. Margot attends a study group at the home of a friend one night. David is unable to contact Margot the following morning, but figures she has gotten up early for school. He later phones Margot’s piano teacher, only to be told that she had cancelled her lessons six months prior.
Margot had been pocketing the money for the lessons, before transferring $2,500 to a now-defunct Venmo account, David discovers. When David realises Margot has gone missing, he contacts the police, who send the investigation to Detective Rosemary Vick, who requests information about Margot’s personality and acquaintances. David is able to gain access to Margot’s Facebook account and communicate with her contacts, only to discover that since Pamela’s death, Margot has had no close pals.
6. A Simple Favor (2018)
Director- Paul Feig
Stephanie Smothers, a joyful YouTuber and full-time, stay-at-home single mother, is unquestionably a force of nature and true connoisseur of all things domestic. Stephanie’s picture-perfect life will take an unexpected turn when she befriends Emily Nelson, an exquisite and cryptic New York City PR executive, who is always available to volunteer for multiple jobs at her son Miles’ elementary school. After a few inebriated afternoons, Emily asks Stephanie to take up her son, Nicky, from school. Then Emily vanishes, and as the hours stretch into days, Stephanie resolves to act, and sets out on a mission to find Emily.
7. Death On The Nile (2022)
Director- Kenneth Branagh
1937 in Egypt A newlywed millionaire is found dead in a pool of blood, killed on board, as world-famous Belgian investigator Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile. With every affluent passenger on board the opulent SS Karnak harbouring a grudge against the murdered wealthy heiress, Hercule Poirot employs patience and tenacity to find the murderer among them.
8. Old (2021)
Director- M. Night Shyamalan
Guy and Prisca, overworked married couple, arrive at a luxury, strangely affordable resort with their children, Trent, six, and Maddox, eleven, with the hopes of spending the perfect tropical holiday and building family relationships. Instead, they’re in for a rude awakening, as a brief visit to a hidden private beach sets off a chain of mysterious, logic-defying psychosomatic changes that impact all of the secretive hideaway’s guests. However, time flies on this sandy, difficult-to-find beach.
9. Happy Death Day (2017)
Director- Christopher Landon
Tree Gelbman, a self-centered college student and sorority sister, wakes up with a bad hangover on her birthday morning in the room of a guy whose name she can’t remember after a night of hard partying and heavy drinking. As Tree goes about her day, she has no idea that everything that has happened or will happen during the day is a warped déjà vu of a reality that repeats itself over and over again, until her gruesome murder by a masked lunatic at night. Treee gets a little closer to figuring out who her unknown killer is with each repetition—or, better still, resurrection. Tree’s death is always the result of trying to figure out who he or she is. Get up, figure out who’s behind the murders, die, and do it all over again. After all, perfectionism is a skill that can be learned with practise.
10. Gone Girl (2014)
Director- David Fincher
Nick Dunne, a former New York City journalist, returns home to Missouri to discover his front door half-open, shattered glass all around, and his popular novelist wife, Amy, mysteriously disappeared. As Rhonda Boney, an experienced detective, probes more and deeper into the husband’s supposedly immaculate image, Nick’s life inevitably comes under the limelight amid an uncontrollable media feeding frenzy. As a result, Nick becomes further entangled in a hazy reality in which nothing is as it seems.
