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Memento (2000)
8.4/10on IMDb
Released
Start here for a murder inquiry built around the investigator's memory problem. Leonard leaves himself photographs, notes, and tattoos so he can keep looking for his wife's killer. Since he forgets the circumstances in which he made them, you have to judge how much to trust each reminder.
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A Cure for Wellness (2017)
6.4/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for the closest match to the isolated institution. An executive goes to a spa in the Swiss Alps to bring back his company's boss and ends up a patient. The more the doctors insist that everything is part of the cure, the harder it is to tell where the treatment ends and the investigation begins.
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Angel Heart (1987)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this for a private-eye story that turns into humid, unsettling horror. Harry Angel is hired to find a missing singer. As the search takes him to Louisiana, people with pieces of the answer keep dying, and his client is harder to understand than the man he was hired to find.
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Cure (1997)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Try this quiet Japanese thriller if you want space to think between clues. A detective investigates a run of murders with a repeated mark and no obvious connection between the people who committed them. What they can't remember becomes as important as what they confess.
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The Conversation (1974)
7.7/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this when you want to play detective with a sound recording. Harry Caul keeps going over a conversation he recorded, convinced it points to a murder. What he hears changes as he develops a theory about the speakers, and you can listen for the same shift.
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Blow-Up (1966)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this when you'd rather stare at an image than follow a chase. A photographer enlarges pictures he took in a park and begins to suspect he caught a crime. The closer you look at the biggest prints, the harder it becomes to tell a recognizable detail from a patch of grain.
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Blow Out (1981)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for a conspiracy thriller that lets you follow a technician's work. A sound recordist captures a car crash and hears something that could change what it means. Matching the recording to photographs gives you a clearer sequence, but it leaves open who will believe what it shows.
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The Machinist (2004)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this for the weight of a mystery told through a man who hasn't slept properly in a year. After a factory accident, Trevor tries to work out what a man named Ivan has to do with it. The people he asks about Ivan only make the answers harder to reconcile.
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Jacob's Ladder (1990)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Try the 1990 film for a frightening inquiry into what happened to a group of soldiers in Vietnam. Jacob compares what he remembers with what other veterans report, while visions keep interrupting his life in New York. Even a promising explanation has to compete with what he thinks he's seeing.
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The Game (1997)
7.7/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this for a mystery that makes paranoia look like a reasonable response. A banker accepts a novelty gift and starts looking for the company behind it when it interferes with his life. Every person who might help could have been assigned a part.
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The Others (2001)
7.6/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this for an inquiry that takes place in a house with carefully enforced rules. A mother investigates voices and disturbances while keeping her light-sensitive children away from windows. Each visitor gives her one more reason to listen, and one more reason to worry about what she can't see.
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Dark City (1998)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Try this for a science-fiction mystery where a man wakes up beside evidence that seems to make him a killer. He has no reliable memory to answer for it, and his search for his own history points to a city that keeps changing. Pick it if you want the investigation to become stranger with each answer.
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The Number 23 (2007)
6.4/10on IMDb
Released
Try this when you want to share the investigator’s obsession for a while. Walter Sparrow reads a murder novel that starts to sound uncannily like his own life. The recurring number is easy to spot once he points it out, which leaves you with the harder job of deciding whether it means anything.
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Identity (2003)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
A storm strands a group at a Nevada motel, where a string of deaths leaves the survivors piecing together what they have in common. Try this if you want the same sense of being cut off as in Shutter Island, with a sharper turn toward a closed-circle whodunit.
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Gothika (2003)
5.9/10on IMDb
Released
Try this if the asylum side of Shutter Island is what you want more of. A criminal psychologist wakes up as a patient in the same institution where she worked and learns she’s accused of killing her husband. Her lost time and the strange things she sees give her very different leads to follow.
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Fractured (2019)
6.5/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for a hospital mystery that gets its pressure from a missing record. Ray insists his wife and daughter entered the building with him. The staff say there is no trace of either one, leaving you to decide how to read his memory of the trip.
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Flightplan (2005)
6.3/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this if you want a missing-person case with a short clock and nowhere for the investigator to go. A mother searches a plane for her daughter, but the flight crew questions whether the girl was ever aboard. The mother's knowledge of the aircraft is one thing she can still put to use.
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Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
6.3/10on IMDb
Released
Try this for a quieter puzzle about making a record before you forget what you learned. Christine starts a video diary because her memory resets when she sleeps. Each day's clues have to compete with the version of her life someone gives her in the morning.
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The Girl on the Train (2016)
6.5/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this for an investigation that begins with the thin evidence of a commuter's view through a window. Rachel thinks she saw something relevant to a missing woman and has gaps in her memory of the night in question. The story gives you reasons to weigh what she remembers against what other people say she did.
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Forgotten (2017)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Choose this Korean thriller if you want a case to begin at the dinner table. Jin-seok's brother returns after an abduction with no memory of the missing days. The changes Jin-seok notices don't match his family's welcome, and he starts digging into what happened before his brother came home.
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Perfect Blue (1998)
8.0/10on IMDb
Released
Pick this animated thriller for a mystery that can make a diary look more authoritative than lived experience. A former pop idol discovers an online account of her life written in her voice. A series of violent events makes it increasingly hard to separate what she did, what she performed, and what people claim to know about her.
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