Best Mystery Movies of 1997

In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a cold-hearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad: a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nary a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.

In a future society in the era of indefinite eugenics, humans are set on a life course depending on their DNA. Young Vincent Freeman is born with a condition that would prevent him from space travel, yet is determined to infiltrate the GATTACA space program.

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgangers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Aspiring Florida defense lawyer Kevin Lomax accepts a job at a New York law firm. With the stakes getting higher every case, Kevin quickly learns that his boss has something far more evil planned.

A radio astronomer receives the first extraterrestrial radio signal ever picked up on Earth. As the world powers scramble to decipher the message and decide upon a course of action, she must make some difficult decisions between her beliefs, the truth, and reality.

In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.

A group of strangers find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison. It soon becomes clear that each of them possesses the peculiar skills necessary to escape, if they don't wind up dead first.

A man obsessed with conspiracy theories becomes a target after one of his theories turns out to be true. Unfortunately, in order to save himself, he has to figure out which theory it is.

In 2047, a group of astronauts are sent to investigate and salvage the starship 'Event Horizon' which disappeared mysteriously 7 years before on its maiden voyage. With its return, the crew of the 'Lewis and Clark' discovers the real truth behind the disappearance of the 'Event Horizon' – and something even more terrifying.

Forensic psychologist Alex Cross travels to North Carolina and teams with escaped kidnap victim Kate McTiernan to hunt down "Casanova," a serial killer who abducts strong-willed women and forces them to submit to his demands. The trail leads to Los Angeles, where the duo discovers that the psychopath may not be working alone.

Two years after the terrifying events that occurred in Woodsboro, Sidney is now attending Windsor College in Cincinnati, and Gale Weathers' best selling book on Sidney's life has now been made into a major motion picture. When two college students are killed in a theatre while watching the new film 'Stab', Sidney knows deep down that history is repeating itself.

When his SUV breaks down on a remote Southwestern road, Jeff Taylor lets his wife, Amy, hitch a ride with a trucker to get help. When she doesn't return, Jeff fixes his SUV and tracks down the trucker -- who tells the police he's never seen Amy. Johnathan Mostow's tense thriller then follows Jeff's desperate search for his wife, which eventually uncovers a small town's murderous secret.

In his squalid apartment, a man tries to squash with his shoe an insect of some kind that is moving around the room.

After four high school friends are involved in a hit-and-run road accident, they dispose of the body and vow to keep the incident a secret. A year later, they each start receiving anonymous letters bearing the warning "I Know What You Did Last Summer."

A visiting city reporter's assignment suddenly revolves around the murder trial of a local millionaire, whom he befriends.

Smilla Jaspersen, half Danish, half Greenlander, attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland. Scenes from the film were shot in Copenhagen and western Greenland. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival, where director Bille August was nominated for the Golden Bear.

FBI agent Dennis Quaid tries to catch a serial killer who kidnapped his son.

A law student, who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue, begins to discover clues that implicate him as the suspect of a series of murders.

A secretary is found dead in a White House bathroom during an international crisis, and Detective Harlan Regis is in charge of the investigation. Despite resistance from the Secret Service, Regis partners with agent Nina Chance. As political tensions rise, they learn that the crime could be part of an elaborate cover-up. Framed as traitors, the pair, plus Regis' partner, break into the White House in order to expose the true culprit.

A homicide detective teams up with an evolutionary biologist to hunt a giant creature that is killing people in a Chicago museum.

Two investigative reporters for a tabloid magazine track down across country "The Night Flier", a serial killer who travels by private plane stalking victims in rural airports. One of the reporters, Richard Dees, begins to suspect that "the Night Flier could perhaps be a vampire"

Two lovers rent a marvelous old Victorian mansion and invite a group of their friends for a Murder Mystery Weekend. Things get off to a less than fantastic start, however, when, while having a glass of after-dinner champagne, one of the lovers, Gregg Rockwell, crashes to the table, dead from poisoning.

Eliza D'Amico thinks her marriage to Louis is going great until she finds a mysterious love note to her husband. Concerned, she goes to her mother for advice. Eliza, her parents, her sister Jo, and Jo's boyfriend all pile into a station wagon to go to the city to confront Louis with the letter. On the way, the five explore their relations with each other and meet many interesting people.

Two children in 1917 take a photograph, believed by some to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies. Based on a true story

Jack Shaw has experienced the terror first-hand. He's a top CIA agent who's tracked international killer-for-hire Carlos "The Jackal" Sanchez for over twenty years and barely survived Carlos' devastating bombing of a Parisian cafe. Now, he finally gets a break when he discovers Carlos' dead ringer: American naval officer and dedicated family man Annibal Ramirez.

A small Oklahoma town is stripped of its innocence when one of its boys turns up mute and bloodied by the lakeside. Unable to tell his story, the local sheriff embarks on a quest to uncover the roots of a gruesome crime. He's led to Ainsley DuPree and her new husband, Jack, a man whose interest in family may very well outweigh his morals.

Photographer Charles Castle is numbed with grief following the death of his beautiful bride. He goes off to war, working in the trenches as a photographer. Following the war and still in grief Charles is given some photographs purporting to be of fairies. His search for the truth leads him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful village seething with secrets

The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.

Jessica Fletcher searches for a woman who witnessed the murder of a man trying to expose a serious flaw in a top-secret government satellite code.

After a quiet fishing trip, Rockford is tricked into taking over a fellow PI's case involving alleged Police misconduct, which lands him in the hospital, hounded by a beautiful reporter, and out of favor with the entire Police Deapartment. Meanwhile Angel tries to cash in on the publicity by selling a movie about Rockford's life.

A debauched Hollywood movie actor tries to piece together one wild night in Miami years earlier which remains a drug-induced blur, and soon finds out that some questions about his past are best left unanswered.

A girl is angry about having to move to the city, but gets involved in a mystery when a rich neighbor is found dead. His will suggests that one of the people in her apartment house is his killer and doles out clues to find the culprit - as well as win $20 million.

Mitzi Kapture portrays a military investigator trying to convict an officer of killing his wife. Convinced the officer committed the crime but hindered by lack of physical evidence (including a body), she must interview military personnel who have differing views of the events and circumstances surrounding the murder.

Eerie dreams that haunt a young nurse heighten the mystery surrounding her mother's sudden disappearance.

Mythology and religious dogma are slowly revealed when an attractive young woman is approached by a modeling agency that pulls her into an underworld of priests that are not Christian but rather want to resurrect Satan by collecting the souls of 18 beautiful children.

Peter Glahn is released after years of incarceration as a political prisoner and is now returning to his homeland, the mythical Mandragora where the sun never sets. On board the ship home, he meets the mysterious Juliana Kossel who vanishes after stealing his heart. Once he arrives on the island, he goes to the family ostrich farm run by his sister Amelia. He finds Amelia living with a farmhand named Cain Ball who fears that Peter's return will endanger the agreement he made with Amelia that will see him inherit the farm. Amelia has since fallen for the vain Dr. Isaac Solti who controls the island and has a hold on both Zephyr Eccles, the widow of a local fisherman, and Juliana, Peter's dream girl from the ship. Solti's true obsession is a recently discovered statue of Venus that possesses strange powers. All the characters meet at Solti's lab where the sexual tensions erupt.

A woman has a miscarriage. After her grief becomes bearable, she attempts to adopt a baby, but discovers evidence that her baby might not have been dead when it was removed from her stomach. If so, who took the baby, why and where?

Writer Mark Easterbrook has a vested interest in solving the murder of a priest. That's because Mark himself is under suspicion. But to save his reputation and put the real killer behind bars, he'll have to go through a mysterious list of names that's suddenly turned up and may hold the key to the murderer's identity.

New York 1952. Mickey Jelke inherits a big sum of money and spends his nights in Manhattan, painting the city red. Night after night, he can be found in one Broadway bar or the other, in the company of disreputable persons like pimps and prostitutes. One day,a shady cop, aided by Mickey's own girlfriend, Patricia, decides to accuse him of running a prostitution network. A scandal breaks out.

A man with an unknown disease travels to an island with his girlfriend where his relatives once lived, hoping to find a cure to his illness. Although his relatives were all thought to be dead, he finds them living underground.

A female prosecutor notices a woman in a plastic surgeon's waiting room who looks strikingly like a girl who was murdered more than ten years earlier. An investigation into the plastic surgeon grows more bizarre by the minute, as the prosecutor unravels a ten year old mystery involving betrayal and murder.

Michael and Janie are a pair of young grad students living together on a quiet college campus. One day, Janie discovers that Michael has been cheating on her. She walks out on him, only to come back the next day to find him dead of a gunshot wound. The police suspect Janie, but the evidence seems to implicate Janie's friend, Frankie. Somehow, Janie must find a way to prove herself innocent while still protecting her friend.

After the murder of a beauty queen, an investigation reveals the suspects to be a former lover, a rival contestant, and a stage mother.

Drew is a young woman who drives to a small town she has never been to while in a trance. A year ago in this town Laura, who looked just like Drew, was murdered. Everyone assumed that Laura's boyfriend Teddie who went missing at the same time as the murder had done it, but Drew starts having dream sequences and trances that imply otherwise. Gradually through investigation and with the guidance of more visions from Laura, Drew uncovers the story behind the murders.

A gun. A girl. A body. A cast of characters as guilty as sin. Welcome to the world of Mission Erotica. With 10 sizzling sex scenes, an all-star cast, and enough action for three movies. This is your Mission...should you decide to accept it.

Teenagers join a Vampire Club only to be taught the lessons by the Boogeyman who poses as an impostor.

Olive Martin (Quirke), a heavily overweight young woman is convicted of killing and butchering her mother and sister and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, when she is assigned to write a book about her life, author Rosalind Leigh (Goodall) begins to develop a relationship with Olive and is soon convinced of her innocence. With the help of restaurant owner and former policeman Hal Hawksley (Fulford), she sets out to prove it and undo what she sees as a miscarriage of justice. However, all is not what is seems.

After escaping a lethal injection for the murders Mommy (Patty McCormack) had committed, she is given a special implant in her arm that will keep her from having homicidal urges. However, since she still tries to see her daughter and other murders are continuing, it doesn't look very good for Mommy.

While Nick Cameron is returning to England from the continent with mysterious cargo in the cabin section of his small aircraft, he is thrown off-course by a severe electrical storm and loses radio contact. To his surprise and horror, he is arrested upon landing and accused of being a traitor in connection with the cargo he has been carrying - which, unknown to him, contained plutonium. Although he pleads innocent, Nick is not believed and is sentenced to a long term in prison. While in prison, he is subjected to special experimentation at a mysterious laboratory - with one unnerving, and unexpected, side-effect of the experiments being intermittent invisibility. —David McAnally