Right now, theatergoers can see two films concerning a New York publisher’s envoy staying at the home of a venerated novelist to help squeeze a new book out of the situation, which proves unexpectedly hazardous. Naturally, the option that’s terrible, Verity, has made a nine-figure load of dough.

Then there’s A Talent for Murder. Unlike Verity, it’s not an erotic thriller. Unless snails count.

Weapons’ Alden Ehrenreich is the publisher’s rep, Edward Ridgeway. Helen Mirren (Winchester) is the author. And not just any author, but crime-fic legend Patricia Highsmith, she of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. In 1995, Ridgeway travels to Switzerland with a contract, in hopes of convincing Highsmith to cap her brilliant career with a sixth Ripley novel.

Because his predecessor vanished eerily after visiting Highsmith’s home, Ridgeway knows his mission won’t be a breeze. Her face set on permasour mode, Highsmith proves arrogant to the nth degree and saltier than a dozen bags of Rold Golds. She openly displays a collection of sharp weapons. And her kitchen is loaded with toxins and poisons that seem to coarse through her veins, only to emerge from her mouth as venom — with exquisite diction, mind you. 

You need not be familiar with Highsmith or her work to enjoy what stealthily boils into a beguiling mystery. As she and Ridgeway talk shop, a potential story for the book takes shape, which we see play out on the cobbled streets and in country estates of Italy. In this “movie” within the movie, the jet-set metrosexual Ripley (also Ehrenreich) schemes his way into a fortune by way of wooing a wealthy family’s youngest heir (Olivia Cooke, Ready Player One). Among other actions. As was the case with director Anton Corbijn’s underrated (and equally literate) spy thriller, 2010’s The American, these Italian sequences amount to visual intoxication.

Meanwhile, in the real world of Switzerland (although A Talent for Murder is not based on true events), we suspect Ridgeway is being manipulated by a master. Mirren sure plays Highsmith as a sinister spinster, her dowdiness disguising a mind capable of conjuring the best of worst possible deeds. Ehrenreich ultimately walks away with the film by handling two roles of opposing forces, the Ripley part of which showcases a smile just a few wrinkles shy of Jack Nicholson’s iconic grin of mischief from the 1970s and ’80s.

It’s rare for a modern suspense story to operate several steps ahead of its audience and hold that advantage throughout. The film isn’t a whodunit, but a wholldoit. Wherever it was taking me, I wasn’t quite certain, but all-in for the ride. These days, that’s pure pleasure. —Rod Lott

In theaters Oct. 23.

Although I’m a voracious reader, fiction rarely finds a slot in my TBR pile(s) these days. The latest exception: Strange Houses, a 2021 mystery from Japan penned by the enigmatic, unimonikered Uketsu, a YouTuber who hides his/her/their identity behind a minimalist mask that suggests Ghostface by way of an egg carton.

What appealed to me wasn’t the author’s anonymity or horror-ready headwear, but the novel’s use of floor plans as clues to forward the narrative. More than mere gimmick, these scale diagrams are the mystery; you literally couldn’t tell the story without significantly diminishing the experience. I have a track record of falling for this illustrated maps-and-charts approach in fiction, whether erudite (Arthur Phillips’ The Egyptologist) or ridiculous (Matthew Reilly’s 7 Deadly Wonders).

Possibly due to the daunting and imperfect task of translating the Japanese language into English, Strange Houses’ prose struck me as primitive. But the premise? Addicting and unputdownable. No wonder the book’s popularity traversed oceans to become an international phenomenon. Somewhere in the middle of fever-turning page after page, I thought, “This would make a great movie.”

An adaptation already exists! Alas, A Strange House is only decent. Uketsu’s surrogate is Amemiya (Shotaro Mamiya, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo), a like-and-subscribe-starved YouTuber. He needs views — and gets them after his producer (DJ Matsunaga of hip-hop’s Creepy Nuts) shows him a flyer for a potential abode. They notice an area of the blueprint appearing to serve no structural purpose — but perhaps a sinister one. Amemiya enlists the expertise of antisocial architect pal Kurihara (Jiro Sato, 2015’s Death Note TV series), who spots even more disturbing peculiarities on the page.

Kurihara and Amemiya soon learn the place is tied to the recent discovery of a corpse eerily missing a left hand. As their investigation grows beyond theoretical to physical, floor plans of other residences surface, each literally holding secrets within its walls. To explain further would give away the plot’s twists. Suffice to say, several come built-in.

The Strange foundation has solid bones and no shortage of curb appeal. Scripter Kentaro Ushio and director Junichi Ishikawa succeed in nailing the book’s spirit, admirably leaning into the J-horror elements to bestow a multifaceted whodunit of perversity. When the camera pulls back at one point to give the audience a top-down view of the action, it’s like a Clue game board come to life — and, as locked-room and puzzle-box mysteries should, death.

To the filmmakers’ credit, A Strange House is appreciably faithful. However, it could stand to better establish the characters, especially Amemiya, because the movie begins in haste, like a TV show several episodes removed from the pilot. Ishikawa and Ushio primarily labor in the medium of television, conceivably accounting for the zero-to-60 launch. The pic also could use a few turns of an Allen wrench to dispense with add-ons the screen renders superfluous.

With fewer minutes on the clock and a fresh coat of paint on the players, a remodel could work wonders. Considering Uketsu has three sequels (Strange Pictures, Strange Buildings and Strange Maps) currently on the market, no doubt someone will try. —Rod Lott

At first glance, The Samurai and the Prisoner, a literary adaptation set in late 16th-century Japan, hardly seems like horror/thriller auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s usual cup of sake. Within a few minutes, when it suddenly reveals itself as a murder mystery, all makes sense.

The film takes place almost entirely at a castle ruled by Lord Murashige (Masahiro Motoki, 1999’s Gemini), who’s already anxious about an imminent enemy siege when a young visitor is found dead. The boy appears to have been shot with an arrow, yet no weapon is located. It’s almost a locked-room puzzle, if not for a mere 3-inch gap.

To crack this case, Murashige leans on his adversary’s envoy, Kanbei (Masaki Suda, Kurosawa’s Cloud), held captive in the castle’s dungeon, to pore over the clues and form a hypothesis. Kanbei’s deductive skills prove excellent — I mean, he’s got the time — and three more devious crimes will confound the castle before the end. If managing all that chaos isn’t enough for m’lord, he does so while grieving the loss of his true love: a precious tea urn. 

Understated humor like that is layered throughout, most notably in an extended bit concerning a slain general’s head; Murashige is uncertain which clan can claim the honor of killing because, as a soldier reasons, “We were fighting in the dark, no names were given.” 

Obsessed with matters of ritual and religion and oneupmanship, the picture is as meticulously crafted as it is purposely episodic. As the weather turns, a new whodunit presents itself for Murashige to pass to Kanbei to solve, making The Samurai and the Prisoner far from an ordinary costume epic, even if those majestic visuals and powerful lead performances suggest otherwise. Its two-point-five hours move quickly, although no pace can completely hide the occasional meandering. —Rod Lott

In theaters, expanding Aug. 7 and 14.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, where does that leave the blind? Im Yeong-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo, Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula), a sightless stamp engraver in his twilight years, found love with a garment worker he married. It vanished when she abandoned her husband and infant son 40 years prior.

Now an adult, son Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min, Decision to Leave) receives unexpected news from the police: Not only have his mother’s remains been found, but she didn’t disappear as assumed; she was murdered. This news arrives amid a crew shooting a documentary about the elder Im, so the producer (Shin Hyeon-bin, Beasts Clawing at Straws) helps Dong-hwan discovered what happened to the woman he never knew.

What they find on the surface is unimaginable cruelty from greedy relatives and asshole co-workers who nicknamed her “Dung Ogre.” All insist she was so hideous-looking — hence the film’s title of The Ugly — no photos exist. Most barbarous is the treatment from her piggish employer (Im Sung-jae, Emergency Declaration). Dong-hwan’s father sums it up with “What we see as beautiful, we respect; the opposite, we scorn.

The Ugly represents a departure for filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho, the creative conductor behind the Train to Busan franchise. Not particularly knotty in plotting, his film solves its mystery through simple sequential peeling of layers. With each successive interview, Dong-hwan grows further torn between wanting to know and afraid what he might learn next. Both leads are marvelous, but especially Park. In his incredible final shot, Sang-ho doesn’t leave us with a spinning top, but delivers the closure we need, only to rip open a whole new line of questioning. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

No sooner has live-in nurse Meredith Stone (Patricia Pearcy, Squirm) joined the payroll of cranky old paraplegic inventor Mr. Langrock (Joseph Cotten, Shadow of a Doubt) than she’s told only a single room of his estate is off-limits. Specifically, the one that’s locked up. The same one she spotted someone in, standing at its window, upon her arrival via Yellow Cab. The one she should never, ever enter under any circumstances whatsoever. 

“Ooh, how Gothic: a locked room!” coos a minor character played by Death Race 2000’s Simone Griffeth, and she’s not wrong. But whereas most movies of this ilk would spin such a setup across three dark and stormy acts, Delusion unlocks that riddle in its first 15 minutes, which is to say of course Meredith enters the room.

The real mystery kicks in after Mr. Langrock’s teen grandson (Jaws 2’s John Dukakis, son of Michael) arrives from being raised on a commune. That’s when people at the estate start to die, in classic whodunit fashion. Certainly a kid so far removed from society that he doesn’t recognize a skateboard must be the culprit, right?

Unassuming in nature (especially when shorn of its alternate, oxymoronic title, The House Where Death Lives), Delusion is two-thirds Agatha Christie, one-third Michael Myers and all-around quietly nifty, marking a promising debut for director Alan Beattie. However, some of its advantages might be accidental. For example, the abode’s small doorways lend a discomforting, cramped feel … but that’s how the house was built. For another, the main actors’ unfamiliarity to viewers (the legendary Cotten excepted) mean audiences’ preconceived notions can’t apply … likely a budgetary necessity than a calculated play.

Supporting my theory, the only other movie Beattie helmed, Stand Alone, is as formulaic as you’d expect from a mid-’80s Death Wish imitation. That sophomore slump lacks the well-constructed script first-timer Jack Viertel delivered for Delusion: tense and peculiar, with the kind of kink Brian De Palma would’ve maximized for a field day of a film. Strange that Viertel never wrote another movie, abandoning La-La Land for enormous success on the Great White Way.

Most cruelly, Pearcy doesn’t waste her leading-lady opportunity, yet her face hasn’t graced a screen any larger than a television — a mystery in itself. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.