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How to Reveal the Killer’s Identity
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I used to drive my husband crazy by identifying the murderer – who had no apparent motive or connection with the victim – very early in mystery movies, often within minutes of the murderer’s appearance in the story. SPOILER ALERT. If a minor character with no relationship to the main characters is given more than a minute’s worth of screen time fairly early in the movie, he or she is the murderer. There is no other reason to waste time on him or her. The motive and connection will be revealed later, often in a shocking twist, but you can predict the outcome without knowing any of that. Characters without an obvious connection to the plot do not get screen time. This method does not work for Roger Ackroyd-type situations where the idea is to build trust in someone and then pull the rug out – in such movies, everyone is a red herring and they all have plenty of screen time. If there is an anomalous character, however, given a bit of screen time and exposition for no apparent reason, this method is surprisingly accurate. “He did it.” “What? Why? Huh?” “He has no other reason for being in the movie.” “That’s ridiculous.” [98 minutes later] “I hate you.”
On TV, it was typically whoever was the guest star that week.
My friend calls that the “Law & Order Rule”.
I only remember one exception to the rule, where the guest star got to look guilty, then victimized. Of course, with more than one guest star, one is kept guessing, but not very long!
Watch Blake Edwards’ Murder By Death…..it will answer all your murder mystery questions. It covers each and every murder mystery ever produced. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074937/?ref_=nv_sr_1
I don’t know what the trope is called (I know there’s a website dedicated to them) but when the victim/witness/associate goes to the killer’s office/home/lair to wag their finger at him and tell them they’re going to the police “RIGHT NOW” then the next scene is usually the dumping of the victim/witness/associate’s body.
Ha! Diagram THAT sentence.
Then you combine it with another awful cliché, and it will turn out that the detective has multiple personalities, and is not only the only person in the room, he’s also the true killer.
The simplest way to tell who the guilty party is: It’s the white, male, practising Christian. Thats the only reason they’d have such a character in the show. And even if he didn’t commit the crime he’s still guilty of being a white, male, practising Christian.
And that goes double if he’s a while, male, practising Christian butler.
Triple is he’s a white, male, practicing Christian stable hand. In fact, stable hands should pretty much be shot on sight. Murdering maniacs, every last one of them.
I always blame the producer first.