Review: “A Haunting in Venice”

You have to give Kenneth Branagh some credit. Revealing no flagging interest in Agatha Christie and her famed investigator creation, Hercules Poirot, following his film versions of two of her most famous works, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, with a loose adaptation of one of Christie’s lesser known Poirot tales, one that takes the ensemble whodunit that’s a staple of the series and grants it a decidedly spooky edge. A Haunting in Venice, inspired by Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party, finds Branagh reuniting with screenwriter Michael Green and pulling double duties once more as director and star. Retired from detecting— despite the lines of people waiting outside his door every day hoping he’ll take their case— and living in Venice circa 1947, Branagh saddles his Poirot, still struggling with trauma from the war, with even more of a world-weariness than we’ve seen from him before. That is, until his mystery novelist friend, the spunky American Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), turns up and presses him to attend a séance at opera singer Rowena Drake’s (Kelly Reilly) home. It is Halloween night, after all.

The bones of the plot’s structure from there on out will be familiar to mystery fans, or at the very least those who watched Branagh’s previous two Poirot features. A large group of people come together for the séance, which is being conducted by Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), a purported psychic medium hired by Rowena to help her commune with her deceased daughter Alicia. There’s the traumatized doctor Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill); Rowena’s housekeeper Olga (Camille Cottin); Joyce’s assistants Desdemona (Emma Laird) and Nicholas (Ali Khan); Alicia’s ex-fiancé Maxime (Kyle Allen); and Poirot’s bodyguard Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio). Their fraught backstories, all entangled in one way or another, come to light when the inevitable murder happens, and Poirot reluctantly opens and investigation. The question is, is this killer flesh and blood, or is something of the paranormal kind lurking in the corners of Rowena’s shadowy palazzo, where unexplainable incidents keep occurring and Poirot keeps hearing distant, disembodied voices?

Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, besides a few differences here and there, largely stayed faithful to the familiar source material (which, it should be noted, had been adapted for the screen long before that). A Haunting in Venice benefits from not needing to strictly adhere to the source material, and by extension, Branagh’s direction appears a lot freer. It’s a lot grittier and darker (visually as well as thematically) compared to its predecessors, which were set in gaudy, artificial environments (I will never forget the two women sitting in front of me at Murder on the Orient Express, whose first comments as soon as the credits rolled were on how they couldn’t see any of the characters’ breath when they were standing outside in the snow) and whose effectiveness varied wildly depending on the frequency each cast member was tuned in to, their performances ranging from exaggerated, near-camp heights to straight and serious. Here, Branagh indulges (perhaps overly so) in shooting with lenses that lend a distorted and disorienting effect to the scenes, and frequently moves the camera into canted angles. The style doesn’t always best serve the story, but it is, at least, stylish, and while the Venice setting overall is sadly wasted, Branagh does pull a foreboding mood out of the interior of the mansion where the bulk of the action is set, and the result is a chamberpiece that feels even more tense than being stuck on a train or a boat. The attempt at bringing in the horror elements to the piece—jump scares and the like—are less inspired, however. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s creepy, string-based score sets the mood better than any visual or audial cues.

The actors, for once, also all seem to be in tune with each other and with the overall tone of the piece. A blanket of grief and gloom appeared to have settled over all of them, including Poirot. Again, Branagh brings wells of emotion to a character who could otherwise been played for more comedy; there’s one scene in particular where his eyes well with tears ever just so, as the true nature of the few relationships he does have is bluntly brought to his attention. His lonely life may make him a good detective, but it doesn’t make him whole as a person. The cast of A Haunting in Venice isn’t as large and starry as the previous movies, but they do a decent job with the material they are given, Fey—playing a recurring character from Christie’s novels—being a particularly interesting bit of casting. She never feels like a real person—then again, few of the characters in these stories do—but it is enjoyable to watch her navigate this mystery alternately with lightness and bite.

But the characters aren’t really fleshed out enough to match the apparent magnitude of their individual traumas, and the mystery itself is a bit of bore. The pacing wavers right up to the final reveal, which is played more as a resigned admission than a triumphant “a-ha!” Although, that’s probably appropriate for a mystery that finds every character wrapped in guilt and grief, and an investigation spear-headed by a detective who has himself lost hope in humanity. Poirot may come out of A Haunting in Venice technically back in the game, but his state of mind—and the perspective, therefore, that he brings to his cases—remains uncertain. And that’s why, despite the mixed results of each of the Poirot movies he’s made so far, I kind of hope that Branagh keeps on making them.

A Haunting in Venice is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 103 minutes. Rated PG-13.