Each time Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot leaves the home, somebody dies. In 2017 he hopped aboard the Orient Categorical and somebody died. In 2022, he took a visit down the Nile, and somebody died. He ought to most likely solely go locations by bicycle. Agatha Christie wasn’t going to jot down Homicide on a Penny Farthing, was she?
Considerably appropriately, the Hercule Poirot of A Haunting in Venice has had the identical thought. He spends his days locked up in his Venice condo, refusing to see anybody or take any instances. He’s someplace between retired and a recluse, and somewhat than discover that irritating, he’s having fun with the quietude.
Barrelling into that quiet is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey, taking part in just about the identical character as she does in Solely Murders within the Constructing). She’s a journalist who has a deal that Poirot can’t probably refuse. She has discovered a mystical psychic who can do issues, really feel issues, that no different clairvoyant can. She desires Poirot to hitch her at a seance, carried out by the psychic (Michelle Yeoh in a short however fascinating position), in order that he can decide whether or not she is, actually, a charlatan. There’s no homicide right here: only a downside to be unravelled.
Oh, Kenneth, it’s best to know higher. He agrees, hops right into a gondola and attends the seance, hosted at a crumbling mansion owned by Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone). Rowena is a well-known singer who deserted her craft as soon as her daughter died. She desires to make use of the seance to contact her daughter, to be together with her one final time. As anybody would do when coping with one thing so personal, she invitations most of Venice. So, in comes Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Doonan), the daughter’s American fiancee Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen) and a bunch of different potential suspects.
It’s not a lot of a spoiler to say that the seance goes haywire and somebody dies. As a result of that is Poirot and Agatha Christie. No one questions Poirot, the little death-magnet. The charlatan-shaming pivots to a homicide case, as all of us guessed it will. Besides, Poirot doesn’t fully ditch his authentic intention. That query of whether or not the supernatural exists burns within the background.
A Haunting in Venice, as you could have guessed from the synopsis, is a little bit of a departure from each Homicide on the Orient Categorical and Demise on the Nile. There’s a distinctly decrease star-wattage, for one. The primary two movies have include their very own curses, as Kenneth Branagh employed actors who would instantly go on to have real-life controversies. You most likely wouldn’t get Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and Russell Model collectively for a film within the trendy age. Maybe that’s why he appears to be dialling down the star-power of A Haunting in Venice. Apart from Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh and Tina Fey, maybe, that is extra of a low-key affair.
However the largest change is tone. A Haunting in Venice is simply as a lot a horror film as it’s a whodunnit, with Poirot seeing and listening to all kinds of spooky goings on as he goes in regards to the case. The director of images takes his lead, veiling the lens in darkness as we transfer about dilapidated structure. The home looks like it’s going to tumble into the canals at any level.
A Haunting in Venice is extra profitable as a horror film than it’s a homicide thriller. Actor-director Kenneth Branagh proves adept at making a claustrophobic house inside the mansion, and the scares are extra psychological than they’re jumpy. So long as you avoid the query of whether or not they’re really supernatural – this being a Poirot film, you recognize what the reply goes to be – the insidious moments are unsettling. It may be an entertainingly spooky watch.
It might simply be us, however whereas the shift into horror was welcome, the homicide thriller itself didn’t have interaction us as a lot – no less than not compared to the sooner motion pictures. A big downside is that we simply didn’t get as invested within the characters, and the horror pivot is perhaps the rationale. A lot time is spent twitching curtains and listening for whispers that we solely get a scene or two with every of the suspects. We neither cared about them, nor knew sufficient about them.
However the true killer is the telegraphing. There have been two supposedly inconsequential moments that we had been alleged to ignore, however they so clearly screamed “it is a clue!” that we rolled our eyes and jotted them in our notebooks. They each incriminate the identical individual, and it doesn’t take a lot to place two and two collectively to make “assassin!”. We desperately hoped we had been mistaken, however no – it was precisely who we thought. How they did it’s one other matter – there’s a explicit logical leap that we are able to’t start to fathom – however who appears trivial.
Nonetheless, it will have been really easy to take a unique route. Kenneth Branagh might have rifled by Agatha’s library and chosen one other traditional (that is solely loosely based mostly on a brief story known as Hallowe’en Get together). He might have waltzed by Hollywood’s elite and picked and chosen his forged. As an alternative, he’s pivoted in one other route solely. He’s drawn on a wholly completely different style, letting much less well-known actors take the stage. The end result may not be as glitzy or fairly as compelling as a thriller, however we’d argue it’s more practical.
The place does Poirot go from right here? A mediocre field workplace suggests this is perhaps his final outing. However there’s a tinge of disappointment to that: with A Haunting in Venice, it lastly felt like Poirot was going someplace fascinating.
