Poirot 3.0 — A HAUNTING IN VENICE

By Maribeth Thueson

After directing and starring in the serviceable Murder on the Orient Express and the lackluster Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh is making his third outing as detective Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice, which is loosely based on Agatha Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party. Luckily, the third time’s the charm, and A Haunting in Venice is his best and most entertaining Poirot film yet.

Poirot and his mustache (the mustache gets its own trailer, the mustache has the highest salary, the mustache is the real star of the film — insert your own joke here) are retired and living in Venice. An old friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), invites him to a Halloween seance at the palazzo of former opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) with the twin hopes of jolting him out of his inactivity and revitalizing her novels, which are based on Poirot’s exploits.

Drake’s daughter had previously died at the palazzo in mysterious circumstances, and Drake is desperate to contact her. The magnificent but crumbling palazzo, which is rumored to be haunted, makes an atmospheric setting for what is essentially a horror film crossed with a murder mystery. The other seance attendees include a doctor suffering from PTSD (Jamie Dornan), his preternaturally mature son (Jude Hill), the housekeeper (Camille Cottin), and the medium, the “unholy” Mrs. Reynolds, played by the excellent Michelle Yeoh.

Yeoh’s medium is the key to the story. She is so believable that the characters, the movie audience, and even Poirot must question whether her possession by spirits during the seance is real instead of the usual charlatan’s tricks. But even after Poirot debunks her methods, the spookiness continues, and when one of the attendees is murdered Poirot locks them all in the palazzo for the rest of the night while he tries to discover who the murderer is.

There’s just one problem: Poirot can’t trust that what he’s seeing and hearing is real. The sense of distortion is amplified by the askew framing and fish-eye lenses used by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos.The palazzo is dark and full of shadows, and a windy rainstorm threatens from outside. Yes, it’s the stereotypical dark and stormy night, and every element in the movie has been used before, many times, in many other movies, but they gel together perfectly here, and despite some sagging in the middle, the adherence to formula works.

The characters are only lightly sketched, but the cast gamely plays their necessary parts. Fey provides some fresh pragmatism, and Branagh allows Poirot to have some vulnerability instead of his usual certitude. Yeoh is disturbingly eerie, and when she erupts violently in the seance, it’s both surprising and spine-tingling.

In fact, the same could be said of the film itself. The fall season brings with it a slew of horror movies, but for those who aren’t interested in slashers, evil nuns, or possessed pre-teen girls, A Haunting in Venice provides the ideal fare — a mystery with just a touch of scariness.

Originally published at https://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on September 26, 2023.