September 10, 2023
In 1957, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) had retired from detective work and moved to reside in Venice. One day, best-selling American mystery novel writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) invited him to go with her to attend a Halloween night party at the palazzo of opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). The house was rumored to be haunted by the spirit of Rowena's daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson), who had recently committed suicide.
Poirot came with his ex-policeman bodyguard Vitale (Riccardo Scarmacio). Also at the party were the family doctor Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his precocious young son Leopold (Jude Hill), the housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), and Alicia's ex-fiance Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen). The guest of honor was the celebrated medium Madame Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), who was to conduct a seance to "call" Alicia's soul.
This film is the latest of three film adaptations of Agatha Christie mystery novels directed by Kenneth Branagh, after "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017) and "Death on the Nile" (2022). This new one is based on a relatively lesser-known Christie mystery "Halloween Night" published in 1969. Branagh again stars as renowned detective Hercule Poirot, his version with a distinctly long and ridiculous handlebar mustache.
As the title suggested, Branagh told the story of "A Haunting in Venice" with a generous dash of ghostly horror and suspense. There was a lot of jerky and shaky camera movement here, sudden cuts to various odd angles and viewpoints, accompanied by eerie reverberating sound effects, from ominous typing noise, splashing water, and fluttering of wings. Here, the usually pragmatic and skeptical Poirot was having visions of a little girl no one else sees.
The setup of the murder mystery was trademark Agatha Christie. A disparate group of people gather together, this time to witness a seance. However, an unexpected murder occurred during a violent storm, so everyone had to be locked in the location till morning when the police arrived. At first, there seemed to be no obvious suspect, then later, everyone seemed to be a suspect. To further confuse things, there was even an attempt on Poirot's life.
Branagh was very passionate and credibly intelligent and perceptive as Poirot. However, his co-stars played unlikable characters whom we barely knew or cared out, the same problem with the first two films. The setup before the first murder took so long, even taking time to tell a legend a children's curse or showing kids bobbing for apples. Even then, the final reveal felt like it happened too suddenly, with Poirot figuring things out from out of thin air. 6/10.
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