A Haunting In Venice (2023)
As those who have read this Substack page over the past year know, I generally avoid reviewing anything from Disney or any of their holdings for various reasons. However, I do make exceptions now and then.
When the topic is Hercule Poirot, exceptions are a must. Well, they’re also a must when the movie is free, but that’s a topic for another day.
A Haunting In Venice is another installment in the informal Guys Who Aren’t Allowed To Retire In Italy Universe (also looking at you, Equalizer 3). Poirot is living quietly in post-war Venice, and even though people line up outside his door hoping he’ll help them solve their mysteries, the daily delivery from the local pastry shop is the only thing allowed in. As far as Poirot is concerned, God doesn’t exist and mysteries are over for him.
Enter mystery author and obvious Christie stand-in Ariadne Oliver, who invites Poirot to a seance at the home of Rowena Drake, a famous opera singer whose daughter apparently committed suicide by jumping into the canal. Since a rather infamous medium named Mrs. Reynolds is going to be there, Ariadne won’t take no for an answer, and she and Poirot make their way in while a kids’ Halloween party is going on.
Naturally, the seance is more than everyone bargained for, and after one of the characters winds up violently dead, Poirot puts the whole house on lockdown. Conveniently enough, there’s a whopper of a storm going on outside and no one can leave anyway, but it adds to the atmosphere.
This movie is beautifully shot, with the outdoor scenes looking like paintings. We really get a lot of the unique character of Venice, a city that is slowly decaying and sinking, always a little bit slimy and dank while also strangely elegant.
Kenneth Branagh is very much an actor’s director, and the entire cast shines here, especially Tina Fey, who seems to be holding back the funny but not too hard. It’s a good thing, too, because a story like this needs restraint or it gives away too much, and in an Agatha Christie story that isn’t to be done. Suitable plot exposition must be dropped like the proverbial bomb, with everyone guessing how much each person knows and when did they know it. Nothing makes sense until everything does.
Next to Peter Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh is my favorite Poirot. There’s always a tendency to make this character a little too greasy and strange, and unlike other Poirots we could mention, it’s pretty safe to say Branagh’s detective doesn’t wear a hairnet over his mustache when he goes to bed. He’s just earthy enough and just debonair enough to be accessible.
For all its strengths, the movie relies a little too much on jumpscares from start to finish even though it doesn’t need to. I don’t know if the filmmakers thought the story needed more punch; after all, Hallowe’en Party is considered Christie’s most mediocre mystery, but after a while the jumpscares felt a wee bit eye-rolling and I stopped caring.
The movie also piles on the post-war trauma, which, yes, would have been a thing, but it felt like it held the characters back from developing further. There’s not much one can do when a character spends most of their time hunched over and trembling.
In its favor, though, A Haunting In Venice has a relatively short run time compared to other Christie films, which keeps everything moving fairly nicely. It might not be Christie’s best mystery, but it gets the job done.
A Haunting In Venice is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: A-
Principal Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, Dylan Corbett-Bader, Amir El-Masry, Ricardo Scamarcio, Fernando Piloni, Lorenzo Acquaviva, David Menkin, Camille Cottin, Kelly Reilly, Jude Hill, Emma Laird, Stella Harris
Directed by Kenneth Branagh.
Written by Michael Green and Agatha Christie (novel, Hallowe’en Party)