A Haunting in Venice Review

A Haunting in Venice marks the third time Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in a Poirot film. This time he adapts Hallowe’en Party and aims to make a leaner film.

It’s 1947 and Hercule Poirot (Branagh) has entered retirement and lives in Venice. His bodyguard, Vitale Protfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio) ensures no one comes close to the famous detective and offers him cases. This changes when Poirot’s old friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) tells him of a Halloween séance being hosted by Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), an opera singer and grieving mother. They plan to expose the medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) as a fraud. However, whenever Poirot goes somewhere, death and mystery follow.

The previous film in the Poirot series, Death on the Nile was met with a lukewarm reception. I was negative towards the film because I thought it was bloated and excessive because of the run time and the overuse of special effects. I was also critical of Death on the Nile for feeling too artificial, because it was shot on a sound stage in England rather than on location. A Haunting in Venice seemed to be made to be the opposite of Death on the Nile. A Haunting in Venice had a shorter runtime of 103 minutes, the whole film was set in Venice, and most of the mystery took place in a rundown palazzo. It was a grittier and grimy film compared to the previous two films, which were more glamorous affairs.

A Haunting in Venice was a more downbeat film. The first shot was of a seagull attacking a pigeon and showing Poirot living in his self-imposed exile. This downbeat tone extends to the characters. Poirot was at a low ebb, because of his self-imposed exile and melancholy he carried for his deceased wife. He was a sad figure compared to how he was. Ms. Drake suffered from the loss of her daughter, Dr. Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder having served in the war, and the Holland siblings were refugees. The palazzo had a dark backstory about it being an orphanage during the plague and people who lived in the palazzo suffered from the ‘Children’s Curse.’

A Haunting in Venice had an eerie atmosphere. The palazzo was dark, dank, and rundown – a great setting for a haunted house story. There were plenty of shadows to hide in and the raging storm outside meant there were a lot of sounds. There was some great creepy imagery when a shadow puppet show told the story about the palazzo’s origins, and the death of a character was effectively gruesome for a film with a 12A rating. Poirot was a rational sceptic despite supposed supernatural events going on around him and his sanity was questioned when he saw things he couldn’t explain. At my local cinema, the trailer for A Haunting in Venice was shown before numerous horror films.

A Haunting in Venice had a strong start, but the film did fall into the Angela Christie formula when the death happened. Poirot took charge, locked everyone in the palazzo so no one could escape and he had to question everyone. After the previous two films, A Haunting in Venice felt the same old, same old. A Haunting in Venice had the same writer as the previous entries, so he had stuck to the formula that he felt worked. A Haunting in Venice comes out after the success of the Knives Out films, which were able to spice up the murder mystery genre. Tina Fey did liven the film up with her American bravado.

Poirot’s story in A Haunting in Venice oddly felt like the Sir Ian McKellen film Mr. Holmes. That film was about an elderly Sherlock Holmes living in retirement after his final case ended in failure. Both films were about aging famous detectives living in exile, rejecting every case offered, and a shadow of the man they used to be. Both films even feature beekeeping as a major plot point. Poirot had observational skills that would rival the Victorian detective, which was, fun to watch.

The third film in the Poirot series aimed to change things up with its look and tone and these were welcome. However, the film couldn’t overcome the overly familiar story and characters to make it stand out.