A Haunting in Venice Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dorman, Jude Hill, Kelly Reilly, Ricardo Scamarcio, Camille Cottin, Emma Laird, Ali Khan, Rowan Robinson.
A Haunting In Venice marks Kenneth Branagh’s third appearance as Hercule Poirot, the famous moustachioed Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie in 1920. The film is loosely based on a late Christie novel Hallowe’en Party, written in 1969, one of her lesser known works which has never previously been adapted to the screen, although it was filmed for the television series Poirot, which starred David Suchet. The script has been written by Michael Green, who also adapted both Murder On The Orient Express and Death On The Nile for Branagh.
It is 1947 and Poirot is living in Venice and enjoying his retirement. He ignores the pleas from locals to assist them. He is lured out of his comfort zone by bestselling mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a character seemingly loosely based on Christie herself, who invites him to attend a séance at the palazzo of renowned diva Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly, from Yellowstone, etc). The grieving woman hopes to connect with her dead daughter, who drowned a year earlier in mysterious circumstances. The séance is conducted by Joyce Reynolds (Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh), a famous psychic, who was also the last person to be convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Poirot hopes to debunk the séance, and despite initially uncovering some artifices he ends up having to confront events that he cannot logically explain. But then Reynolds Is killed and Poirot sets out to solve the murder. As well as trying to solve the murder of Reynolds Poirot is forced to confront some of the demons of his own past.
Among the guests attending the séance are Ferrier (Jamie Dorman), a war affected doctor, and his precocious young son Leopold (Jude Hill), Vitale (Ricardo Scamarcio) a former detective who works as Poirot’s bodyguard, Rowena’s deeply religious housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin, from Call My Agent!, etc) and Reynold’s slightly creepy assistant Desdemona Holland (Emma Laird).
A Haunting In Venice taps into Poirot’s vanity and arrogance, but there is more humour here than usual that alleviates the overall sombre mood of the material. Branagh brings a world-weary style to his Poirot, who has been left cynical by all he has witnessed over the past couple of decades, and he captures many of his idiosyncrasies.
Branagh’s stylish direction creates an unsettling atmosphere with slamming doors, gusts of wind blowing curtains, the flickering lights, the pouring rain, all evocatively shot in muted colours and off-kilter angles by Haris Zambarloukos, whose atmospheric cinematography enriches the production. Branagh works in a number of clever jump scares at times, and this gives the claustrophobic material the vibe of a horror film set in a haunted house rather than that typical drawing room environment familiar to much of Christie’s mysteries. The production design from John Paul Kelly is also quite effective. Unfortunately, the pacing is a little pedestrian. And for fans of Christie and the mystery genre it is a little too easy to pick the killer before Poirot does.
Branagh has assembled a solid cast to flesh out the characters, including Dorman and Hill, who both played a father and son in his semiautobiographical drama Belfast. Yeoh is not given much to do in a fairly thankless role, while Fey brings a nice line in sardonic humour to her role.
But while this Venice set thriller aims to recreate some of the same unnerving mood and tension of Nicholas Roeg’s classic Don’t Look Now, it falls well short of that film.
★★☆
