A Haunting in Venice

3 outta 5

A Haunting in Venice is the third installment in Kenneth Branagh’s directing and starring series as Hercule Poirot, after Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. The star wattage is decreased considerably each installment; first movie cast is absolutely stacked and by the third not so much. This is still a murder mystery but added touches of gothic supernatural horror make it feel distinct. Branagh has done a few horror movies in his rather long resume so it’s interesting to see him use that style in a Poirot mystery. And the twists turn out to be genuinely dark and surprising which fits a movie with the word “Haunting” in the title.

In the late 40s, world famous detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is living a solitary life in Venice, protected by his security, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio). Poirot isn’t enjoying solving mysteries as years of discovering death and duplicity have worn down his soul. Arriving unannounced is his associate, writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) who wants her muse Hercule to accompany her to a séance to see if he can disprove it. Medium Joyce (Michelle Yeoh) is trying to find the spirit of a dead woman at the house of her mother, Rowena (Kelly Reilly). Arriving to witness are the maid, Olga (Camille Cottin), a doctor, Leslie (Jamie Dornan), and his son Leopold (Jude Hill), and the dead woman’s former love, Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen). Hercule quickly uncovers Joyce’s two assistants, Desdemona (Emma Laird) and Nicholas (Ali Khan), thinking he has proven this is a charlatan’s tomfoolery. Unfortunately, the medium Joyce ends up dead and now there is a mystery afoot as Hercule locks the doors and vows not to let anyone leave until the killer has been exposed.

Branagh’s Poirot moustache is basically its own supporting character. At the end of Death on the Nile, Poirot shaved his moustache out of mourning for his former love, but the moustache is back here. That is probably because Branagh would have to wear facial scarring makeup without the moustache. Branagh’s character usually supplies good quips, but he seems more dour here, which tracks with him having been exposed to murders throughout the years. He says he would love to believe in the supernatural, as it would prove the existence of God and somehow all the death would make sense, but he cannot let his logical mind accept something unreal. Logic always wins, like during an intense conversation with Joyce a hanging chandelier crashes, and he dismisses it as water damage. Or when Joyce has a dramatic reveal of her psychic powers, he instantly shows she is getting help from assistants hiding in the chimney.

There are a lot of spooky moments, like the initial Halloween party at the creepy house features a chilling shadow puppet show of the dark, plague history of the location where young patients were left abandoned by the doctors and nurses. There’s a bit when Poirot goes bobbing for apples which immediately turns terribly wrong. The reveal of exactly how Joyce died is very gothic. Poirot sees visions of the victim that doesn’t conform to Poirot’s logical views. As in every Poirot film, he finds himself at the climax explaining what happened and some of the dark reveals of how the victim died are twisted.

Fey plays the writer, Oliver, who seems like an obvious stand-in for the novel’s author, Agatha Christie. But even in the 1940s setting, Fey as a sarcastic writer feels like Liz Lemon from 30 Rock. She also has an old timey accent which Fey pulls off although it is a bit weird to hear Fey doing an accent that isn’t supposed to be a dopey SNL impression. This film features two veterans of Branagh’s previous film, the Best Picture nominated Belfast, Hill and Dornan, once again playing son and father. Although this time, it features Dornan’s father character heavily traumatized by events he witnessed in World War II and Dornan gets in an effective monologue about trauma. Hill’s Leopold is a wise beyond his years child cliché but he sells it well. Allen as the former love of the deceased girl is the most suspicious as he parades around talking about how he’s now engaged to a rich woman, basically the same as Armie Hammer’s character from Death on the Nile which makes Allen’s character doubly suspicious.

Yeoh as the Medium gets to act rather freaky, especially when she talks in the voice of the dead girl. Her two sidekicks have a tragic backstory of their own and Laird and Khan get in a good scene where they are both interviewed and offer up subtly different explanations about their history with Joyce. Cottin as the maid basically cries a lot about how freaky the house is, as does Reilly as the mother, but both get more interesting as the movie goes on.

There are a lot of freaky visuals in A Haunting in Venice, with repeated images of bird-like plague masks and odd angles of parrots and ghostly children appearing and disappearing. Like a lot of good detective meets supernatural stories, it straddles the line between plausibility and fantasy. While it is difficult to believe the ghost story is real, the film does a good job of just making it seem like it could be true.