The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C
Following Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, A Haunting in Venice is Kenneth Branagh’s third go-around adapting Agatha Christie’s mystery novels featuring detective Hercule Poirot. Refreshingly, Branagh has opted to adapt one of Christie’s less famous Poirot novels this time. Based on the 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party, the source material isn’t as famous as Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, nor does it have the cinematic baggage of a previous, highly successful film adaptation like those two novels. A blend of murder mystery with the trappings of gothic horror, A Haunting in Venice is more unique and, in some ways, more ambitious than Branagh’s prior Poirot films. However, its anemic pace and fundamentally uninteresting mystery largely override the film’s style points.
Picking up years after the events of Death on the Nile, Poirot is now retired and living in Venice. He’s approached by a mystery novelist (played by Tina Fey) to come to a séance being held on Halloween and prove that the psychic (played by Michelle Yeoh) is a fraud. The séance is held at the home of an opera singer to communicate with her daughter Alice, who seemingly committed suicide the year prior. The psychic channels the spirit of Alice, who says that one of the attendees (there are 12 people there) murdered her. Shortly after the séance, the psychic is killed and Poirot must deduce if the house is actually haunted by the ghost of Alice or if one of the guests committed the murders.
The fundamental flaw of A Haunting in Venice is that it hinges on the threat of an actual haunting, but we know that it’s based on a novel by Agatha Christie, the most famous writer of murder mysteries that has ever lived. The supernatural elements never gain traction with the audience because of the source of the story. While I haven’t read Hallowe’en Party, I never questioned that the killer would be revealed as a living human. It’s odd that the film goes so hard with this angle (the trailer amusingly portrays the movie as an outright horror film, which will likely result in some irritated audience members) when it is so clearly a farce. As a result, the film’s attempts at horror are ineffective. And look, I’m sorry if you consider this paragraph to be a spoiler, but then you must be the kid that always thought each new episode of Scooby-Doo would finally have a real monster and not just some dude with a wildly eccentric real estate scheme.
That the supernatural elements ring hollow is a shame because the film does nail the aesthetics of an old haunted house movie. Ironically, despite not being a horror film, A Haunting in Venice features the gothic atmosphere that is sorely lacking in The Nun II. The setting is suitable foreboding, with the house providing plenty of dark corners and musty rooms for our characters to wander through in search of clues. The production design and locations evoke thoughts of classic ghost stories like The Haunting and The Innocents. In a way, the film is like the original House on Haunted Hill, but only if the twist in Haunted Hill was painfully obvious.
On the technical level, the only distraction is the downright bizarre cinematography of Haris Zambarloukos, who also shot the two previous Poirot films and is a frequent collaborator with Branagh. Here he seems determined to make the film feel otherworldly by using weird camera angles that detract from the story because they make the audience actually notice the camera angles. Such distinctive camera work can certainly be artistically beneficial if they have a payoff, if only an aesthetic one, but the work here doesn’t convey a coherent aesthetic or serve the plot in any discernable way. More than anything, it diminishes the impact of scenes by constantly drawing attention to the fact that these are actors and there is a camera in the room.
The mystery itself, once you disregard the pseudo-supernatural elements, is pretty mundane and the pace is plodding. Murder mysteries should have a slow and methodical pace, but this often turns into a grind and I could easily see audiences becoming bored with it. The red herring is obvious and the identity of the killer isn’t too hard to figure out either, though the method of the murder is very difficult to figure out if you don’t posses a very specific bit of culinary knowledge. While not bad, it is all a ho-hum affair once you look past the horror trappings and it never has the “huzzah!” moment that one gets when arriving at the resolution of a great Agatha Christie story.
As with Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, I want to like this movie more than I did. It’s fine, but I want more from adaptations of the greatest mystery writer that’s ever lived. I would also like to see Miss Marple, Christie’s other recurring detective character, get a shot at major movies like this. It’s worth noting that I think this movie is just a middle-of-the-road C, but I saw this with two friends and it’s a rare occasion when I was the most lenient toward a movie. One friend gave it a D and the other was having none of it and gave it an F. As for the F, I wish that friend then came to see The Expendables 4 with me….more on that soon.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Haunting_in_Venice#/media/File:A_Haunting_in_Venice_(2023)_poster.jpg
