With few films in cinemas, other than a handful of exceptions like Barbie
and Oppenheimer, failing to make money, the one genre that seems to buck
that trend has been horror films. So for Kenneth Branagh and the studio
executives it must have seemed like a good idea for Branagh’s next outing
as detective Hercule Poirot’s to be a horror film.
Sadly A Haunting In Venice is neither a great Hercule Poirot or horror
film.
Based upon the novel “Hallowe’en Party” by Agatha Christie, A Haunting In
Venice, thanks to a confusing and terribly slow story, seems much longer
than its relatively short running time of 1 hour 43 minutes.
Set in 1947 Poirot (Branagh) has now retired from detective work. Spending
time in his garden and being minded by a bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio)
he’s brought out of retirement after being approached by Ariandne Oliver
(Tina Fey), an author of mystery books who wants Poirot to attend a séance
where she wants him to prove that the psychic (Michelle Yeoh) is a fake.
As is the way with all Agatha Christie thrillers a starry cast of
characters are also invited to the séance. There’s the famous opera singer
(Kelly Reilly), whose hosting the party in her palatial palazzo, and who
want’s the psychic to contact her dead daughter Alice. There’s the devoted
house keeper (Camille Cottin) as well as Dr Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) whose
there with his son (Jude Hill) and suffers depression after his experiences
in the war.
It’s no spoiler to say that, as always happens when Poirot’s about, someone
gets murdered.
Branagh tries to throw in a supernatural twist to the plot but it never
really works as, like Poirot, we, the audience know that ghosts don’t
really exist.
Most of the cast are under used with some disappearing for long periods of
the films running time whilst Branagh tries to fill the first twenty
minutes with as much of the characters back stories that it becomes all so
slightly confusing.
With hindsight Branagh should have stopped at Murder on the Orient Express
as the film series seems to be running on diminishing returns. Death on the
Nile, with all its CGI, wasn’t great but it was a whole lot better than
Branagh’s attempt at horror.
