By Justin Nordell
I was quite surprised when it was announced that A Haunting in Venice would be Kenneth Branagh’s third outing as director/star of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries (following the successes of 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express and 2020’s Death on the Nile) as an adaptation of Hallowe’en Party. Seeing as how Poirot has nearly fifty stories to choose from in Christie’s bibliography, adapting the one with the most child murder seemed like a bold choice to make into a film. Having read Christie’s Hallowe’en Party novel, I’m here to report that not only is there significantly less child death than the text, but frankly… virtually nothing is the same, save for a few character names and the Halloween setting. But is this a good thing or a bad thing? That all depends on if you have any attachment to the work of Agatha Christie or are just here to see Kenneth Branagh twirl his mustache and solve a murder for a third time.
It’s 1947 in Venice, and notorious sleuth Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh, Much Ado About Nothing) is so inundated with requests to aid in solving mysteries that he has to hire a bodyguard Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio, John Wick 2) to keep them at bay. Enjoying his self-imposed retirement, Poirot’s relaxing day is interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Ariadne Oliver (Upper Darby’s own Tina Fey, Mean Girls), a mystery writer who has received a great deal of fame from her thinly veiled novels based on Poirot’s exploits. Ariadne’s latest obsession is a previously incarcerated fortune teller that, by the best she can tell, may be the real deal. She needs Poirot’s gift of observation to try and sniff out if she’s a fake and whisks him and his bodyguard off to a Halloween Party where the medium will be conducting a seance later that night.
The party is being thrown by famed opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly, “Yellowstone”) at a palazzo, accessible only by boat, that is said to be haunted by the ghosts of children who had been entrapped there ages ago. So naturally, Rowena is throwing the Halloween party for all the local orphans (morbid) and a few select guests, including World War II PTSD sufferer Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan, Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar) and his precocious son Leopold (Jude Hill, Belfast). As the party winds down, the guest of honor, psychic Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All At Once) and her assistant Desdemona (Emma Laird, “Mayor of Kingstown”) arrive. Rowena’s daughter Alicia died a year ago, having fallen from the balcony in her room and drowned, and the seance is being held in the hopes of being able to contact. Once housekeeper Olga (Camille Cottin, House of Gucci) lets in Alicia’s former fiancé Maxime (Kyle Allen, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things) the seance begins with a number of strange occurrences that even Poirot can not at first explain. But when Mrs. Reynolds reveals that Alicia did not jump to her death but was in fact murdered, Poirot locks the partygoers in the palazzo and proceeds to investigate with the help of Ariadne. Will he discover the murderer of fair Alicia (of course) and will all of the guests make it through the night (of course not)?
A Haunting in Venice, for those uninitiated with the work of Agatha Christie, will most likely be a delightfully spooky whodunit, similar to the single location mysteries of Murder on the Orient Express’ train and Death on the Nile’s ship. Yet I must warn Christie fans that the massive changes to Hallowe’en Party are not all good. Screenwriter Michael Green, emboldened after successfully adapting Orient and Nile (keeping in mind both films stay close to not only the source material but previous film adaptations), has chosen to keep very little of the original novel to tell a tale of Poirot’s beliefs being challenged when presented with the supernatural. That’s all good and fine, and I am all for taking source material as jumping off points to tell even better stories… but this one just simply isn’t better. The central mystery is similar (a young adult falling off a balcony and drowning has much more popcorn appeal than a 13 year old being drowned in a bobbing for apples tub), and I will fully admit that the additional murders before the final reveal are quite compelling, but by the time the killer(s) revealed, it’s all rather predictable in a way that Christie never was… and whatever you do, don’t try to go back and unpack what happens because some motivations fall apart. To make matters worse, the characters are almost all thinly written compared to the dynamic inhabitants of Christie’s novel, but ardent fans will have a VERY specific frustrated bone to pick with Mr. Green. He has woefully misunderstood that the character of Ariadne Oliver was Agatha Christie’s avatar to self-insert herself in the world of Poirot… and his writing of the character is downright dreadful. Thankfully Tina Fey imbues endless charm and class to a poorly written role, making her the best Ariadne she could and reminding us she’s a star no matter what genre of film she’s in. But Agatha Christie is most likely rolling over in her grave.
The only positive change is the setting, as the titular Venice provides a deliciously shadowy backdrop for this haunting, and Branagh’s direction is his best yet for this series. I hope you enjoy A Haunting in Venice, but personally I just can’t comprehend Green’s choices and ultimately it soured my enjoyment of the film more and more like one of Ariadne’s beloved apples rotting. By the time the credits rolled, the only mystery I was intrigued by was: why?? Sorry Michael Green, but you’re no Agatha… perhaps… well, for lack of a better phrase: stick to the script?
Grade for Agatha Christie Fans: C-
Grade for Everyone Else: B-
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