Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

How do these movies keep getting made? We’re on the third of Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot films, the wildly uneven series about Agatha Christie’s greatest detective. Murder on the Orient Express promised the return of A-list ensemble whodunits, but its lackluster energy made Knives Out the true revivalist. Death on the Nile only delighted because of its mess, and now A Haunting in Venice tries to stabilize matters with a touch of the mystical. Ghosts in a detective movie? Turns out, a little horror is a welcome addition to these cozy whodunits.

Lavish style is as important to these movies as its mystery, and a waterlogged Venice drips with flourishes. Most of the action takes place at a crumbling palazzo, rumored to be haunted, on All Hallows’ Eve. Water bashes at its base and roof, dripping through walls and ceilings onto priceless adornments. Everywhere you look has an old-fashioned oddity to take in, a delight of set design that lets you feel the uneasy dampness.

Within the home lives a mother in mourning. Her daughter was lost in a mysterious incident, and a seance is being conducted to resolve the matter. Joining her is the family doctor carrying ghosts of his own, the doctor’s precocious son, a superstitious housekeeper, the daughter’s disgruntled ex-fiance, Poirot’s bodyguard, and Hercule Poirot himself, drug there by his author friend to witness a mystic that might be the real deal. 

The house’s lore is established using a nifty bit of shadow puppet storytelling: during the plague sick children were locked inside to die. Their ghosts are allegedly responsible for the daughter’s death, and they’re ready to take more victims.

The arrival of the mystic and her assistants round out the rogues’ gallery of potential murders and victims, and when the doors close for the seance to begin, so does our locked-room mystery.

As with all the Poirot films, there’s the initial murder to solve and a web of interweaving mysteries. Poirot isn’t interested in the case at first, having retired to save himself from the pain of people’s cruelty. This is all the work of a person, after all. Ghosts are hogwash to him, but that doesn’t stop Branagh from reveling in some good old-fashioned creepiness.

Plot questions and red herrings come at the usual steady cadence for these films, but whenever Venice begins to drag under its repetitive nature the lilting voice or spectral figure of a child breaks up the methodical trek. Poirot is having a time with this case, and Branaugh is making us stick with his tortured psyche.

None of the scares are intense. A loud crash early on is the most jump-worthy moment, and Branaugh’s overreliance on pushy camerawork sometimes gets in the way of simple, creepy scenes. But the chill of the house is always present, giving the film a delightful sense of unease.

The cast is also uneasy, a real mixed bag of performances that don’t coalesce around a single tone. Tina Fey as the writer pushing Poirot to investigate is far too pushy, as is Kyle Allen as the ridiculously suspicious ex-fiance and Kelly Reilly’s one-note mourning as the mother. Shining in their moments is Camille Cottin as the housekeeper who believes the house’s lore and young Jude Hill as the requisite real boy lurking everywhere he shouldn’t be (also, Michelle Yeoh never goes wrong). Branaugh, of course, has the meat of the story as the troubled Poirot, and his uncertainty about the situation makes the character all the more interesting. This isn’t an infallible Poirot. This is a Poirot unsure of himself, carrying things the house seems to be feeding on.

Ghost stories never have to be literal. The things going bump in the night could be the tricks of a greedy medium or a tree branch amplified by memories that torture your mind. There’s also the possibility they could be real, that the soul of an abandoned child is running down the hallway. Whatever the cause, the question remains how the characters will react when faced with the truth. Because something is bumping around in that old palazzo, lots of things, really, and Poirot must find them to ease his troubled mind.

This extra question, not just of who did what when, powers A Haunting in Venice into the series’ most interesting territory. It’s still not dreadfully serious. Predominantly, it’s cozy fun, even when the ghosts do come out to play. But the light tingle in the spine is the perfect touch.

Release: available now in theaters
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writers: Michael Green
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Kelly Reilly, Tina Fey, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Riccardo Scamarcio, Michelle Yeoh