Perhaps the greatest strength of A Haunting in Venice is the obscurity of it’s source. Hallowe’en Party is not one of Agatha Christie’s better known works. Where Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None are household names, this late Poirot mystery (written during that time when Christie was quite publicly fed up with the character and was writing his stories reluctantly) is not particularly notable beyond it’s tie-in to a popular holiday. And yet it proves a good fit for an instalment in a film series that has had its own turbulent relationship with the iconic Belgian sleuth.
For as much as Kenneth Branagh clearly loves playing Poirot, he doesn’t seem all that satisfied by the traditional contours of the novels he is working off of. He can’t quite shake those blockbuster instincts or his particular ideas about Poirot’s history and inner demons. And the mixed reception to this take on the character seems to have not passed him by. I wonder if that awareness accounts for why he selected this title (a title he changed) for his third outing -one that relatively few people knew of, which would permit his Poirot to exist more freely, and permit Branagh the director to alter the tone. Of course I’m sure the budget tightening had something to do with it too (the film cost 30 to 40 million less than Death on the Nile). But whatever the reasoning, it resulted in something fairly remarkable: a Branagh Poirot mystery that is generally quite thrilling.
And it comes as much if not more out of Branagh’s methodical creative and artistic choices as it does the tenets of the story itself. In collaboration with returning screenwriter Michael Green, he leans openly into aesthetics of horror -and the movie was marketed (perhaps misleadingly so) on those aesthetics. Branagh has not directed a horror movie since his disastrous Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994, full of ill-conceived creative liberties and alienating stylistic choices. And in many respects, he engages in the same kind of whims for A Haunting in Venice. But he’s grown a lot in thirty years, he’s found a way to make his technique-centric approach to horror work. He still makes use of wide fish-eye lenses for example, but less clumsily and to a more deliberate purpose than was often seen in his earlier gothic adaptation. In fact he utilizes a lot of interesting visual devices, including Dutch angles, refracted images, a body-mounted shaky cam, and one great panoramic sequence with himself as the only immovable figure. They may seem disparate, but each of these contributes uniquely to the eerie atmosphere that is a critical to the films’ preoccupation with the paranormal.
Christie, ever the rational author, never gave credence to the paranormal -her murders were always carried out by people, no matter how elaborate or inexplicable. And Branagh is careful not to tread on that authorial hallmark, while still finding ways to tease supernatural thrills. I won’t reveal how he does it narratively, but it’s very appropriate. The movie’s pervading theme is the conflict between supernatural and rational, particularly on Poirot’s mind, as this mystery defies reason at each turn. The context is a high-end séance at a Halloween party in Venice, in the palazzo where a young woman had died mysteriously. For Poirot, in anti-social retirement, faithless and cynical -presumably due to the events of the previous film, his involvement is purely a sceptics vendetta. Belief in the paranormal is often equated to religiosity here and Poirot is the dirtbag atheist at hand to bitterly stamp it all out with facts and logic. The character trajectory that Branagh has taken Poirot on has been confusing in the past -particularly in Death on the Nile with it’s heavy focus on his tragic romance backstory. That returns here, but is coloured by the detective’s weary cynicism -and while it still doesn’t come close to earning the weight that Branagh intends to give it, the melancholy plays better in this situation and feels more organic with the style of the mystery. It helps that Branagh seems to be drawing at least a little intentionally on Don’t Look Now -another story set in Venice about people haunted by a personal tragedy. Branagh even borrows that film’s drowning motif and the imagery to one of its final shots.
The custom with these movies is to fill out the cast of suspects with big name actors, though there are notably less celebrities in A Haunting in Venice than Branagh’s last two episodes (perhaps prompted by the “cursed” cast of Death on the Nile). But this too rather fits circumstance and tone. Plus there are still a few major stars Branagh nabbed in Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh -hot off her Oscar win. Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly is here, as is popular French actress Camille Cottin. And Branagh reunites his Belfast father and son, Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill -once again as a father and son, where the formers war trauma causes him to lean emotionally and psychologically on the latter’s unexpected (and somewhat unsettling) maturity. The most interesting of this ensemble is Fey’s Ariadne Oliver, an American mystery author and one of Poirot’s recurring sidekicks. Fey’s performance is a bit hokey –she employs a very Katherine Hepburn-style transatlantic accent- but the character is written in a manner that it’s hard not to interpret her as a stand-in for Christie herself, especially in how she bases her plots on Poirot’s cases and has come to secretly resent him. This lens is especially intriguing in light of where the story goes with regards to her.
Because the mystery itself isn’t particularly compelling and doesn’t have a really distinct hook like the last two, Branagh puts a lot more effort into the film’s atmosphere. And it’s handy to have a recent movie like The Haunted Mansion to compare it favourably to with regards to things like the ghostly appearances and the séance. Ostensibly, both movies utilize their horror inoffensively, but Branagh has more of an interest in mood and motifs. Yes, he utilizes the occasional easy jump scare, but he imbues in those moments a stylish or psychological weight that lingers. He takes the “haunting” part of his title seriously –what better articulates the realization that an apparent stowaway child is a spirit (though Branagh does have a tendency to use quick flashbacks to spell out his conclusions, still not trusting his audience enough to remember story points). There is one moment where a combination of the style, music (by the increasingly more impressive Hildur Guðnadöttir), editing, and storytelling on a single horror beat gave me a full body chill that didn’t subside for a full minute. I can’t recall a Branagh film, or a murder mystery film in general, that has done that before.
A Haunting in Venice could be accused of not taking advantage of its’ unique setting and context –for as nicely as the piazza is shot it can get stale in the long dark. Several of the characters still have threadbare personalities that their actors aren’t particularly capable of making interesting –especially those less experienced actors made to share screen-time with Branagh and Michelle Yeoh. And for its various divergences, it sticks fairly closely to the classic murder mystery formula, without much surprise where plotting is concerned. But all the creative, technical, thematic, and aesthetic choices surrounding these mere narrative facets are far more rich and intense and bolder than expected, well worth recommending the movie over. And it bodes well for this minor franchise Branagh has so eagerly been attached to. If he can maintain this sharpness, maybe it won’t be Poirot’s final case.
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