Review of “A Haunting in Venice” (2023)

For our traditional Saturday pizza and bad movie night, we watched a recent flick, an updated Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Plot:

Famous Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), who emigrated to England, has lost his faith in God and retired to post-WWII Venice, no longer investigating, despite the long line of people seeking his help. Instead of a valet, a bodyguard accompanies him in the person of former police officer Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scarmacio), who keeps the unwashed masses at bay, sometimes rather forcefully.

An old friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), arrives and invites Poirot to a party and séance at a palazzo said to be haunted. Ariadne is a writer whose last few books haven’t done well. A famous medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), is coming at the behest of the owner of the palazzo, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a famous opera singer. Rowena’s daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson) died by suicide.

In the spirit of Halloween, Rowena Drake is hosting children from a local orphanage for goodies, magic lantern shows of dancing skeletons, and a silhouetted puppet show, telling the gruesome story of how the palazzo came to be cursed. It was once an orphanage. When the Black Plague struck, the doctors and nurses abandoned the children they were supposed to protect. So now, their ghosts take their vengeance on doctors and nurses…

“But none of you are doctors or nurses, are you?” the puppeteer (David Menkin) asks. “So, let’s enjoy!”

When Poirot asks if such a horrible story isn’t too much for children, Ariadne tells him. “Scary stories make real life a little less scary.”

After the children go home, the séance begins. The medium is good, convincing even Rowena that she speaks in the dead Alicia’s voice. She throws in the tidbit that daughter Alicia did not die by suicide; someone murdered her.

Poirot exposes the medium as a fake, and she dies a gruesome death before the night is up.

Thoughts:

The film is based on Agatha Christie’s 1969 Hallowe’en Party but bears little resemblance to the book. It adds horror, a taste—a possibility—of the supernatural, and the richness of a setting in a medieval Venice palazzo. It deals with the horrors of war. While many scenes are darkly lit, these posed no difficulty in seeing the action.

Poirot uncovers a side plot of skullduggery in addition to the murders that is not strictly a red herring. Someone attacks him. Is it an attempt on his life or a case a case of mistaken identity?

Before her death, Alicia was experiencing mental illness and claimed to be hearing the ghosts of the children in the house. Did she indeed die by suicide, or did someone kill her? If so, for what purpose?

Another child, the precocious Leopold Ferrier (Jude Hill), claims to see and speak to the ghost children. Leo cares for his father, Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan), a man broken by his experiences during the liberation of the death camps.

Even Poirot hears singing and sees a child trying to tell him something. When he turns, the child disappears. Was the child ever there?

The film is moody and haunting in the figurative sense. Scrambled or not, Poirot’s little gray cells see through to the truth of the things to point the finger at the bad’un. The answer is logical without being obvious. The bad’un gets their comeuppance in a scene that leaves open the possibility of vengeance from beyond the grave—or was it just a trick of the night, the storm, and Poirot’s eyes?

I liked this flick, as gloomy as it was. I didn’t mind the open-ended questions about the supernatural.

The film won the 2023 Hollywood Music In Media Awards (HMMA) for Best Original Score in a Horror/Thriller Film for composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. The music is fantastic.

This is too recent a work to download for free, but it’s available online for rent or purchase, and if you’re lucky, your local library will have a copy of it.

Title: A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Directed by
Kenneth Branagh

Writing Credits
Michael Green…(screenplay by)
Agatha Christie…(based on the novel Hallowe’en Party by)

Cast (in credits order)
Kenneth Branagh…Hercule Poirot
Dylan Corbett-Bader…Baker
Amir El-Masry…Alessandro Longo
Riccardo Scamarcio…Vitale Portfoglio
Fernando Piloni…Vincenzo Di Stefano
Lorenzo Acquaviva…Grocer
Tina Fey…Ariadne Oliver

Released: 2023
Length: 1 Hour, 43 minutes
Rated: PG