‘A Haunting in Venice’ review: Branagh takes Poirot into dark depths

MANILA, Philippines – If you’ve been following the Kenneth Branagh series of adaptations of Agatha Christie novels featuring detective Hercule Poirot, you’ll think that, hopefully, this third installment would be a fun one. Its predecessor, packed with much more star power, failed to deliver the entertainment of Murder on the Orient Express.

However, if you missed the first two movies, then this is that rare, incredibly forgiving trilogy that doesn’t demand an understanding of lore, timelines, and other complications so that you can appreciate a movie.

When we meet world-renowned detective Hercule Poirot in A Haunting in Venice, he is retired from solving mysteries. Then he is pulled into a Halloween party, a seance, and eventually a murder that needs solving. 

It’s an all-too-familiar setup, but, if I were to be honest, I’m more than happy about something like this. There’s some comfort in familiarity, and also excitement in seeing how a filmmaker and cast use this frame. After all, I could just as well be describing any other mystery here. But it’s not about how different the setup is.

For my tastes as a viewer, I don’t care either if I can guess the culprit or if I’m picking up all the clues. What I relish in something like this is how the details unfold. I enjoyed the revelations, the way that we learn about characters, and, most importantly, all the ways that the movie tries to throw me down different paths to lose me.

Taking all that into consideration, A Haunting in Venice worked for me. In the two hours or so that I was following Poirot, I enjoyed the different tracks we took. With brisk pacing and sharp writing – underpinned by solid performances by the whole cast – this is a movie that will be enjoyed by mystery fans and people who are trying to watch a fun film that doesn’t necessarily fall into the genre stuff that makes up a lot of theatrical releases.

Not that it’s free from genre – it’s far from it. As the title so clearly implies, the film employs elements of horror and the supernatural, alongside the traditional mystery tropes. The film’s trailer sells the horror elements a little too much, which might scare away viewers who aren’t in it for the scares. This has some jump scares, sure, and it has some gruesome sequences. However, on the whole, it’s still more decidedly a mystery than a horror film. 

I actually feel it’s even more on the humor spectrum than it is on horror. The horror elements can get creepy, but that horror is often deflated once a jump scare passes. Toward the end of my screening, it seemed that the audience had figured out the formula and were laughing with each scene that would build horror only to pull the rug out. 

This movie works because it has the elements in place to succeed. Branagh does a fun Poirot. Michelle Yeoh’s turn as a Medium is fiery, and when she goes toe to toe with Poirot, it’s something to watch. Then, as Poirot interrogates the various suspects, the dialogue flows and snaps. 

I did feel that this movie was doing a little bit too much in terms of camerawork. I understand that we’d get various techniques to heighten the horror elements and to make it feel as if Poirot is sort of lost between worlds in certain points. I quite liked the Dutch tilts, as well as some of the Steadicam work.

However, there were times when the use of techniques actually drew attention to itself, and I guess those were moments when Branagh as director wanted to make sure that things were visually interesting. He kind of threw in as many techniques as he could here. Some of it worked to enhance the feel of the film, while some of it didn’t for me. 

However, I prefer a movie that allows its filmmakers to show off their technical chops and ambitions in being visually arresting. I’ll take this any day over much of the humdrum shooting or overeager shaky camera that passes for visual language. This is just a quibble. 

On the whole, A Haunting in Venice is an entertaining two-hour mystery movie. I’m not sure yet if it’s necessarily memorable, but it is fun and hits all the marks. I want there to be more mystery movies, and I think any fan or viewer interested in the genre will want to catch this.  – Rappler.com