Hercule Poirot hunts ghosts in ‘A Haunting in Venice’

After the all-too-classic but elegant ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ from 2017 and the gruesome ‘Death on the Nile’, Hercule Poirot returns for a new adaptation of the queen of crime novels.

Kenneth Branagh is clearly in love with the work of Agatha Christie and has chosen to be both in front of and behind the camera to modernize the investigation into the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the best detective of his time. He does this by developing the passive side of his character and at the same time making films that are reminiscent of murals. Yet this detective trilogy relies mainly on the star cast, who kill each other in every part.

The film is based on Agatha Christie’s novel “The Snow White Party” and takes us to the year 1947, where we find ourselves in a dilapidated Venetian palace. Hercule Poirot tries to lead a peaceful retirement in post-war Venice, despite the many requests for assignments he receives. On Halloween evening he is invited to a séance in the palazzo. A singer wants to contact her recently deceased daughter and summon her spirit.

He was supposed to be part of this paranormal experiment to see through the deception, but it turns out to be a murder. As usual, our mustachioed detective locks down the building to unmask the killer. But this time he must confront his sharp mind with the supernatural, as the house seems to be haunted.

While the previous part, ‘Death on the Nile’, a very colorful film, offered a digital uniformity to recreate Egypt of the 1930s, ‘A Haunting in Venice’ offers a real and aesthetic baroque background. This time there is no artificial-looking panorama as in his previous two adaptations, but the real Venice, with a wonderful sense of the macabre.

The action takes place on a dark Halloween evening and shows Venice in a very special guise, which gives the whole thing the flair of a horror film. The Doge’s City is staged with its mist-shrouded lagoons and Gothic architecture. The crumbling palazzo where the film is set is a former orphanage with a dark past. The tiled floors and high ceilings are swept away by a storm on the night of the investigation. Everything about the film exudes the spirit of fantastic cinema, the production of which sometimes borrows from the greats of the genre.

The director does not hesitate to experiment with striking effects by exaggerating his perspectives: he tilts the camera and plays with spectacular close-ups and inverted images. These productions sometimes seem grotesque, but are justified by the genre: a ghost story, regardless of whether the haunting thought is imaginary or not.

The director uses the fact that all the characters are in an enclosed space to corner the characters. The spectators are startled by the slamming of doors, children’s voices and other surprise effects. The film does everything you would expect from a house that spits.

Branagh is a master of cabaret and has a tendency to overdo it. Yet the Shakespearean actor has probably learned from his mistakes because, in contrast to the previous parts, he delivers a more nuanced, less cartoonish and therefore less annoying performance.

This time there are slightly fewer stars than usual among the numerous leading actors: Michelle Yeoh, who recently won an Oscar, is the leading actress, who, as an elegant and eccentric medium, is at the center of the investigation. There’s also Camille Cottin as the mysterious housekeeper to see. She proves to be the most interesting character and brings a welcome French touch to the line-up of British-American actors.

While ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘Death on the Nile’ weren’t particularly convincing, ‘A Haunting in Venice’ turned out to be the least bad of the three films – or the best, depending on how you look at it.

The spooky atmosphere is an excellent disguise for a script that sometimes doesn’t work very well. Like any investigative story, the film is only as good as its climax. This consists of revealing the killer and his motives in a monologue in which the pieces of the puzzle are put together in the presence of the suspects. Only the suspects here are extremely exaggerated, so the solution is relatively clear if you like reading crime novels.

The result is a forgettable film from a forgettable trilogy, whose appeal lies mainly in its horror atmosphere. ‘A Haunting in Venice’ remains a fun Saturday evening entertainment that you can experience like a filmed Cluedo, discovering that the perpetrator was Colonel Mustard in the library with the chandelier.

“A Haunting in Venice” has been showing in German-language Swiss cinemas since September 14.