Venetian Minds
Kenneth Branagh steps beyond the confines of traditional whodunit and adds a shot of horror. Mysterious indeed.
A haunting in Venice
Director: Kenneth Branagh • Writer: Michael Green, based on the book by Agatha Christie
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Camille Cottin, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kelly Reilly, Kyle Allen
USA / UK / Italy • 1hr 43mins
Opens Hong Kong September 14 • IIA
Grade: B
A Haunting in Venice is, in many respects, a horror film. Let’s call it mystery-horror. Loosely based on Agatha Christie’s lesser-know Hallowe'en Party, Venice is the latest step in what seems to be actor-director Kenneth Branagh’s mission to adapt every single one of Christie’s 75 novels for the screen. Ken, dude, what happened to Shakespeare?
Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but after re-making Murder on the Orient Express, a tall order given the legendary status of the original 1974 version, and following it up with the messy Death on the Nile – hamstrung by bad CGI because COVID prevented location shooting, the (perfectly cast) Armie Hammer cannibal scandal, and Gal Gadot – Venice seems to have all its ducks in a row. It doesn’t have to match a beloved existing film, there are no weirdos in the cast, and Venice’s canals are as enticing as ever, particularly without the irritating tourists all over them. And it has great potential for creepiness, and offers great potential to play with the mystery form, like Rian Johnson did in Knives Out, and Branagh himself did in the 1991 stealth classic Dead Again. So why is dark the first word that comes to mind for A Haunting in Venice? Check that: It’s solid enough, but it doesn’t linger. Then again, it’s Christie. It doesn’t have to.
The story starts in 1947, and our famous detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is living a sort of post-war exile in Venice. He’s not taking cases, not solving murders. When brassy American crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey, doing her best ’40s movie dame, calling Poirot Hercules) muscles past Poirot’s dedicated manservant/bodyguard (and former cop) Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio) and asks for his help revealing a fraud – and help with her next novel – he reluctantly agrees.
The ususal suspects
Anyone who’s seen a Christie whodunit – and the hundreds of films that have followed in her racist footsteps – will know what comes next. The players gather, this time in a Venetian palazzo, a one-time orphanage now “haunted” by the ghosts of children left to die years before by ice cold doctors. The hostess, broke-ass former opera star Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), has donated her space to charity for local kids in the wake of her own daughter Alicia’s suicide. After the kids’ Halloween party, Rowena hires renowned medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) to conduct a séance to ease her grief. Also attending: housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin); the shell-shocked Drake family GP, Dr Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his Chucky-esque son Leopold (Jude Hill); Hungarian refugee siblings Nicholas and Desdemona Holland (Ali Khan and Emma Laird), Reynolds’ assistants; and budding chef Maxime (Kyle Allen), who was also once Alicia’s fiancé.
So far so Christie. The characters weave and connect in unexpected ways, there are dark secrets, unexplainable curses and hidden agendas, and when Reynolds – the fraud Oliver and Poirot are after – winds up impaled on a Renaissance statue everyone becomes a suspect. The game is afoot.
Whether or not you’re in it to guess who indeed done it is irrelevant. The joy (if you find them joyful) of a murder mystery is in the getting there. Figuring out if this torn photograph or that dead sister along with Poirot – or Sherlock Holmes, or Easy Rawlins, or Father Cadfael, or Detective Dee – is half the fun, and returning writer Michael Green – who also wrote Logan and Blade Runner 2049 (though also Green Lantern) – mixes up the formula just enough to keep things interesting. Venice has an entirely different tone from the Very Proper British Mystery feel of the two films; it’s literally and figuratively darker than its frothier predecessors. Branagh and his favourite DOP Haris Zambarloukos lean hard into horror trappings (changing speeds, Dutch angles, hard shadows) and the palazzo’s inherent Gothic vibe for the visuals. As a complement, Poirot and Ferrier are both haunted (ha!) by the World Wars, Maxime is the sole voice of reason suggesting Alicia was struggling with her mental health, and as a Christie avatar, Oliver brings a sense of modernity to the atmosphere – social, commercial, artistic. Subjects far from frothy. Sometimes the mishmash works, sometimes it doesn’t, but when it does it’s largely down to the oppressive atmosphere Branagh creates, the enigmatic nature of Venice itself, as well as a playful performance from Yeoh that really gets the story moving. Of the three films so far, traditionalists will probably stump for Express as the standout, but Branagh may have found his groove in Venice. He’d to well to stick with Christie’s deep cuts. — DEK
*A Haunting in Venice was reviewed during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, it wouldn't exist.