As the credits roll on A Haunting in Venice, the audience is treated to B roll footage of the titular city’s skyline. A conciliation of aesthetics, no doubt, from the filmmakers to the audience as there hasn’t been much time for sight-seeing in the preceding 100 minutes of the film. The bulk of the movie’s runtime is instead devoted to cold, lonely, isolated sets as the characters combat what seems to be an aggressive, vengeful spirit. The two queries at the forefront of these ludicrous events are essentially the same question – is the culprit of these incidents human or paranormal? On the same note, what genre have the participants found themselves in?
That’s a mystery for Whiskers Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) to solve. His endeavor begins when he’s contacted by an old friend (Tina Fey), who invites him to a séance where a young opera singer intends to speak with her recently deceased daughter. I don’t know. If you’re Poirot, you must have nothing going on if this sounds like a good time to you. He must be knee-deep in books and crossword puzzles if a party where we attempt to zoom call some dead stranger seems like a vibe. At the séance, Poirot encounters Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), a psychic who has convinced Rowena Drake (and Drake’s estranged Fiancé) that the attendees can contact the deceased.
However, Whiskers outright rebukes Joyce’s authenticity, displaying a total disbelief in the supernatural. His arrogance gets so out of pocket that it leads to the film’s goofiest moment. Imagine you’re Poirot – at a party where death and unexplained catastrophes have taken place, where a murderer might be just around the corner. Does this sound like the appropriate time to go, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go bobbing for apples.” It ends badly. Great timing, stupid.
Poirot’s defiance is evidence of a man at a crossroads. Forever mourning his lost love and coming to terms with the violence and death he’s witnessed, the man’s optimism is diminished. He’s had a front-row seat for what people can turn into at their worst while also having to endure such quotes as “And enough CHAMPAGNE… to fill the Nile!” He’s been through a lot, resulting in turmoil juxtaposed with the wry curiosity and enthusiasm of a young boy who may also have a knack for this detective thing. Poirot sees a mirror of a past self in the kid and perhaps the inspiration to pull through his most unusual challenge yet.
A Haunting in Venice is the best of these recent adaptations of Agatha Christie’s notorious novels. Branagh, once again in the director’s chair, uses the ambiguity and flexibility of Hallowe’en Party (1969) to play with the audience’s form and expectations. The film intentionally makes you question what’s ‘real,’ what’s tangible, and what may be an invasion from another space and time into our plane of existence. This only works because Branagh is taking the material so seriously, even more so than his previous efforts in Murder on the Orient Express (2017) & Death on the Nile (2022). The atmosphere is dark and melancholy, with the comic relief kept to a minimum. The only one who pokes at the illusion is Tina Fey, who sometimes seems like she just walked off the set of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She’s like that one person who’s a little too loud at a funeral.
The film’s look is a bit Gothic and very intimate. One of my favorite shots is seeing from Poirot’s POV as his suspects recount their alibis, the camera whipping over to spotlight the next testimony. There are multiple expertly timed jump scares, which go off like gunshots; a good sound system is a must for this movie. In setting the table for the story, the film stumbles upon a critical distinction – the difference between ‘cursed’ and ‘haunted.’ While similar, to be haunted is to be vexed by a particular place, whereas a curse follows you. Our protagonist is the cursed man tasked with solving a haunting, but he must overcome one to resolve the other – it’s all or nothing.
Or perhaps it’s more complicated than that – maybe what we consider to be cursed is just unfortunate timing. Maybe what we brush off as hearsay is, in fact, living, breathing phenomena and evidence of just how much we don’t understand about the universe. A Haunting in Venice questions a lot but also answers a lot and has fun while doing it. It’s a clever diversion, one in which that highlights ‘whodunit’ isn’t the only thing worth asking.
