A Haunting in Venice

Or: Ghosts in Grey Cells

In a radical departure from his first two Hercule Poirot mysteries (the flash but brittle Murder on the Orient Express, and the equally flash by more substantive Death on the Nile) impresario Kenneth Branagh repots Agatha Christie’s The Hallowe’en Party from a sleepy English village to the slowly drowning canals and houses of Venice (I’m looking forward to the Murder of Rodger Ackroyd in Hollywood.) Despite the spritz up screen writer Michael Green, pieces both the plot and grace notes of the original onto a new and enticing story, that will ruffle few feathers.

The Great Detective (Branagh), retiring to the perfumed necropolis, is enticed from his solitary pleasures by Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey, an American remake of Christie herself), who invites him to examine the work of medium Joyce Reynolds (Michael Yeoh) who has come to a famously cursed household, at the bequest of a famously cursed opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelley Reilly) who wishes to contact her deceased daughter. Naturally, the seance Goes Wrong, and as the bodies start piling up, and Poirot begins to experience strange phenomena. Is it a head wound, or suggestion or something more sinister at work.

Those who remember The Hallowe’en Party as “The One with All of the Child Murder” may de alarmed by the appearance of Judah Hill (who played Branagh’s youthful avatar in Belfast) who returns as creepily precocious Leopold, which he suffers through admirably. Other fine performances include Camille Cottin as ill-starred housekeeper Olga Seminoff, Yeoh herself as more than a match for Poirots prying and Branah’s presence. And Fey, is both bonding and scheming, an underplayed counterpoint and a reminder that Chrsitei herself wanted to kill off her creation.

Far from being Flash, A Haunting in Venice is luxuriant, wallowing in the beautiful murals and unnatural angles of its haunted house. It’s jump scares are more flinch inducing than throw-your-popcorn anywhere and its overt horrors are just ridiculous enough to settle the pulse, while keeping the unsettling in movie magic (a shadow puppet, a closing door, a bloodied hand bursting through a ribcage). It’s still a spectacle, but the unlike its predecessors, there’s a spirit of something present.