A Haunting in Venice
The creaky formula of the whodunnit is wheeled out again by Kenneth Branagh which even the atmospheric shadows of Venice cannot salvage.
Hercule Poirot does get around. Jerusalem, Istanbul, the Orient Express, London, Cairo, the Nile… And now that haunted houses are all the rage, the amateur sleuth pitches up at the home of a horde of troubled souls in Venice, where the spirit of a recently deceased girl has joined the throng. However, this time the actor Kenneth Branagh follows not in the footsteps of Albert Finney or Peter Ustinov, but wields his Belgian accent in a story previously only filmed for television (with David Suchet behind the moustache), adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party.
The year is 1947 and the wounds of World War Two are still much in evidence. As Poirot points out, “battle scars are not always of the body.” Poirot has retired to the Italian city to nurse his own wounds and is invited to join a motley bunch of potentially homicidal suspects for a séance on All Hallows' Eve. The star attraction is Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), a noted medium with an impressive array of tricks up her sleeve, hellbent on contacting the soul of Alicia Drake, who recently drowned in the canal outside the very building at which the séance is to be conducted. But Poirot, a natural sceptic, informs the stellar spiritualist: “I am uncharmed by your kind,” minutes before a chandelier crashes to the floor.
One guest, the former constable Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), tells Poirot that, “in Venice, we say every house is haunted – or cursed.” Indeed, Venice has provided the setting for many a macabre entertainment and Branagh, the director, lays on the atmospherics with a broom. Drawing on his propensity for tilted camera angles and fisheye lenses, Branagh displays the sort of cinematic flimflammery that Poirot might dismiss as the vaudeville of the clairvoyant.
Since the enormous popularity of Rian Johnson's Knives Out and its sequel Glass Onion, the whodunnit has recently gained an unprecedented shot in the arm, raising the bar exponentially. Alas, Branagh’s third stab at the genre has set it back a decade or two. Saddled with shrill performances from Tina Fey and Kelly Reilly, it provides neither characters of any interest or even a set-up in which to believe. It wears its genre like a jacket from a charity shop, with an occasional trope sewn into the lining (such as an unwarranted jump scare and a thoroughly deceitful vision). Ultimately, then, it’s a sombre, dreary affair, which the occasional decent line of dialogue and the fabulous shots of Venice really cannot salvage.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Dornan, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio.
Dir Kenneth Branagh, Pro Kenneth Branagh, Judy Hofflund, Ridley Scott and Simon Kinberg, Screenplay Michael Green, Ph Haris Zambarloukos, Pro Des John Paul Kelly, Ed Lucy Donaldson, Music Hildur Guðnadóttir, Costumes Sammy Sheldon, Sound Tomas Blazukas and James Mather, Dialect coach Marina Tyndall.
Kinberg Genre/The Mark Gordon Company/TSG Entertainment/Scott Free Productions/Agatha Christie Limited-20th Century Studios/Walt Disney Studios.
103 mins. UK/USA/Italy. 2023. UK and US Rel: 15 September 2023. Cert. 12A.
