YNOT at the Movies

Acclaimed filmmaker Kenneth Branagh is a great storyteller, if he tells his own stories, such as those in "Belfast" (2021) which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. But somehow, he is obsessed with retelling the stories by Agatha Christie whose central character is the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. After directing "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017) and "Death on the Nile" (2022), here comes his third adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries: "A Haunting in Venice" (USA/UK/Italy 2023 | 103 min.). With a signature curly mustache and a heavy fake and distracting Belgian accent, Kenneth Branagh once again plays the acute sleuth to solve a crime of murder, when he should have been telling compelling stories of his own.

Instead of the romantic and sunny images of Venice, the film opens with the city's eerie look right after World War II in 1947. It's where the famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) now lives in a self-imposed exile from solving crimes.

When an old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a bestselling American writer who needs a breakthrough hit, comes to invite him to investigate a haunted house, Poirot agrees and arrives at a spooky stone mansion owned by an opera singer Rowenda Drake (Kelly Reilly), where she hosts a Halloween party for the local orphan children.

It's also the one-year anniversary of her daughter Alicia's death at this palazzo, and Rowenda invites a few guests to hold a séance to communicate with Alicia's spirit. Besides Ariadne and Poirot, other guests include the séance's host Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) who claims to be able to communicate with the dead, and her assistants Nicholas Holland (Ali Khan) and Desdemona Holland (Emma Laird), who are siblings that both survived the war. Also present at the séance are Rowenda's family doctor Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his smart son Leopold (Jude Hill), among a few others.

After the séance, one of the guests is murdered. As all of Agatha Christie's stories go, everyone becomes a suspect, and Poirot is back to business to find out the murderer. As the night goes deeper, more bodies pile up. But one thing is certain—Poirot is going to solve the mystery by day break.

Even though it's well-known that the perspicacious Poirot is Belgian, Kenneth Branagh should not have to rely on speaking in a heavy fake accent to make his character convincing. Quite the contrary, the accent is very distracting and superficial in all three of his adaptations. He tried to make a horror film, but the only scary element of the film might be the liberally used super loud sound effect.

The film is based on Agatha Christie's novel Hallowe'en Party. The story is not quite as engaging as it is in her other books. This film adaptation only makes the story even less gripping and less convincing.

Tina Fey can truly be a synonym for comedy. It's puzzling casting her in a role who is almost never funny, although she does a decent job playing the American novelist.

Let's hope this is the last attempt for the talented Kenneth Branagh to adapt Agatha Christie's stories, so he can get rid of that fake mustache and the accent for good and tell some compelling stories of his own.

"A Haunting in Venice" opens on Friday, September 15, 2023.