Mystery Watch: A Haunting In Venice (2023)

Watched:  01/06/2024

Format:  Hulu

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kenneth Branagh

Selection:  Me

At first, a third Poirot movie directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh was something I looked at with perhaps a bit of a jaundiced eye.  I'd enjoyed Murder on the Orient Express well enough, but Death on the Nile felt a bit self-indulgent and just didn't manage to ever keep me terribly engaged.  But, this installment had at two members of the cast who were a sell (Michelle Yeoh and Tina Fey) and that was enough to get me to not dismiss the movie.

A Haunting in Venice (2023) received stunningly little promotion (Jamie reminds me that this was released during the strike, but even for that, seemed it barely got a whisper) and was dropped in the busy horror Halloween season, where I think it was immediately lost in the shuffle.  While I understand the thinking - the movie takes place on Halloween night and is about a seance and ghosts - the trailers didn't really make *anything* particularly clear or compelling.  And Poirot, a character folks know from PBS spots, is not famous as a ghost chaser or breaker.  So one could assume before even starting the movie that this detective, who is the consummate deductive genius, would be disproving ghosts and ghouls, and it all felt a bit ill-conceived as a Halloween flick.*

The title itself seems an attempt to tie the movie into the "A Haunting" series of films and trick the youths into watching it, and while there are worse fates, it's kind of odd.  But it also loses the tie to the actual novel, moves it to Venice from England, and can make you wonder what tax incentives Italy was offering for filming there?  Or if this was a "postcard picture" for all involved.  And, btw, from a quick glance, this story is about 65% new, using only the raw materials of the novel, Hallowe'en Party.

But, I'd heard from Simon that the movie was pretty solid, and then two more folks (hi Mike and Laura) watched it within a day of each other and said that, yes, it was worth a watch.  And, with the promise of Michelle Yeoh, we found it on Hulu.

As Michael had promised, the movie drops the languid and luxurious cinematography of the prior films and goes straight up classy horror film - a curious change as the movie is shot by the same DP as prior Poirot outings, Haris Zambarloukos.  Also on hand is editor Lucy Donaldson, who has some experience cutting at least one horror film, but who really manages to piece the thing together.  No mean feat as the movie takes place in a single home over a single night, with multiple floors, low-light and minimal cues for keeping you in space and time.  Of course, this is a haunted house film, and so some of that is deeply intentional, but I was never left thinking "I have zero idea what is happening".

The cast is not *quite* as all-star as prior outings, at least to American audiences.  Fey is known and an A to B-Lister, and Yeoh is riding the ever-crescendoing career trajectory she's got in place.  Jamie Dornan is just famous enough in the US to make you say "wait... I know that guy!" when he shows up.  But I didn't know too many others.

The movie finds Poirot on the other side of WWII, living in retirement in Venice.  He's seen too much death and has checked out of the detective game when an author, Ariadne Oliver (Fey) who is the *why* Poirot is now famous, shows up, asking for his assistance.  She's attending a seance for the spirit of a dead young woman who drowned in the waters of Venice, falling from the balcony of a famously haunted palazzo.  The girl's mother is an opera singer (Kelly Reilly), who is also allowing an orphanage to throw a Hallowe'en party in the house prior to the seance.  Oliver can't figure out how the medium (Yeoh) is performing her miracles and wants Poirot's steel-trap mind on hand - and maybe she can spawn another book along the way.

We also get a doctor suffering from "post-war fatigue" (Dornan) and his 10-year-old son, Leopold.  A superstitious/ very-Catholic housekeeper (Camille Cottin), and a pair of Romani (I am sure the original book just said "gypsy", which is now a slur, kids) young adults who have been working with Yeoh's medium.  

SPOILERS

This one kept me locked in.  There are a few factors here:  I like a good haunted house movie.  I like a good locked room mystery.  Michelle Yeoh being way better than she needed to be.  And tone.  

I don't want to talk about the mechanics of the mystery too much, but it's right to acknowledge that this one unfolds much like other closed-room mysteries in its way, but *feels* like a different genre for much of the runtime.  You can't escape the notion that Poirot will break the ghosts eventually, and the film leans into that idea immediately and to good effect.  And saves some bits for the denouement.  But overall, it's filmed as a horror movie, and carries that tone until the epilogue.  It's not a secret why the precocious Leopold is seen carrying and reading Poe.

Death on the Nile had the unfortunate condition of needing to acknowledge that it's been done well and famously, and Branagh may have been caught in a hopeless situation of needing to not stray from the novel or prior movie.  But the odd thing about that movie was that Branagh also inserted a storyline for Poirot himself, and it felt bolted on.  I get that he wanted the mystery to not be the sole thing - he wanted the solving of the mystery to be seen as something that pushes Poirot forward as a character.  It's something to keep it fresh for him as a director and performer, but, man.  It just distracted from the core mystery in the last film.

In this movie, the integration of Poirot's personal issues feels far more organic, and the metaphor (and possible reality) of ghosts haunting that need closure to rest is woven in seamlessly.  With a cast of limited size, and with fairly well described characters - for the purposes of a locked room mystery - we get a fairly rich picture.  Our ghosts interweave the story from all angles.

My biggest complaint about the movie is one I'm not sure is an actual problem.  

SUPER SPOILERS

The unpacking of the mystery reveals that Rowena, our opera singer, was responsible for the accidental death of her daughter after poisoning her daughter to keep her under her control and away from a potential suitor.  I literally thought the actress playing Rowena was maybe 32, so I was half-way through the movie before I figured out the daughter wasn't a child of about 10 when they kept showing an older character in flashbacks of the drowning.  I guess the actress  Kelly Reilly was mid-40's when this was filmed, so a daughter who was supposed to be in her late teens or early 20's is fine.  And I cannot blame Kelly Reilly for being youthful in appearance. 

As with prior Poirot installments, when something didn't *quite* add up in his "here's what happened" bit, there's a Columbo-ish "and, by the way" bit there at the end that gave me fist-pump a bit when we learn Leopold was the blackmailer.  

I would boo how little Yeoh we got in the movie, but let's all be grateful for whatever Michelle Yeoh we can get.

END SPOILERS

I dug it.  A good start to the year of movies.  I don't mind if Branagh wants to keep pushing these out for a while, especially if he's going to challenge himself the way he did here.

*ironically, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, was a huge believer in spiritualism, and participated in many seances