If you have read my reviews of the first two takes on Agatha Christie’s famous Hercule Poirot master detective character, directed and starring Kenneth Branagh as the Belgian sleuth, then you will know that thus far I have been underwhelmed.  Murder on the Orient Express (2017) seemed too convoluted and Death on the Nile (2022) was little better.  These, along with A Haunting in Venice, share some elements.  They each have the main character, Hercule, of course, but they all come to the same point where he presents his evidence and the mystery is revealed.  If there is so much continuity between them, why is it that I found this one slighting more engaging?  You will have to read on to find out.

It is Halloween, 1947, a good time for A Haunting in Venice.  Hercule has retired from his work as a detective in the title city, doing his best to ignore the many requests of people wanting the help of the celebrated crime solver.  He is helped in this regard by Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), a former poilice officer turned bodyguard.  There is one person that is allowed to approach Hercule, and that is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey).  She is a successful author, gaining recognition for her stories based on Hercule’s exploits.  She comes to report the work of Mrs. Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).  She is a medium, and Ariadne claims to have attended one of Mrs. Reynolds’ seances and seen things that cannot be explained.  Hercule is, as to be expected, incredulous, but nonetheless accepts an invitation to the house of renowned opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly).  Rowena has summoned Mrs. Reynolds to her home because the performer wishes to communicate with her deceased daughter, Alicia Drake (Rowan Robinson), who had seemingly jumped from the top floor of the house and drowned.  The ceremony is to take place after a Halloween party for neighborhood children has concluded.  There are a number of others in attendance, and they will be discussed as needed.  Alert as ever, Hercule spots one trick early on as Nicholas Holland (Ali Khan), one of Mrs. Reynolds’ assistants, is hiding in the chimney and causing letters to be typed on a typewriter, making it look like the medium has otherworldly powers.  Not long thereafter, though, Mrs. Reynolds seems to go into a trance like state, spinning about on her chair and speaking in the voice not her own.  Everyone is shocked, though Hercule remains unconvinced, voicing his doubts to her minutes later.  She dismisses his words, saying that they will not see each again before walking out of the room.  This proves prophetic as within an hour she will be dead, the victim of being pushed over a balcony and impaled on a sculpture.  Moments before this happens, the killer had tried to murder Hercule, but left before it proved fatal.  Those who had been spooked by the séance are prepared to believe a supernatural explanation for these occurrences.  This home, like apparently every domicile in Venice, is cursed, this one by the souls of children who had died in the place.  While Hercule insists on incredulity, he begins hearing, and eventually seeing, things only present to him.  It looks to take a physical toll on him, somewhat hampering the precise methodology he pursues in catching the person responsible for the crime.  That process involves locking everyone in one location and questioning them until the culprit is revealed.  Nobody is happy about having to do so, not the least those who think it madness to be thought of as a suspect.  Still, the storm raging outside does much to keep them in place.  Going through each of the interviews Hercule conducts would be tedious.  I will say that he is assisted by Ariadne, who is hoping to turn these events into a new book and revitalize her career.  As such, I will stick to the revelations that are pertinent to the overall plot.  The need to solve the case is given a boost when World War II veteran and doctor, Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan), is found dead in the music room, a knife in his back.  Things start to come together for Hercule when he finds half of a picture of Alicia and Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen).  He had once been engaged to Alicia, but had broken it off when he discovered that she did not have as much money as he hoped.  This along with a volatile temper as seen when a fist fight breaks out between Dr. Ferrier and Maxime, makes Maxime a tantalizing suspect.  The photograph, though, demonstrates a kinder side to Maxime, who later says that he had been on his way to ask Ariadne’s forgiveness when he learned of her death.  To make a long(ish) story short, the culprit is Rowena.  She did not approve of Maxime.  When he canceled the engagement, she had given Ariadne hallucinogenic honey in her tea, feeding her stories of the house, which pushed her to leap to her demise.  Rowena killed Mrs. Reynolds because she thought the so-called psychic was going to implicate the mother, at first mistaking Hercule for Mrs. Reynolds when the detective put on her costume.  As for Dr. Ferrier, Rowena had assumed that he had figured out what she had been doing to Alicia and began blackmailing her.  Rowena had been having to pay somebody off alright, but that turns out to be Leopold Ferrier (Jude Hill), Dr. Ferrier’s bright young son.  His dad had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from World War II, and Leopold had been using the money for his care.  As for the strange occurrences, those are partly to blame on the tea in the honey that Hercule had also ingested, and on Ariadne.  She had been in league with Mrs. Reynolds to try and stump the famed sleuth and make herself look better in the process.  On the immediate heels of all these revelations, Rowena does what her daughter had supposedly done a year previous.  As day breaks, Hercule returns to his home, ready to use his talents to once more help the public.

I suppose I should apologize for this review of A Haunting in Venice, as with any discussion I do of a Poirot story or any murder mystery.  I ask for forgiveness because I spoil them.  Yet, is this not something everyone tries to do while watching such a movie?  I know I do, thinking along with it, following the evidence as it is presented, and drawing my own conclusions.  If I get it right, I feel like I have accomplished something.  In this vein, I was satisfied when I correctly guessed that Ariadne and Mrs. Reynolds were in league with one another.  They seemed too vocal about being opposites, and Ariadne had a clear motivation for using somebody of Mrs. Reynolds supposed talents.  I say “supposed” because (and you are going to get a double dip of Catholic analysis here) mediums should not be consulted.  Unfortunately, one of the characters, Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), expresses a hard-line example of the Catholic stance on such things.  While Hercule is too quick to dismiss the supernatural, Olga speaks of it in terms that make her sound like a religious nutcase.  There are sound reasons for not engaging in séances and similar rituals.  Simply put, they leave you open to the devil.  There are spirits.  There is a life beyond this one, and I give the film some credit for lending a little credence to this notion.  Yet, the word “beyond” is key.  In other words, it is outside of our understanding, and thus we should not meddle or trifle with it.  Wherever Alicia is, she should be allowed to stay there and not be bothered.  We will all meet again in the “sweet by and by,” as the old song goes.  That should be enough motivation to keep to the straight and narrow and get to Heaven.

Speaking of getting to Heaven, there is a lot of talk in A Haunting in Venice as to whether we have a soul and what happens when we die.  Hercule’s career has convinced him that such things, along with God, do not exist.  You can also tell that, unsurprisingly, he is embittered.  I would posit that it is because of his lack of belief that he is unhappy, though he claims to be “satisfied” with his life.  The film also suggests that his experiences in the Drake villa that Halloween night had an effect on him, though I cannot say it is of a religious nature.  At the same time, he does speak to what I can only describe as an unassailable Christian logic as to the existence of God.  He says that if there is such a thing as a soul, then it could have only been created by God, and therefore it is all true.  He is speaking as somebody living in the late 1940s.  This is before a time of new age beliefs when people talk about having souls, but apply whatever rules they wish to the eternal within all of us.  Those who subscribe to this stuff borrow higgledy-piggledy from an assortment of religions and belief systems, though rarely from Christianity.  I get frustrated by such things because, like séances, they ignore thousands of years of thought on these matters.  I did not say “tradition because of that word’s connotations.  It too finely encapsulates the whole of the Christian experience.  Hercule might be at home with this pseudo-culture that attempts to unite so-called science and the divine, but there are some things that are not completely within his grasp.  That is why I appreciated this one more than the others in Branagh’s Poirot series.  It is not perfect, but at least there is some progress.

Interestingly, I kept trying to get my broadcast partner from Down & Out Reviews to want to see A Haunting in Venice. His answer consistently was that he thought it “looked stupid.”  It made me wonder if he had heard of Agatha Christie?  This is a fitting way of backing into my recommendation, though.  Such stories are not for everyone.  It moves at a slower pace, but I am okay with it.