Given how littered it is by corpses, it’s remarkable the extent to which ghosts are absent from the murder mystery genre.
Aside from the plot ramifications – it’s tricky sustaining the whole “whodunnit” aspect when you have an incorporeal witness – it does tend to undermine the foundation of rationality on which the process of detection is built.
In A Haunting in Venice, the third instalment in Kenneth Branagh’s blockbuster Poirot franchise, the Belgian sleuth finds himself confronted by the limits of logic when confronted with the seemingly supernatural.
Ten years after the events of Death on the Nile, legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) has retired to Venice where, refusing all callers, he finds solace instead in pastries. The day before Halloween 1947, Poirot is visited by an old frenemy, mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who invites him to help debunk a seance, to which he reluctantly agrees.
Cue a stormy night in a crumbling palazzo with a moderately starry cast – including Kelly Reilly (as a grieving mother), recent Branagh collaborators Jamie Dornan (traumatised doctor) and Jude Hill (precocious child), and current Best Actress, Michelle Yeoh (unassuming spiritualist) – some of whom are shortly to become corpses.
The faded grandeur of the palazzo is a contrast to the sheer glamour of the Orient Express, for instance, but there’s little to replace the prior opulence; besides tilt shots and spiral staircases. Returning cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos’s use of sallow torchlight and murky shadow is characterful, as is returning writer Michael Green’s script, but, much like Branagh’s Poirot, it feels like diminished returns.
As with Branagh’s Belfast, of which I am particularly dubious, there is, despite the significant budget, a makeshift visual inventiveness; like they’re trying every trick in the student filmmaker book to maintain our interest, even if that loop-de-loop doesn’t quite cut together. Editor Lucy Donaldson certainly earns her pay-check in this regard.
Embattled faith has been a through-line for this interpretation of the character – I can only assume an adaptation of Curtain is looming – but this Halloween party, to quote the title of Agatha Christie’s original novella, is the ghost of a chance.
