The time for excuses is over. There is nothing much wrong with Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Hercule Poirot. He is not quite the character Agatha Christie created – too inclined to physical intervention – but this more angsty variation holds the attention nicely. The films around him are a different matter. Murder on the Orient Express fluffed its reveals as it strived for meretricious visual flourish. Death on the Nile nearly sank under the weight of its camp vulgarity (though Gal Gadot’s “Enough Champagne to float the Nile” exercised the cringe-glands). Yet it proved possible to give both a pass as unchallenging comfort viewing. So-so adaptations of Ms Christie’s work have been securing such waivers for close to a century.
Branagh’s period of grace comes to an end with the murky dog’s dinner (Doge’s dinner?) that is A Haunting in Venice. Arriving in good time for Halloween, the third outing has grand ambitions to be both a horror film and a cosy murder mystery. Sadly, Branagh, again taking on directing duties, finds no satisfactory way of making the chimera breathe. Working from Michael Green’s script, he stages a mystery and layers the ghostly visitations on top as if slapping sausages on ice cream. I suppose we shouldn’t reveal if – as in Scooby Doo – the supernatural manifestations are debunked, but we can say the eventual explanation requires absurd convolutions of which Dame Agatha would not much approve.
We begin with Poirot not exactly enjoying retirement in Italy’s wettest city. The second World War is recently over and – as confirmed in a later, borderline-offensive revelation – the planet, not least that bit occupied by our hero, is still going through collective PTSD. What will bring him back to the fray? Why it’s Tina Fey as an American variation on Christie’s near-alter ego Ariadne Oliver. The mystery novelist invites her pal to a seance conducted by a sombre, apparently sincere mystic (Michelle Yeoh, doing her considerable best). Strange voices emanate from the damp walls. Odder visions loom at windows. Eventually, as you won’t need to be told, somebody ends up dead and Poirot gets to properly exercise the famous little grey cells. Suspects include furrowed Jamie Dornan, bereaved Kelly Reilly and generically foreign Camille Cottin.
Loosely based on Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party, the screenplay moves the action to Venice with a mind to heightening atmosphere and providing the publicity bods with attractive still images, but, as it happens, once the characters have arrived – stepping from varnished speedboats on to damp walkways – the film fast retreats to the soundstages of southern Buckinghamshire. You would get scarcely more location footage in one of David Suchet’s telly episodes.
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Haris Zambarloukos, who shot Belfast and Thor for Branagh, achieves a degree of sepulchral ambience, but the endless gloom also serves to emphasise the pedestrian nature of the storytelling. It is hard to “show not tell” when the audience can barely see what it is being shown. The solution, in a film that feels as if it has somewhere lost 15 minutes, is for characters to talk us through the initial scenario, talk us through the subsequent crisis and talk us through the closing summation. If you have watched a Christie mystery before, you may be able to fill the yawning gaps in the sketchy stock personae. Those hitherto unfamiliar with her work will be baffled as to why they should care about any of these bland costume fillers.
Branagh’s decent performance and Christie’s indestructible reputation may just be enough to see the film through to a modest profit and, later, decent figures on Disney+. But A Haunting in Venice feels like a misguided experimental sprig from an already compromised operation. Best to play these things straight, Ken.
A Haunting in Venice is released on Friday, September 15th
