Kenneth Branagh returns for his third appearance as Hercule Poirot, once again also taking on the director duties. Very loosely based on the Agatha Christie book The Halloween Party, this story is set in post World War II Venice. Poirot, now retired, reluctantly attends a séance, but when the medium is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer.
After Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, the obvious move would have been to make another lavish adaptation, most likely Evil Under the Sun. But A Haunting in Venice has a very different feeling to those films. It is almost entirely set in a gloomy, spooky, old house on Halloween whilst a storm rages outside. Normally a steadfast non-believer, even Poirot begins to think that spirits may be present as strange events occur.
Those horror inflected elements work surprisingly well as Branagh conjures up a brooding atmosphere, using darkness and inventive, expressionist, camera angles. The mystery also is a puzzle and whilst the killer is deducible, the other elements of the knotty plot are harder to guess.
Branagh feels very comfortable in the role of the eccentric sleuth now. If he returns, hopefully Tina Fey will also come back as mystery author Ariadne Oliver, a character who appears in a number of the Poirot books. The rest of the cast is less star studded this time, but they are nonetheless impressive, with Kelly Reilly the stand out as the house owner and Jamie Dornan does his best work since The Fall.
This is a highly entertaining whodunnit with a few chills thrown in.
Rating: 8 out of 10