Film: A Haunting in Venice
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Yeoh, Riccardo Scamarcio
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Rating: 3/5
Runtime: 104 min
 

Kenneth Branagh’s fascination for Agatha Christie’s mysteries has gotten him to direct this third outing, an atmospheric, horror indented adaptation, ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Murder on the Orient Express, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp, had a retro style that was eye-catching while Death on the Nile had a less-famous ensemble cast and did not quite come good. In both his previous adaptations of Christie novels, he directed and played the cerebral Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and in this one too he dons that very same mantle - albeit a little more sombre, less assured and decidedly less pompous. He appears to be finding his feet again…

Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist who made her name by fictionalizing the misadventures of the Belgian detective, cajoles Poirot out of self-imposed retirement to attend a Halloween-night séance taking place at a former opera singer, Rowena Drake’s (Kelly Reilly) haunted palazzo where the death of Drake’s daughter Alicia (Rowan Robinson) occurred under inexplicable tragic circumstance. Ariadne basically needs Poirot to debunk a clairvoyant, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) who she is certain is a charlatan.