#48: A HAUNTING IN VENICE

Starring Kenny Branagh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio and Michelle Yeoh. Written by Michael Green. Directed by Kenny Branagh. Budget $60 million. Running time 103 minutes.

It's round three for Hercule Poirot, and his moustache in this modern take on the diminutive Belgium detective created by the Agatha Christie and this time rather than remaking another classic (and far better) movie, Kenny and his writer Michael Green have decided to loosely adapt another Agatha novel starring Poirot called Hallowe'en Party. 

Last time round, Branagh and Green gave us an origin story for Poirot's moustache and this time they're trying something new by utterly rewriting Agatha's original story and playing up the supernatural aspects thus creating more of a horror film 'whodunnit', rather than a straight forward murder mystery. 

The plot sees a family and one servant gather in a Venice town house one night as the city is battered senseless by what can only be a described as a hurricane. They're all there for a séance held by the famous medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) held to contact the dead daughter of opera singer, Rowen Drake (Kelly Reilly). Poirot, now retired, is invited along by American crime author, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) who's determined to get Poirot back in the game and to prove the séance is a fraud. The rest of the soon-to-be-suspects include the shell-shocked family doctor (Jamie Dornan) and his precocious son and future Jacob Rees-Moog (Jude Hill), housekeeper (Camille Cottin), Reynolds's two assistants (Ali Khan & Emma Laird), Poirot's Italian bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio) and the dead daughter's ex-fiancé (Kyle Allen). Before you can say, 'the butler did it', the body count is mounting, the corridors are alive with the sounds of ghostly children and things are most certainly going bump in the night, and not just the bodies falling to their doom.

The mystery is intriguing but an overuse of far too many jump scares and supernatural red herrings gets tiresome, and none of it is helped by Kenny's over reliance on fish-eyed lenses, dutch angles, over the head shots, and far too many close ups of Kenny's gurning mug. It's jarring and keeps pulling you out of the experience, in fact I can't remember a film where the director's so called style has been so intrusive, it's almost as if Kenny had contacted the ghost of Michael Winner and was channeling him and ultimately the film becomes undone by Kenny's over-dramatic direction.

The film putts along from murder-to-murder and interview-to-interview before finally rolling to stop and the reveal when the killer or should that be killers, I'm not saying, is finally revealed, justice is served and the storm abates and everyone goes home for tea, although one guilty party escapes scott-free. 

Overall this was far better than the last film, Deaf On the Nile. The location and setting worked well as did the look of the film although the whole film, as seems to be in most modern films, was exceedingly gloomy, dark and murky.

When the solution is revealed there's very little chance you'll have worked it out  yourself and you'll be relieved that Poirot takes the time to explain the workings of the elaborate crime down to the last minute crumb.

7/10