A Haunting In Venice: A Deathly Dull Ode To Classic Detective Fiction

MY civilian hat is off to the dichotomy of Kenneth Branagh, a fine actor but a singularly inert film-maker who has somehow adapted Agatha Christie into the very grave she turns in. Branagh’s renditions of her famous character Hercule Poirot — the mustached Belgian detective who behaves like a Scooby-Doo-esque hybrid of Inspector Closeau, Sherlock Holmes and Benoit Blanc — have been spectacularly dull and unimaginative. A Haunting in Venice is the third Poirot slog after the clammy Murder on the Orient Express and the virginal Death on the Nile.

There is not a moment of intrigue to be had. There is not an autopilot performance to appreciate. There is not a spark of cinematic originality. Every time we expect the literary murder mystery to dissipate into the slow-burning horror film it threatens to, the movie stays stubbornly arrow-straight. The novelty is supposed to be that this is traditional film-making, a throwback to a time when tech wizardry and manic visual effects and sound whataboutery were yet to dilute the genre. But to those who wistfully claim “they don’t make ‘em like these anymore,” I say “for good reason”.

Loosely based on Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party, A Haunting in Venice takes off in 1947, presumably after the outdoorsy events of Death on the Nile. Our brainy sleuth has retired to Venice, and the only investigations he allows himself are related to shopping and the right eggs for breakfast. He has a bodyguard for company, who fends off desperate Italians hoping to be the fabled man’s clients. But Poirot’s retirement is short-lived, for his old friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), arrives in need of inspiration for her new book. She’s the one whose loosely adapted literature made him famous. 

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Ariadne takes a reluctant Poirot along to a Halloween seance at a spooky palazzo that’s allegedly haunted by a girl who died there a year ago. His initial quest — to discredit the oracle (Michalle Yeoh) and prove that the supernatural pales in comparison to the natural — quickly morphs into a once-upon-a-stormy-night mystery. The suspects involve a ‘loony’ doctor, a precocious teen, a caretaker (or butler), an ex-lover, a mother, an ex-cop and, of course, the writer herself. Nobody can leave, for the canals are flooded, and Hercule Poirot is seduced by the platter on which the resurrection of his career is presented. Cold, hard facts were never so alluring.

The killer is so predictable that Poirot spends 10 minutes defending the sheer obviousness of his theory with cerebral intensity. He makes it sound like a twist, but it really is not. (It reminded me of Sharp Objects.) To be fair, the only way a vintage whodunit would appear new today is if the detective himself did it. But that’s also not the point of such a film. It’s the ability to be faithful to the Agatha Christie stage without succumbing to the modern trappings of fiction — the gravity of the humans isn’t allowed to morph into satirical self-awareness. There are no quick-witted puns or narrative odes, no eccentric characters in service of reinventing the pensive detective. There are a lot of memories and trauma and thoughts, a lot of dimly-lit and luxurious rooms where verbal exchanges provide the ‘action’ in the film.

Perhaps the central conflict is also the rigidity of Poirot’s faith. His trust in his own profession and worldview are shaped by generational grief derived from two wars and an inherent sense of godlessness. This murderous night at the palazzo — like the aliens in M Night Shyamalan’s Signs — is designed to convince the disillusioned protagonist that there are forces beyond the normal. That ghosts do exist, even if they’re in the stricken heads of those who’ve seen and endured too much. It’s like the film is pitting man-made horror against supernatural horror, and asking us (and Poirot) to reconsider our physical reading of the genre. Legend has it that children haunt the place, and Poirot hears voices, so his relationship with the embattled writer looking for a hit story becomes all the more important. He is determined to believe that there is no higher power, and there can be no voices that can be heard over the graves of the millions that died in battle. A Haunting in Venice is the literal striving to be metaphorical; it’s blind faith striving to be good faith.

But Branagh remains a cautionary case of keeping the format so old-fashioned — so moody and self-serious and, well, bland — that we are guilted into a perpetual paralysis of nostalgia. Because the thinking becomes: Surely there has to be more, right? Why is nothing and nobody more than their identities? Why is this franchise so vintage and sexless that even the big names look like they’re in it for the cash? His Oscar-winning Belfast, too, has the unique honour of being the most distant memoir I’ve seen, but let’s save that debate for a gloomier day. Given how often Branagh has worked with Christopher Nolan, it’s not surprising to see him go classical with such aggressive softness.

A Haunting in Venice is all warm lights and psychodrama-101 plotting, but it’s a film that’s so determined to be the mature geezer in the room — to defy our preconceived notions of how a genre should evolve or ‘update’ itself — that it ends up sprinting backward to prove its point. The result is a deathly boring study in sophisticated franchise-making. Wrinkles are nice, but the personality beneath the skin matters. The rumours in town are true: The storyteller is the killer in these whodunits.