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Even with its run-of-the-mill jump scares and the occasional fun twist, A Haunting in Venice is another average inclusion in the Kenneth Branagh saga of his Agatha Christie adaptations.

As a mystery and thriller genre fan, I have a confession to make – I have yet to read an Agatha Christie novel.  I know, this basically makes me a fraud, but I am soon going to right this wrong!  It has been nice for someone in my shoes that Kenneth Branagh has taken the reins of adapting a lot of her beloved classics into films for the average audience to enjoy in modern day.  Branagh has starred in and directed the last three installments of the Hercule Poirot series from Christie, with A Haunting in Venice being adapted from Hallowe’en Party.

A decade following the events of Death on the Nile, Hercule Poirot (Branagh) finds himself retired in Venice when an “old friend” and mystery author, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), invites him to a Halloween party in a haunted palazzo to investigate a medium (Michelle Yeoh) who she believes is a fake, leading to seance to contact the dead Alicia Drake (Rowan Robinson).  When mysterious events keep happening to the guests, everyone begins to question whether someone sinister is behind everything that is happening or if these hauntings are happening from the great beyond.

As these movies usually go, the cast is stacked with some amazing talent.  Tina Fey gets added to the bunch as Ariadne Oliver, another of Christie’s characters that shows up in the Hercule Poirot series.  The issue with Fey is that, while she always gives a strong and fun performance in all of her roles, it did not seem like she added a lot to the characters of Oliver.  It felt as though I have seen this type of character from her before, drawing you out of her performance and just focusing on the fact that Tina Fey was in the movie.  There are some powerhouse actors that join Branagh and Fey – Michelle Yeoh (Joyce Reynolds), Jamie Dornan (Dr. Leslie Ferrier), Jude Hill (Leopold Ferrier), Camille Cottin (Olga Seminoff), Kelly Reilly (Rowena Drake), Riccardo Scamarcio (Vitale Portfoglio), Ali Kahn (Nicholas Holland) and Emma Laird (Desdemona Holland).  Everyone gave a perfectly fine performance; no one was dragging the movie down, but it was also obvious that there was something off about what each of them brought to the role.  Because it is a very cast-heavy film, sometimes if the cast does not have the chemistry that is needed, it can bring the whole tone down several notches. 

One of the best aspects of this movie was how it looked.  Haris Zambarloukos, the cinematographer behind the film who has worked on a lot of Branagh’s previous films, knew how to perfectly capture the beauty that is Venice in the 1940s.  All of the sets were beautifully crafted and matched not just the time period but the tone that the film was going for.  The palazzo, where a majority of the movie takes place, made for the perfect setting for the Halloween story that was being told.  It was so easy to be captivated by the visuals that it drew you into the story with the rest of the characters.  You felt the creepiness of the haunted palazzo with unease around every corner.  It is crucial for a film like this to have the look that a scary movie needs and this was the perfect amount of scary for the story it was telling.

The biggest issue with this film was the way the story was told.  In its most basic idea, there is a lot of fun that you can have with a horror-mystery movie that takes place on Halloween where everyone is trapped in a rumored haunted building after a seance.  But that is the film’s biggest flaw – the story does not keep you entertained.  There are comedic moments alongside the scary ones, but the flow of the film is not there.  The story itself does not expand upon the basic idea and that pulls it down so much as you can be expecting a little more from the third installment in the series.  There is an expectation and this film just does not hit it.  It is trying to be a little bit different by adding the horror elements to it instead of just being a typical mystery the earlier installments were.  While those components were there, nothing special was done with them to make this film stand out from the other two. 

The pacing was the other big issue with A Haunting in Venice.  There was so much going on that had to be accomplished that there was a lot of telling and not showing, making the film feel rushed in a lot of places. From scene to scene, there was a whiplash effect with the manner in which the plot unfolded. During some of the accusation scenes, I did not understand how Poirot was able to make those conclusions.  One of the reasons I loved mystery and whodunnit movies is because even though I can feel duped on who the culprit was, when the inevitable flashback scene happens, it makes sense as I can see how the pieces were put together.  But because some scenes went by so quickly, I do not think the average viewer will be able to pick up on them as easily.  Because of these quick scenes, we do not get to learn more about some of the characters outside of the initial interrogation of them which also leads to why it felt rushed.  There is so much you can do with a big cast but when the story is not only lacking but feels off from scene to scene, it can mess with the final reveal so much more than you may think.

The perfect way to describe this movie is perfectly fine; there are entertaining aspects that can really draw you in, but the pacing and average performances of the actors can really bring it down.  In no way do I think that this is a bad movie, but there is so much more that could have been done to make it reach the peak it deserves being the third installment in the Hercule Piorot series.

Grade: C+

Oscar Prospects:
Likely: None
Should be Considered: None

Where to Watch: In Theaters