Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Haunting in Venice’ on Hulu, Kenneth Branagh’s Creepy Riff on Agatha Christie

Part III of the franchise informally known as The Mustache and the Man Attached to It is A Haunting in Venice (now streaming on Hulu), in which filmmaker/star Kenneth Branagh once again adapts an Agatha Christie novel (‘Hallowe’en Party’) and plays hero sleuth Hercule Poirot. I’m disappointed to report that Poirot hasn’t changed his follicular upper-lip style, which began life as the Sasquatch Handlebar in 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, but morphed into the Quad-Winged Gryphon for 2022’s Death on the Nile. That style is maintained here for a spooky-season murder mystery that tests not only the strength of the Gryphon during an apple-bobbing scene (!), but also the deeply skeptical nature of Poirot, who wrestles with the previously indefensible idea that ghosts exist. So does he succumb to the allure of the supernatural, or remain the persnickety man of reason we know and love? No spoilers, no spoilers, NO SPOILERS.

A HAUNTING IN VENICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Poirot awakens with a start in VENICE, ITALY, 1947. Why? PTSD from the war, maybe, or perhaps how his entire life has unfurled beneath the deep dark shadow of the beating wings of Death, which makes sense for a guy who solved murders for a living. Note the past tense. He’s retired now, feeding his persnickety ways by tooling around fussily in his garden and shopping for eggs and measuring them so they fit his egg cup. His persnick is officially outta control, although the lack of an alteration in mustache style may be symbolic of a guy in a personal and/or creative psychological stasis. Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio) is his bodyguard, hired to fend off all the people who want to burden Poirot’s mind with the unsolved crimes that surely torment them. To those people Poirot says Too bad! I am re-TAYHERED in his theeck Belgeean ack-sent, and then tut-tuts and putters about and enjoys his quiet, empty, lonely, sad life. 

I’m reading into that a little heavy-handedly, I know, but ol’ mustachio nut just doesn’t seem content these days. And so he’s delighted to once again make the acquaintance of an old friend, Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), to whom he owes his fame: She’s the mystery novelist who first wrote about him many years ago. Now, she wants him to tag along to an allegedly haunted palazzo and sit in on a seance, because she needs his help to make a fried sandwich out of the bologna being dished out by a renowned psychic medium. Notably, Poirot, being a learned man with inimitable skills of deductive reasoning, thinks ghosts and mind-reading and whatnot are total bunk. He is a skeptic. He will slash supernatural assertions to bits. He will expose the fraudulent, predatory nature of any fortune-telling, tarot-reading, crystal-balling huckster in his path. He will take a ouija board and saw it to bits and make a mustache fluffer out of it.

The aforementioned abode belongs to Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly of Yellowstone fame). The place is said to be haunted by the ghosts of children who died of the plague there, back when it was an orphanage, and it has eerie vibes from here to Alpha frickin’ Centauri. Rowena’s daughter died there too – her angry greedy butthole fiance Maxime (Kyle Allen) dumped her, so she jumped to her death into the canal. Rowena wants to bridge the gap to the beyond and talk to her daughter; enter psychic Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), who will facilitate the communique as Poirot sighs deeply and rolls his eyes and prepares to debunk the living snot out of her. So, inventory: Poirot and Vitale and Ariadne are present alongside Rowena, the uninvited Maxime, and Joyce. Rowena’s family doctor, Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) and his son Leopold (Jude Hill, from Branagh’s Belfast) are also present, alongside the housekeeper Olga (Camille Cottin) and Joyce’s assistants, Desdemona (Emma Laird) and Nicholas (Ali Khan). And thus assembled is a gallery of suspects to interrogate when one of the party ends up quite impressively impaled on a statue. Oh, and there’s also a goofy scene where Poirot cuts loose when nobody’s looking and tries to fish an apple out of a basin with his mouth, which is so against character, because his mustache, man! He wouldn’t put it through such trauma. Also, someone tries to drown him while his face is in there, but won’t SOMEONE think of THE MUSTACHE?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hitting the three-movie mark in this franchise means it’s time for a definitive ranking of Branagh’s Christie adaptations:

3. Death on the Nile – This thing is uneven and all over the place and bloated, and even though it was enjoyable in the moment, I’ll never, ever feel compelled to watch it again.

2. Murder on the Orient Express – The Mustache’s entrance. You’ll never forget it, especially since the machinations of the plot are so easily eclipsed by the intimidating presence of the Sasquatch Handlebar.

1. A Haunting in Venice – It’s not a great movie by any means, but it’s the best of the series, mostly thanks to its cinematography and ability to generate a creepy mood.

All that said, I’d much rather scratch the murder mystery itch by rewatching every episode of Poker Face than sitting through any of these.

Performance Worth Watching: Fey is spirited here, and clearly cast to lend her considerable comedic sensibilities to the film’s dour and spooky atmosphere. But you’ll wish the direction and screenplay allowed her to be a little sharper and more witty, and less subdued. 

Memorable Dialogue: Imagine Branagh rapid-firing the following impeccably clever line and not laughing: “What is it that I do? Um. When a crime has been committed, I can, by application of order and method and the slow extinguishing of my soul, find, without fail or doubt, whodunit!”

Sex and Skin: None. “Whodunit” has nothing to do with doin’ it.

Our Take: Oh, the angles here. So many angles! They’re all so very canted and inverted and wide – all employed to create a disorienting sense of space in this palazzo where Poirot struggles to apply his well-honed sense of precision logic. Maintaining the erstwhile detective’s perplexed point-of-view is where A Haunting in Venice excels, Branagh taking pains to generate uncanny atmospheric conditions. If only the writing held up alongside the visual presentation; the story’s emotional undercurrent is undercooked, flitting around the idea that people are haunted more by loss than spectral entities before undermining itself by making the disappointing suggestion that the events Poirot experiences turn him into a believer. That’s a tad upsetting, because one of his mightiest traits is his ability to withstand the allure of hokum and woo-woo.

And so the film is constructed of many explain-that-Poirot! scenes that put him off his game and force him to rethink his methods of working and living – and the usual array of twists that play out during an eventful, moderately engaging third act. Haunting is less star-studded than previous Branagh/Christie outings, which makes it less distracting, and more immersive; Reilly is excellent as a key plot cog, Yeoh is depressingly underutilized, and Fey is funny only in fits and starts, and you’ll with there were more laughs cutting through the downbeat tonal fog. It’ll reasonably satisfy murdery mystery fans, while we who merely dabble in the genre wonder if its recent resurgence is starting to get played out. In Branagh’s relatively prolific corner of the playground, the real mystery continues to be how Poirot maintains that motherf—er on his face.

Our Call: This series continues to be aggressively perfectly fine – if never transcendent – in its classical approach to the murder mystery genre. STREAM IT, but keep your expectations more like John Waters’ mustache than Poirot’s. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.