movie reviews for a haunting in venice

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, black writers week, a haunting in venice.

Now streaming on:

"A Haunting in Venice" is the best of Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movies. It's also one of Branagh's best, period, thanks to the way Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green dismantle and reinvent the source material (Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party )  to create a relentlessly clever, visually dense "old" movie that uses the latest technology. 

Set mainly in a palazzo that seems as immense as Xanadu or Castle Elsinore (it's a blend of actual Venice locations, London soundstages, and visual effects), the movie is threaded with intimations of supernatural activity, most of the action occurs during a tremendous thunderstorm, and the violence pushes the PG-13 rating to its breaking point. It's fun with a dark streak: imagine a ghastly gothic cousin of " Clue ," or of something like Branagh's own " Dead Again ," which revolved around past lives. At the same time, amid the expected twists and gruesome murders, "A Haunting in Venice" is an empathetic portrayal of the death-haunted mentality of people from Branagh's parents' generation who came through World War II with psychic scars, wondering what had been won.  

The original Christie novel was published in 1969 and set in then-present-day Woodleigh Common, England. The adaptation transplants the story to Venice, sets it over 20 years earlier, gives it an international cast of characters thick with British expats, and retains just a few elements, including the violent death of a young girl in the recent past and the insinuating presence of an Agatha Christie-like crime novelist named Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), who takes credit for creating Poirot's reputation by making him a character in her writing. Aridane tracks down Poirot in a Venice apartment, where he's retired from detective work and seemingly in existential crisis (though one he'd never discuss without being asked). He seems resolved to a life of aloneness, which is not the same as loneliness. He tells Ariadne he doesn't have friends and doesn't need any. 

Ariadne's sales have slumped, so she draws Poirot back into sleuthing by pushing him to attend a Halloween Night seance at the aforementioned home, hoping to produce material that will give her another hit. The medium is a celebrity in her own right: Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ), a character named after the untrustworthy little girl in the original Christie story who claims to have witnessed a murder. Reynolds plans to communicate with a murder victim, Alicia Drake ( Rowan Robinson ), the teenage daughter of the palazzo's owner, former opera singer Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ), and hopefully learn who did the deed.

There are, of course, many others gathered in the palazzo. All become suspects in Alicia's murder as well as the subsequent cover-up killings that ensue in these kinds of stories. Poirot locks himself and the rest of the ensemble in the palazzo and announces that no one can leave until he's figured things out. The gallery of possibles includes a wartime surgeon named Leslie Ferrier ( Jamie Dornan ) who suffers from severe PTSD; Ferrier's precocious son Leopold ( Jude Hill , the young lead in Branagh's " Belfast "), who is 12 going on 40 and asks unnerving questions; Rowena’s housekeeper Olga Seminoff ( Camille Cottin ); Maxime Gerard ( Kyle Allen ), Alicia’s former boyfriend; and Mrs. Reynolds’ assistants Desdemona and Nicholas Holland ( Emma Laird and Ali Khan ), war refugees who are half-siblings.

It would be unsporting to say much about the rest of the plot. Reading the book won't give anything important away because—even more so than in Branagh's previous Poirot films—the kinship between source and adaptation is a bit like the later James Bond films, which might take a title, some character names and locations, and one or two ideas, and invent everything else. Green, who also wrote the recent " Death on the Nile " as well as " Blade Runner 2049 " and much of the series "American Gods," is a reliably excellent screenwriter of fresh stories inspired by canonical material. His work keeps one eye on commerce and the other on art. He regularly reminds nostalgia-motivated viewers in the "intellectual property" era of why they like something. At the same time, he introduces provocative new elements and attempts a different tone or focus than audiences probably expected. (The introduction to the movie tie-in paperback of Christie's novel has an introduction by Green that starts with him confessing to a murder of "the book you are holding.")

Accordingly, this Poirot mystery aligns itself with popular culture made in Allied countries after World War II. Classic post-war English-language films like " The Best Years of Our Lives ," " The Third Man ," "The Fallen Idol," and mid-career Welles films like " Touch of Evil " and "The Trial" (to name just a few classics that Branagh seems keenly aware of) were not just engrossing, beautifully crafted entertainments, but illustrations of a pervasive collective feeling of moral exhaustion and soiled idealism—the result of living through a six-year period that showcased previously unimaginable horrors, including Stalingrad, Normandy, the mechanized extermination of the Holocaust, and the use of atomic bombs against civilians. And so the embittered Poirot is a seeming atheist who practically sneers at speaking to the dead. Green and Branagh even give him a monologue about his disillusionment that evokes comments made about Christie near the end of her life, and in the novel, about what she perceived as increasingly cruel tendencies in humanity as a whole, reflected in the sorts of crimes that were being committed.  

Aside from a few period-specific details and references, the source seems to exist outside of the time in which it was written. Branagh and Green's movie goes in the opposite direction. It's very much of  the late 1940s. The children in the film are orphans of war and post-war occupation (soldiers fathered some of them, then went back home without taking responsibility for their actions). There's talk of "battle fatigue," which is what PTSD was called during World War II; in the previous world war, they called it "shell shock." The plot hinges on the economic desperation of native citizens, previously moneyed expatriates who are too emotionally and often financially shattered to recapture the way of life they had before the war, and the mostly Eastern European refugees who didn't have much to start with and do the country's grunt work. The overriding sense is that some of these characters would literally kill to get back to being what they were.

Branagh was compared to Orson Welles early in his career for obvious reasons. He was a wunderkind talent who became internationally famous in his twenties and often starred in projects he originated and oversaw. He had one foot in theater and the other in film. He loved the classics (Shakespeare especially) and popular film genres (including musicals and horror). He had an impresario's sense of showmanship and the ego to go with it. He's never been more brazenly Wellesian than he is here. This film has a "big" feeling, as Welles' films always did, even when they were made for pocket change. But it's not full of itself, wasteful or pokey; like a Welles film, it gets in and out of every scene as fast as possible, and clocks in at 107 minutes, including credits. 

Film history aficionados may appreciate the many visual acknowledgments of the master's filmography, including ominous views of Venice that reference Welles' "Othello" and a screeching cockatoo straight out of " Citizen Kane ." At times, it feels as if Branagh conducted a seance and channeled Welles' spirit, as well as that of other directors who worked in a black-and-white, expressionistic, Gothic-flavored, very Wellesian style (including "The Third Man" director Carol Reed and "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Seven Days in May" director John Frankenheimer ). Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos have also mentioned Richard Brooks's 1967 adaptation of " In Cold Blood " and Masaki Kobayashi's "Kwaidan" as influences. The movie deploys fish-eye lenses, dutch tilts, hilariously ominous close-ups of significant objects (including a creepy cuckoo clock), extreme low- and high-angles, and deep-focus compositions that arrange the actors from foreground to deep background, with window and door frames, sections of furniture, and sometimes actors' bodies dicing up the shot to create additional frames-within-the-frame. 

Like post-millennial Michael Mann and Steven Soderbergh movies, "A Haunting in Venice" was shot digitally (albeit in IMAX resolution) and lets the medium be what it naturally is. The low-light interior scenes make no attempt to simulate film stock, depriving viewers of that "comfort food" feeling that comes from seeing a movie set in the past that uses actual film or tries for a "film look." The result is unbalancing, in a fascinating way. The images have a mesmerizing hyper-clarity and a shimmering, otherworldly aspect. In tight close-ups of actors, their eyes seem to have been lit from within.  

Branagh and editor Lucy Donaldson time the cuts so that the more ostentatious images (such as a rat crawling out of a stone gargoyle's mouth, and Poirot and Ariadne seen through the metal screen of a fireplace, flames in the foreground) are on-screen just long enough for the viewer to register what they see, and laugh at how far the movie is willing to go for the effect. Movies are rarely directed in this style anymore, in any format, and it's a shame, because when they are, the too-muchness can be intoxicating.

Available in theaters on September 15th. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Now playing

Kaiya Shunyata

Janet Planet

Jourdain searles.

Just the Two of Us

Sheila o'malley.

Film Credits

A Haunting in Venice (2023)

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.

104 minutes

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot

Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard

Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff

Jamie Dornan as Dr Leslie Ferrier

Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver

Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier

Ali Khan as Nicholas Holland

Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland

Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake

Michelle Yeoh as Joyce Reynolds

Dylan Corbett-Bader as Baker

Amir El-Masry as Alessandro Longo

Fernando Piloni as Vincenzo Di Stefano

• Kenneth Branagh

Writer (based upon the novel "Hallowe'en Party" by)

• Agatha Christie
• Michael Green

Cinematographer

• Haris Zambarloukos
• Lucy Donaldson
• Hildur Guðnadóttir

Latest blog posts

KVIFF: Loveable, Tiny Lights, Windless

The Forrest Gump Soundtrack Hits Different in the Spotify Era

The Man Behind the Curtain: Robert Towne (1934-2024)

Female Filmmakers In Focus: Agnieszka Holland

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

‘A Haunting in Venice’ Review: A Whodunit With a Splash of Horror

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this adaptation of a ghostly mystery from Agatha Christie, with assists from Michelle Yeoh and Tina Fey.

By Jason Zinoman

What genre does “A Haunting in Venice” belong to?

Twirl a mustache and join me on the case. Our first clue is that Kenneth Branagh is playing Hercule Poirot in his third adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. So, this would appear to be an open-and-shut case. Add a murder in a spooky house peopled by suspects, and you have all the hallmarks of a classic locked-room mystery. But Christie fans will quickly deduce that the screenwriter Michael Green has departed considerably from “Hallowe’en Party,” the original source material from 1969, one of her later, lesser books, adding elements that move into the realm of supernatural horror. Be on guard for misdirection.

A glum Poirot, retired from solving cases, has been invited to attend a séance where a famous opera singer, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), wants to contact her dead daughter. The medium (or fraud?) is played with brio by Michelle Yeoh, and her psychic powers present a challenge to the stony rationality of the aging detective. Unlike his relatively faithful, innocuously entertaining versions of “ Murder on the Orient Express ” and “ Death on the Nile ,” Branagh is pushing into ghostly new territory, leaning on scary-movie tropes such as scurrying rats, jump scares and that old standby, a face popping up in the mirror.

It’s a bit gloomy as a mystery, but perfunctory as horror. Too talky, for one thing. Branagh, who dabbled in gothic terror early in his career when he made “Frankenstein,” has more of a feel for actorly grand guignol than the pace of cinematic-scare sequences. Just when you are about to return to the whodunit, there’s an invigorating twist, spurred largely by the presence of Tina Fey, who, between this movie and her wryly satirical flourishes as an opportunistic podcaster in the series “Only Murders in the Building,” is getting awfully skilled at playing a potential killer. Fey here embodies the sharp-tongued Ariadne Oliver, a mystery author with a screwball cadence, touchy about her critical reception.

Fey introduces a comedic energy into the movie, talking out of the side of her mouth while accompanying Poirot. She adds some much-needed fizzy carbonation to the stiff drink of mystery solving. Branagh wants to tell a story of a shaken, brooding Poirot struggling with decline, but luckily, camp humor intrudes. When he aims his preposterous accent at the French actress Camille Cottin, who plays a housekeeper, it makes you think a good time was had on set.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘a haunting in venice’ review: michelle yeoh and tina fey join kenneth branagh in his snoozy agatha christie adaptation.

A Halloween seance in a dark palazzo brings detective Hercule Poirot out of retirement in Branagh's third run at the role.  

By Caryn James

Caryn James

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

Like Agatha Christie herself, Kenneth Branagh found a reliable formula for mysteries. In his two previous adaptations of Christie novels, he directed and played the cerebral detective Hercule Poirot amid a star-filled cast, in an exotic location with at least one killer on the loose. Murder on the Orient Express (2017), with Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp, had an enjoyably retro, over-the-top style. Death on the Nile (2022) was a bit less starry and diverting.

Related Stories

The end of 'yellowstone': what is known about the final episodes, eddie redmayne says warren beatty offered to send him money after his email got hacked, a haunting in venice.

The story takes place in 1947 and is very loosely based on a lesser-known, late-career Christie novel, Hallowe’en Party (1969), altering the plot, changing existing characters and adding new ones. And it shifts Christie’s English country-house location to Venice, where Poirot has retired and putters around his rooftop garden. His old friend, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver, arrives, solidly played by Tina Fey in ’40s-era sharp-tongued American mode, as if she’s channeling Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Ariadne entices Poirot to come to a Halloween seance in a supposedly haunted palazzo, to expose a clairvoyant she is certain is a charlatan. Michelle Yeoh , always a delight to see, plays the medium, and at one point is spun around wildly like a woman possessed. But lower your expectations: She has a much smaller role than the trailer suggests.

Lower your expectations for Venice, too. The change of location should have worked great, playing right into the formula. The film opens with promising, skewed angles on the city, and there are a few outdoor scenes at the end. But most of it takes place in the gloomy palazzo, more clichéd than spooky, with shadowy staircases inside and a canal out there conveniently located for drowning. The interiors are actually a set in Pinewood Studios, with a production design of drab colors, shot with a muddy look.

In typical Christie mode, the suspects gather together, including the caddish ex-fiancé (Kyle Allen) and Poirot’s Italian bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio). Jamie Dornan , who starred as the father in Branagh’s semi-autobiographical Belfast , plays a doctor with PTSD, and Jude Hill, the child who played the young Branagh character there, is his precocious son here. Hill is a genuine talent, a vivid presence onscreen. And Camille Cottin ( Call My Agent ) brings fierce conviction to the role of Rowena’s housekeeper, who used to be a nun. Cottin stands out because so many in the large cast seem to be sleepwalking through it all.  

That doesn’t apply to Branagh, who has always been a perfect fit for the hammy character of Poirot. In each of his Christie films, Branagh brings depth and backstory to the person behind the mustache, with his dark view of humanity. In Venice, more than ever, he seems a touching, lonely figure.  

But depth of character is not the point in this mystery. Of course Poirot eventually says, “No one shall leave until I find who killed her!” and later describes exactly who and what caused multiple deaths. His revelations are not especially surprising, though. As any mystery fan knows, the supposedly least likely suspect is often the killer, and the unsuspenseful Haunting in Venice doesn’t do much to undermine that guess.

Full credits

Thr newsletters.

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Box office: ‘despicable me 4’ rules july 4th with $122m opening, ‘maxxxine’ scares up $6.7m, brad pitt ‘f1’ teaser trailer arrives: “we need to build our car for combat”, m. night shyamalan says inspiration for ‘trap’ was ‘silence of the lambs’ meets taylor swift concert, james cameron remembers jon landau: “he gave everyone a sense of purpose and belonging”, producer jon landau, james cameron’s right-hand man on ‘titanic’ and the ‘avatar’ films, dies at 63, ‘longlegs’ review: maika monroe and nicolas cage in a mesmerizing serial killer chiller that burns with satanic power.

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• What's the Tomatometer®?
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening this week
• Top box office
• Coming soon to theaters
• Certified fresh movies

Movies at home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most popular streaming movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• MaXXXine Link to MaXXXine
• Kill Link to Kill
• Remembering Gene Wilder Link to Remembering Gene Wilder

New TV Tonight

• Sunny: Season 1
• Vikings: Valhalla: Season 3
• Sausage Party: Foodtopia: Season 1
• The Serpent Queen: Season 2
• Me: Season 1
• The Bachelorette: Season 21
• Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer: Season 1
• Melissa Etheridge: I'm Not Broken: Season 1
• All American: Homecoming: Season 3

Most Popular TV on RT

• Star Wars: The Acolyte: Season 1
• Supacell: Season 1
• The Bear: Season 3
• The Boys: Season 4
• Presumed Innocent: Season 1
• My Lady Jane: Season 1
• House of the Dragon: Season 2
• Dark Matter: Season 1
• Evil: Season 4
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV
• TV & Streaming News

Certified fresh pick

• My Lady Jane: Season 1 Link to My Lady Jane: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (July 2024)

25 Most Popular TV Shows Right Now: What to Watch on Streaming

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming

Movie Re-Release Calendar 2024: Your Guide to Movies Back In Theaters

4 TV and Streaming Shows You Should Binge-Watch in July

• Trending on RT
• Best Movies of All Time
• Renewed & Cancelled
• Most Anticipated July Movies
• How to Watch the Summer Olympics

A Haunting in Venice Reviews

... you’ll probably solve the mystery faster than Poirot.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jul 6, 2024

A captivating whodunit boosted by an evocative setting and stellar cast performances, it is a cinematic experience that not only keeps viewers guessing until the very end, but also leaves us haunted by its themes long after the credits roll.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 10, 2024

It's just as well Branagh changed the title, because — location switch aside — there's almost nothing here that recalls the original story aside from Poirot, some of the other characters' names, and the presence of an apple bobbing tub.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 25, 2024

I love all three of Branagh's Poirot films for this thread of a broken man exploited and celebrated but desperate for a human connection to ground him in the world of the living...

Full Review | Jan 4, 2024

Enjoyably melodramatic and nicely unnerving, though the tendency to shoot from above and at odd angles becomes headache-inducing, especially when one is trying to work out whodunnit (or indeed woohoodunnit). Camille Cottin and Emma Laird are stand-outs.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 1, 2024

A likable, "good enough" mix of mystery and supernatural thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 27, 2023

For his second act - the best and most colorful - Branagh manages to sustain his film with tricks of the horror genre as old as they are elementary. But in this nightmarish Venice, they are beautiful and elegant. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 24, 2023

Reynolds leads Poirot to a Halloween party in a decaying and haunted palazzo, which provides the perfect backdrop for a spooky, jump-filled series of incidents.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 8, 2023

Taut and effective.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 4, 2023

Branagh’s confidence in direction is strong as ever with a narrative half-predicated on thoughtful sound design that equally hinges on his performance, the use of depth in frame draws the eye to clues and behavior while setting the mood

Full Review | Original Score: 74/100 | Nov 19, 2023

As a review, this film feels like a detective film from days past, younger audiences might want more, but those who enjoy a slow reveal will have a good time. It gets a B grade from me.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 13, 2023

It’s not the same kind of reliable guilty pleasure we expect these vehicles to be [...] but this outing of Branagh’s Poirot is at least an interesting experiment in expanding these stories' usual limits.

Full Review | Nov 4, 2023

Stunningly cinematically accomplished that it is, this whirlwind spectacle comes out short in the one thing that matters most in a mystery – the story itself. [...] Feels like a hollowed-out pumpkin, minus the candlelight.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2023

Branagh’s third outing as Poirot is the charm... playing in the what-if gray area opens up options for some great visuals, startling reactions, and cranking up the spooky factor.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 2, 2023

In Branagh’s relatively prolific corner of the playground, the real mystery continues to be how Poirot maintains that motherf—er on his face.

Full Review | Nov 1, 2023

The secret ingredient has been none other than adapting Agatha Christie through the lens of gothic horror; a subtle twist that instantly turns the fantastic 'Mystery in Venice' into the most stimulating and enjoyable installment of the trilogy.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 31, 2023

Hercule Poirot is back in this mildly entertaining whodunit with supernatural touches. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 28, 2023

The film resonates with qualities found in classics of the genre by Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, and is simultaneously reminiscent in its aggressive theatrical approach to Branagh’s own neo-noir thriller “Dead Again” from 1991.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

A Haunting in Venice elevates well-worn genre tropes with exceptional casting and filmmaking flair to create a satisfying experience.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2023

A Haunting in Venice isn't quite the best of Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films, but it's still an inspired effort.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 25, 2023

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Movie Reviews

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

The big twist in 'A Haunting in Venice'? It's actually a great film

Justin Chang

Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh join Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice. Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection hide caption

Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh join Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice.

You can always count on Agatha Christie for a surprise, and the big twist in A Haunting in Venice is that it's actually a pretty terrific movie.

I say this as a die-hard Christie fan who didn't much care for Kenneth Branagh 's earlier adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Charming as he was in the role of Hercule Poirot, the movies themselves felt like lavish but superfluous retreads of two of the author's best-known classics.

One of the lessons of A Haunting in Venice is that sometimes, it's a good idea to go with weaker source material. Christie's 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party is one of her thinner whodunits, and Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, have smartly overhauled the story, which is now set in 1947 Venice. They've also gleefully embraced the Halloween theme, taking the cozy conventions of the detective story and pushing them in the direction of a full-blown haunted-house thriller.

Pop Culture Happy Hour

'murder on the orient express' and cozy murder mysteries.

OK, so the result isn't exactly Don't Look Now , the most richly atmospheric horror movie ever shot in Venice. But Branagh and his collaborators, especially the cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos and the production designer John Paul Kelly, have clearly fallen under the spell of one of the world's most beautiful and cinematically striking cities. While there are the expectedly scenic shots of gondolas and canals at sunset, most of the action takes place after dark at a magnificent palazzo owned by a famed opera singer, played by Kelly Reilly.

She's hosting a lavish Halloween party, where Poirot is one of the guests, tagging along with his longtime American friend, Ariadne Oliver, a popular mystery novelist played with snappy wit by Tina Fey . Also in attendance are Jamie Dornan as a troubled doctor and an entrancing Michelle Yeoh as a medium, known as "the unholy Mrs. Reynolds," who says she can speak to the dead.

Case Closed: Agatha Christie's Detective Poirot Solves His Last TV Mystery

Mrs. Reynolds performs a séance, hoping to contact the spirit of the opera singer's daughter, who died under mysterious circumstances at the palazzo a year earlier. Soon another death will take place: One of the party guests turns up murdered, and while Poirot is officially retired, he decides to take on the case. He even asks his mystery-writer friend, Miss Oliver, to help him interview suspects, though not before first questioning her about her whereabouts at the time of the killing.

As Poirot, Branagh is clearly having so much fun wearing that enormous mustache and speaking in that droll French accent that it's been hard not to enjoy his company, even when the movies have been lackluster. For once, though, the case he's investigating is just as pleasurable to get lost in.

Book Reviews

2 books investigate the mysteries of agatha christie and the golden state killer.

It's an unusually spooky story: The palazzo, we find out early on, is rumored to be haunted by the vengeful ghosts of children who died there years ago during an outbreak of the plague. Branagh piles on the freaky visuals and jolting sound effects, to the point where even a supreme skeptic like Poirot begins to question what's going on. These horror elements may be unabashedly creaky and derivative, but they work because the movie embraces them to the hilt.

A Haunting in Venice sometimes feels closer to the work of Christie's undersung contemporary John Dickson Carr, whose brilliant detective stories often flirted with the possibility of the supernatural. That said, the actual solution to the mystery, while clever enough, isn't especially ingenious or complicated.

Here are the movies we can't wait to watch this fall

What gives the story its deeper resonance is its potent sense of time and place. It's just two years after the end of World War II, and many of the suspects have witnessed unspeakable horrors. The medium, Mrs. Reynolds, was a nurse during the war, which may account for why she feels such an affinity for the dead. Everyone, from the grieving opera singer to the doctor traumatized by his memories, seems to be mourning some kind of loss.

In Branagh's retelling, Poirot is himself a World War I veteran. One of the reasons he's such a staunch atheist is that he's seen too much cruelty and suffering to believe that God exists. He doesn't exactly change his mind by the end of A Haunting in Venice . But it's a testament to this movie's poignancy that Poirot emerges from his retirement with a renewed belief that he can still do some good in the world. He's eagerly looking forward to his next case, and so, to my delight, am I.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A Haunting in Venice

In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once a... Read all In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer. In post-World War II Venice, Poirot, now retired and living in his own exile, reluctantly attends a seance. But when one of the guests is murdered, it is up to the former detective to once again uncover the killer.

• Kenneth Branagh
• Michael Green
• Agatha Christie
• Michelle Yeoh
• Jamie Dornan
• 498 User reviews
• 253 Critic reviews
• 63 Metascore
• 6 wins & 4 nominations

• Hercule Poirot

• Joyce Reynolds

• Dr Leslie Ferrier

• Ariadne Oliver

• Alessandro Longo

• Vitale Portfoglio

• Vincenzo Di Stefano

• Puppet Show MC

• Olga Seminoff

• Rowena Drake

• Leopold Ferrier
• Child (Cookie Gobbler)
• Child (Crying Girl)

• Alicia Drake

• Desdemona Holland

• Child (Staircase 1)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

All About 'A Haunting in Venice'

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia Sir Kenneth Branagh worked with the technical department to cause surprises for the cast. The actors were not warned about lights going out suddenly, or gusts of wind and slamming doors on the sets in which they worked, causing genuine confused and startled reactions from the actors to appear in the film. Kelly Reilly confirmed that filming the seance scene was a terrifying experience saying in an interview, "It scared the bejesus out of me."
• Goofs Shortly after the first seance, one of the two assistants is seen picking up two hurricane lamps (whch were still alight) by holding them at their tops. Something that would be impossible to do unless you had burn proof hands.

Ariadne Oliver : Scary stories make real life a little less scary

• Connections Featured in The Project: Episode dated 22 September 2023 (2023)
• Soundtracks When the Lights Go on Again Written by Bennie Benjamin , Sol Marcus and Eddie Seiler Performed by Vera Lynn Courtesy of Decca Music Group Limited Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

User reviews 498

• Sep 15, 2023
• How long is A Haunting in Venice? Powered by Alexa
• September 15, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• 20thcenturystudios
• Film Sözlük
• Án Mạng Ở Venice
• Campiello dei Miracoli, Campo Santa Maria Nova, Venezia, Italy
• 20th Century Studios
• Kinberg Genre
• Scott Free Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $60,000,000 (estimated)
• $42,471,412
• $14,279,529
• Sep 17, 2023
• $122,290,456

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• IMAX 6-Track

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

‘A Haunting In Venice’ Review: Kenneth Branagh Brings a Supernatural Dimension to His Hercule Poirot Series

Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh are among the latest additions to the ever-expanding ensemble of stars beset by mystery, as Poirot investigates the possibility of ghosts.

By Todd Gilchrist

Todd Gilchrist

• ‘MaXXXine’ Director Ti West on How ‘Body Double,’ the Moral Majority and Mia Goth’s Leading Lady Aspirations Inspired His ‘Self-Actualization’ Slasher Movie 2 days ago
• ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’ Director Drew on Franchise Iconography — and ‘80s Action Filmmaking — for His Next-Generation Sequel: ‘We Wrecked a Million Cars’ 4 days ago
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dungeons & Dragons Partnering With Super7 for Comic-Con Pop-Ups (EXCLUSIVE) 2 weeks ago

An adult-oriented crowd pleaser of the sort that seldom gets made any longer without superheroes being involved, and better than that, is quite entertaining, “ A Haunting in Venice ” extends 2023’s streak as the Year That Hollywood Lured Grown-Ups Back To Theaters. Less prestigious than practiced in spotlighting the star wattage of its pedigreed cast, Kenneth Branagh ’s third Agatha Christie adaptation offers a nimble stopgap between drier art-house fare, traditional studio tentpoles and scrappy genre material leaching ticket sales from their pricier competitors — while satisfying all three potential audiences.

Related Stories

Ame institute to host “state of the creative industries” panel, sponsored by variety vip+, paul walter hauser tells interviewer: 'please don't say' i'm 'like vin diesel' because 'i like to think i'm on time and approachable', popular on variety.

As with the previous films in this series (and indeed, in ensemble films like this in general), the casting is key to the success of the story, even more than the resulting solution (or solutions) to its mystery. For better or worse, the star-director takes his foot off the accelerator just a bit to play a slightly less sexy Poirot than in previous outings (that said, get someone who looks at you the way that Branagh looks at Kenneth Branagh). But his comparatively more sober take on the character is born naturally from his circumstances at the beginning of the film, even if Daniel Craig’s resuscitation of Benoit Blanc in “Glass Onion,” who was similarly smarting from inactivity before being called back into service, eats more than a little bit of Poirot’s lunch here.

Even so, who better than Tina Fey to play a self-important, slightly bullying know-it-all who conceals her questionable competence behind a thin layer of condescension? It’s a role that was seemingly born for the actress who brilliantly played Liz Lemon for seven seasons. Meanwhile, a fresh-from-her-Oscar-win Michelle Yeoh beautifully navigates a crucial but sometimes invisible line between empath and charlatan in her limited screen time as Mrs. Reynolds. Jamie Dornan probably qualifies as the next-biggest star in the cast, and he delivers more PTSD than is really required to sell his character Leslie Ferrier’s wartime field surgeon bona fides, but the intensity of his performance provides a nice counterpoint to the turn given by Jude Hill, once again playing Dornan’s onscreen child (after leading Branagh’s “Belfast”) as Leslie’s morbid, precocious son Leopold.

Gifted as they are, Reilly and Scamarcio — along with Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard, Alicia’s former lover, Camille Cottin as Rowena’s housekeeper Olga Seminoff, and Emma Laird and Ali Khan as Mrs. Reynolds’ assistants Desdemona and Nicholas Holland — show that they understand their respective assignments enough not to stand out, except when necessary as suspects (or red herrings). Conversely, Branagh counts on his longtime cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos to emphasize the space, especially the subjective terror of being in a building whose inhabitants may not all be among the living. Although the duo don’t fully return to the comic-book dutch angles of their work on “Thor,” Zambarloukos’ extensive use of anamorphic lenses (imagine a film shot with your iPhone camera constantly set at .5 distance) amplifies the sensation of something scary lurking in the shadows or just around the corner.

Reviewed at El Capitan Theater, Sept. 6, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 103 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Studios release and presentation of a Kinberg Genre, The Mark Gordon Co., TSG Entertainment, Agatha Christie Limited, Scott Free production. Producers: Kenneth Branagh, Jody Hofflund, Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott. Executive producers: Mark Gordon, Louise Killin, James Pritchard
• Crew: Director: Kenneth Branagh. Screenplay: Michael Green, based on the book “Hallowe'en Party” by Agatha Christie. Camera: Haris Zambarloukos. Editor: Lucy Donaldson. Music: Dara Taylor.
• With: Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, Camille Cottin, Riccardo Scamarcio, Kelly Reilly, Jude Hill, Jamie Dornan, Rowan Robinson, Michelle Yeoh, Emma Laird, Kyle Allen, Ali Khan.
• Music By: Hildur Guðnadóttir

More from Variety

Ben affleck and matt damon to star in netflix thriller ‘rip’, gaming layoffs already top 2023’s total — and it’s only july, ‘the instigators’ trailer: matt damon and casey affleck are robbers on the run in doug liman’s new action comedy, car buyers want more screens as in-vehicle entertainment rises, more from our brands, he’s ‘running against a criminal, it should not be close.’ dems express doubts about biden, one of l.a.’s ‘most interesting’ estates lists for $15 million, stars’ local tv deal goes supernova as team and rsn agree to split, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, alex cross series adaptation gets prime video release date — watch trailer, verify it's you, please log in.

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

‘A Haunting in Venice’ Review: A Supernatural Twist Can’t Energize Kenneth Branagh’s Lethargic Hercule Poirot

Christian zilko.

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Share on LinkedIn
• Show more sharing options
• Submit to Reddit
• Post to Tumblr
• Print This Page
• Share on WhatsApp

Kenneth Branagh ‘s Hercule Poirot series — which began with 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and continued with last year’s superior “Death on the Nile” — has emerged as a straightforward alternative for mystery purists turned off by the flashiness of the “Knives Out” films. While Johnson keeps reminding us that murder mysteries are living, breathing entities that can push narrative boundaries and make us laugh and think (while occasionally being too online for their own good), Branagh’s faithful adaptations of Agatha Christie classics function as a control group making the case that the genre was doing just fine for the past century. Having both franchises running at the same time has benefitted both old and new mystery fans — the world gets to observe Christie’s ongoing influence on pop culture while revisiting her best works. Related Stories Clive Owen Talks Working on ‘Closer’ with Mike Nichols: ‘It Is About Keeping Up with Him’ Annie Baker Says ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Was ‘Retrospectively Influential’ on Her ‘Janet Planet’

Branagh launched his series with Christie’s most obvious starting points, kicking things off with her best-selling “Orient Express” before adapting her beloved “Death on the Nile” (which came with a campy hook about a cruise ship carrying enough champagne to fill the eponymous river). But while Christie’s massive bibliography contains enough quality mysteries to fill several lifetimes of filmmaking, there wasn’t a third novel with comparable obvious name recognition. So Branagh got creative for his third film , taking Christie’s Gothic-tinged mystery “Hallowe’en Party” and moving the setting from England to Italy to make “ A Haunting in Venice .”

Without the intellectual stimulation of solving crimes, he has to find other ways to keep his brain sharp. When his old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist whose knack for puzzles rivals his own, invites him to a Halloween party to help her expose a grifting psychic, he soon finds himself attending a post-soiree seance at a Gothic manor that has been the site of unimaginable tragedies. The party’s hosts have spent years grieving the suicide of their young daughter, who fell to her death from one of the tower’s highest windows. The unexpected death tore the extended family apart, prompting brutal divorces and crippling mental health problems for her father.

It’s unsurprising that the parents have taken comfort in “communicating” with their late daughter through the psychic communications of alleged medium Joyce Reynolds (a predictably stylish Michelle Yeoh). But it doesn’t take long for Poirot to spot an assistant hiding in the chimney and expose her act as a fraud. The aging detective takes the opportunity to soliloquize about his distaste for psychics who prey on vulnerable people for money and state his disbelief in supernatural events.

On paper, “A Haunting in Venice” has all the components of a great whodunnit. A star-studded cast solving a Gothic mystery in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities should be enough to entice any Christie devotee. But no amount of star power can compensate for the fact that no one seems to be having any fun. Yeoh makes a commendable effort to craft a three-dimensional femme fatale, but the rest of the cast seems content to put on a melodrama with all the excitement of a jigsaw puzzle called “The Wheat Field.”

Despite the franchises’ obvious differences, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the shadow that the “Knives Out” movies cast over Branagh’s self-described “Christie-verse.” While you certainly can’t hate a movie for differing from an unrelated director’s vision, stuffy adaptations like “A Haunting in Venice” seem even stuffier when Johnson is constantly reminding us how much of the genre’s uncharted territory is waiting to be explored.

“A Haunting in Venice” opens in theaters on Friday, September 15.

Most Popular

You may also like.

A Haunting In Venice Review

15 Sep 2023

A Haunting In Venice

Both the selling-point and the limitation of the Poirot films is that you know exactly what you’re getting. The time-period and the tone are so set in stone that it requires a fresh A-list cast of suspects and new scenic location to differentiate each from the last (see also: Bond, Fast & Furious ). So credit where it’s due to Kenneth Branagh , who has given this a shockingly different feel even while hitting all the necessary beats.

The first slight change wrought by Branagh and writer Michael Green is the time-period: contrary to the traditional Agatha Christie interwar setting, this takes place in 1947. Poirot (Branagh) has retired from detecting, much to the chagrin of many would-be clients who camp outside his door nightly and are repelled by his bodyguard Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio). But the arrival of his pal Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), a crime writer, tempts him back. She wants him to debunk the work of psychic Mrs Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ), who has lined up a Halloween séance in the crumbling palazzo of grieving opera diva Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly).

This new tactic of rewriting obscure Christie novels with wild abandon shows real promise.

There’s a creepier energy here, the plot packed not only with murders but possibly paranormal events, out of keeping with standard whodunnit vibes, Poirot struggling to separate ghost from reality. To emphasise the eeriness, Branagh gives free rein to his long-standing weakness for a Dutch angle, tilting the camera every which way, looking for the creepiest corners of the storm-wracked palazzo, while cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos keeps the lighting just the right side of dingy.

Surrounding Branagh’s reliable Poirot, it’s a mixed bag. Fey brings screwball energy to Oliver, while Reilly seems both delicate and desperate. But Yeoh doesn’t get to do much more than pose, make vaguely sinister statements and be insulted by both Poirot and Oliver. The Belfast reteaming of Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill gives the latter more to do, oddly, though Dornan is suitably twitchy as a veteran with PTSD.

In the end, it still comes down to a gathering of the survivors for a grand reveal and an impossibly convoluted explanation. Some things are essential — and we wouldn’t want this old dog to reveal too many new tricks. Strain too hard for change and you end up with backstories for facial hair and similar madness. Still, this new tactic of rewriting obscure Christie novels with wild abandon shows real promise.

Related Articles

Movies | 19 07 2023

Movies | 11 06 2023

Movies | 26 04 2023

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Movie Reviews

A Haunting in Venice review: Kenneth Branagh scares up his best Poirot film yet

Branagh portrays Agatha Christie's favorite detective for the third time in this supernatural thriller.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

While Kenneth Branagh 's first two outings as Agatha Christie detective Hercule Poirot were classic murder mysteries, A Haunting in Venice is, as its name suggests, most decidedly a ghost story.

The slight shift in tone and genre, leaning into the supernatural elements of the storytelling, does wonders for Branagh's take on Poirot, elevating the movie beyond the solid, if somewhat bland entertainment of the first two films. Additionally, while Branagh tackled two of Christie's most famous works in his initial efforts, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile , the lesser-known 1969 novel Hallowe'en Party serves as the source material this time, with screenwriter Michael Green diverging even further from the original story. The result is something altogether more inventive, surprising, and engaging.

Poirot — played again by Branagh, with his thick Belgian accent and piercing blue eyes that seem to discern all wrongdoing — has gone into retirement, holing up in Venice and refusing to take another case. As such, he takes a bit of a backseat to the action, which leaves him to do what he does best: solve murders. There's no pesky, overwrought backstory here, no mustache origin stories. Instead, Branagh inhabits Poirot with an affection and lived-in-ness befitting of his third go with a character he can now don like a favorite sweater.

When an old acquaintance, mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), visits Poirot, she invites him to attend a Halloween party and seance at the Palazzo of famed opera singer Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ). Some months prior, Rowena's daughter, Alicia (Rowan Robinson), committed suicide by jumping from the balcony into the canal below. Desperate to hear her daughter's voice, Rowena recruits famed medium Mrs. Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ) to contact Alicia's spirit. But when the evening goes drastically wrong, the ensemble — which includes housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), shell-shocked doctor Leslie Ferrier ( Jamie Dornan ), his precocious son Leopold ( Belfast's Jude Hill), and Reynolds' assistant Desdemona (Emma Laird) — find themselves locked in a house that boasts all manner of horrors.

Branagh, teaming with cinematographer and frequent collaborator Haris Zambarloukos, transforms the Palazzo into an off-kilter haunted house and relies on canted angles to indicate the unbalanced state of Poirot's mind. While Orient Express and Nile were designed to showcase the opulence of their settings, here Zambarloukos is much more inventive with his shot set-ups, using fish-eye lenses, tilted frames, darkness, shadow, and severe high and low angles to thrust the audience into this unsettling world.

Poirot and, by extension, the audience are never quite sure whether what they're seeing is real or not — and much of the film is built upon the legacy of ghost stories and how and why we choose to believe them. The design, from the cinematography to the art direction, enhance this sense of supernatural unease. We trust Poirot to have an explanation for everything, but what happens when he simply does not? That's the question at the heart of the action, a ghostly war between Poirot's reliance on deduction and logic and the far more human, irrational foibles of loss, greed, obsession, and the unexplainable.

Branagh leads a strong ensemble here. Yeoh is satisfyingly mercenary and chilling as Ms. Reynolds, toeing the line between canny businesswoman and purveyor of spiritualism in a way that keeps us guessing. While Cottin, largely unknown to American audiences, is inscrutable in the best way, her stern exterior belying her kindly heart.

Fey offers some of her strongest work in years. Generally, she plays a heightened version of herself, but here she is a heavily fictionalized play on Christie, a mystery novelist responsible for Poirot's fame. As Oliver, she is spritely, a tad vain, and a mercurial presence that keeps Poirot and the audience on their toes. At first glance, Fey seems an odd fit for a period piece; she's so firmly associated with a specific brand of modern comedy. But she sinks into the world with gusto, complete with a believable, delightful transatlantic accent.

Dornan, who Branagh featured so exquisitely in Belfast, is a bit underused here as a doctor coming apart at the seams. But his chemistry with Hill, who reprises the father-son relationship with Dornan after Belfast , is perfection — and Hill continues to grow as a natural actor who pulls your eye straight to him in every scene. Branagh has found a real talent in the young performer and continues to mold him admirably.

Perhaps what is most satisfying about A Haunting in Venice is the ways in which it continually surprises. Where the previous Christie adaptations felt by the book, Venice startles at every turn and isn't afraid of jump scares and genuine moments of horror. It is more mystery or thriller than scary movie — and it effectively takes up the themes of the greatest mystery writers, the ways in which grief, trauma, and loss defy even the most rational of brains. The most frightening thing of all isn't the prospect of ghosts, but the ways in which our choices and our pasts haunt us more effectively than any supernatural specter could.

Amidst all this, Venice is also just a heck of a lot of fun, from its eerie Venetian mask costumes to the intriguing ways in which its central mysteries unfold. With heaps of atmosphere and a general spookiness, it's the perfect choice for a Halloween party. Grade: B

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Kenneth Branagh surprised A Haunting in Venice actors with effects on set: 'They had no warning'
• Kenneth Branagh, Tina Fey, and Michelle Yeoh can't hide from their ghosts in A Haunting in Venice teaser
• Kenneth Branagh wins his first Oscar for Belfast after 8 career nominations

Related Articles

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

How to Help Kids Spot Misinformation and Disinformation

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

A haunting in venice, common sense media reviewers.

Stark, spooky Hercule Poirot murder mystery has violence.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Addresses ideas related to faith/belief in the for

Hercule Poirot, like Sherlock Holmes, is fascinati

Main character Hercule Poirot is a White man. Most

Murders and jump scares. Character falls from heig

Sporadic language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Chr

A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill.

Parents need to know that A Haunting in Venice is writer-director and star Kenneth Branagh's third murder mystery centering on novelist Agatha Christie's brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It has a different tone from predecessors Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile : It's…

Positive Messages

Addresses ideas related to faith/belief in the form of arguments about whether ghosts are real, whether there's an afterlife, whether there's a human soul. But in the end, movie suggests that nobody knows for sure and that anything's possible. (There's a sense of hope.) Scenes involving a scary shadow-play story lead to a character saying that "Scary stories make life less scary."

Positive Role Models

Hercule Poirot, like Sherlock Holmes, is fascinating. He's extremely bright, he grasps everything. But he seems sad, suffering from untold losses. He spends most of his time alone, seems locked into a very rigid way of thinking. His intelligence and skill are inspiring, but he's probably not someone to emulate in the long run. Other characters have flaws and questionable motivations. Women are smart, sharp, business savvy. Some characters are disbelievers in ghosts/the afterlife, some prey on the beliefs of the believers. One character says, "there is no such thing as psychic phenomena ... there is only psychic pain."

Diverse Representations

Main character Hercule Poirot is a White man. Most other characters are White, although performers come from all over Europe and Asia: Ireland (Branagh, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill), England (Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly), France (Camille Cottin), Italy (Riccardo Scamarcio), Malaysia (Michelle Yeoh), and the United States (Tina Fey). The actor who plays Nicholas Holland, Ali Khan, appears to be of Indian descent. Other characters of color appear in small/background parts. Women are depicted as smart, independent, and confident.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Murders and jump scares. Character falls from height and is impaled on statue. Character impales self with sword. Spooky stuff: ghosts, sudden noises, screaming, doors slamming, things falling, glass breaking, etc. Fighting, punching, slapping. One person holds another's head over broken window glass. Flashbacks to a person sinking into water and drowning, with others retrieving her lifeless body from the water. Poison used. Four large scratch marks on character's back. One person "clotheslines" another with his outstretched arm; the person hits the ground. Attempted drowning in a tub of apples. Character pushed off of bridge into water. People violently throw things across room. Character tripped by sliding crate. Threats. Cut finger. A bird suddenly attacks another bird. Bees fly out of a skeleton's mouth. A character talks about being a soldier, liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and contending with typhus and death; he admits to "shooting himself through the chest." Dialogue about children locked in a basement and left to die.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sporadic language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Christ" (as an exclamation), "damn," "hell."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that A Haunting in Venice is writer-director and star Kenneth Branagh 's third murder mystery centering on novelist Agatha Christie's brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It has a different tone from predecessors Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile : It's more contemplative, stark, and spooky. Violence includes murders, jump scares, people being impaled (one by a statue, one by a sword), ghosts, sudden noises, screaming, glass breaking, attempted drowning, fighting, punching, slapping, threatening with broken glass, poison, injury, and more. A woman is seen slipping under water and drowning, and there's discussion over whether she was murdered or died by suicide. Another character discusses an attempt at suicide. Infrequent language includes "s--t," "bastard," "Christ" (as an exclamation), "damn," and "hell." A boy offers to get his distraught father "a pill." The movie is quietly, eerily effective, raising questions about ideas related to faith and belief in the form of arguments about whether ghosts are real, whether there's an afterlife, and whether there's a human soul. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (16)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Boring and Dark

A little creepy but still very christie, what's the story.

In A HAUNTING IN VENICE, Hercule Poirot ( Kenneth Branagh ) is retired and living in Venice. He's hired a former police officer, Vitale Portfoglio ( Riccardo Scamarcio ), as a bodyguard to ward off desperate people looking for sleuthing services. Then Poirot is visited by bestselling mystery author Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), who has a proposition. She's working on a book about a famous medium, Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ). She can't figure out how Reynolds does her supernatural seances and wants Poirot to accompany her to see if he can find anything. They attend a Halloween party for orphans at the palazzo of Rowena Drake ( Kelly Reilly ), who, after the party, wishes to contact the spirit of her daughter, Alicia. Alicia had fallen from the balcony and drowned; it may or may not have been murder. Lo and behold, more murders start happening, and Poirot goes to work seeking the facts and finding a suspect. But something is wrong: Poirot himself has begun hearing voices and seeing ghosts.

Is It Any Good?

Stark and spooky, Branagh's third Poirot movie successfully adopts a whole new atmosphere. It's less exotic and edgier, more haunted; it's a tense, thoughtful, and satisfying mystery. Murder on the Orient Express had a fluid use of space aboard a cramped, moving train, while Death on the Nile used bright, open spaces. A Haunting in Venice , which is mainly set indoors, during a storm, and in the late hours of Halloween night -- when the barrier between the living and the dead is said to be at its thinnest -- plays with more shadowy, angular, and even hallucinogenic filmmaking.

Author Agatha Christie published the source novel, Hallowe'en Party , in 1969, more than 30 years after the Orient Express and Nile novels, perhaps suggesting a hard-earned fatalism, which Branagh attaches to this movie's fabric. He seems freshly inspired, and his direction flourishes through Christie's material. As ever, he's equally adept with his actors, himself giving an appealingly wounded performance while slowly stripping away the other characters' veneers of protection, revealing their painful pasts. The mystery itself is clever and effective, though it comes almost with a sense of resignation; there's no joy in solving this murder. Even so, A Haunting in Venice leaves off with a sense of promise.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about A Haunting in Venice 's violence . How much is actually shown? What's the impact of the violence that's not shown? Is that thrilling, or shocking?

What's the appeal of scary movies ? Why is it sometimes fun to be scared?

Which characters are "good," and which are "bad" -- or is it hard to tell? Why do films often want viewers to see people as one way or another, rather than showing humans' capacity to be both?

Like Poirot, do you believe that there are simple, black-and-white solutions for every problem? Why, or why not?

Why do you think author Agatha Christie and Poirot have such enduring appeal?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 15, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : November 28, 2023
• Cast : Kenneth Branagh , Tina Fey , Michelle Yeoh , Jamie Dornan
• Director : Kenneth Branagh
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Asian actors, Middle Eastern/North African writers
• Studio : 20th Century Studios
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 103 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements
• Last updated : January 27, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

Death on the Nile

Murder on the Orient Express

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Best mystery movies, best ghost stories for kids and teens.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

• DVD & Streaming

A Haunting in Venice

• Crime , Drama , Horror , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

• September 15, 2023
• Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot; Michelle Yeoh as Mrs. Reynolds; Jamie Dornan as Dr. Leslie Ferrier; Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver; Riccardo Scamarcio as Vitale Portfoglio; Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake; Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff; Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier; Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland; Ali Khan as Nicholas Holland; Rowan Robinson as Alicia Drake

Home Release Date

• October 31, 2023
• Kenneth Branagh

Distributor

• 20th Century Studios

Movie Review

Hercule Poirot’s little gray cells have served him well. But by 1947, they deserve a break. And so does Poirot.

The great detective is finished with murder, done with death. He’s turned his ever-orderly mind to more gentle pursuits in Venice: measuring marketplace eggs to the millimeter for his breakfast. Dusting (that’s right, dusting ) his garden. His bodyguard, Vitale, keeps potential clients at bay, keeping Poirot’s world clean and conflict-free.

But then an old friend comes to call—a paperback mystery writer, of all people—by the name of Ariadne Oliver. She’s in town for a séance, led by a woman the papers call “the unholy Mrs. Reynolds.”

Ariadne, like Poirot, has always assumed that mediums such as Mrs. Reynolds were invariably phony. But Mrs. Reynolds? She’s something different. And try as Ariadne does to catch the medium’s chicanery, she’s been unsuccessful. Now, she wants Poirot to join her at the séance—to put his little gray cells to use one more time and spot the fake.

“I am the smartest person I ever met, and I can’t figure it out,” Ariadne tells Poirot. “So I came to the second.”

Poirot agrees—for an old friend. The place: a crumbling Venetian villa owned by the legendary opera singer Rowena Drake. The date: Halloween. And who will Mrs. Reynolds be trying to contact on the other side of death’s veil?

Why, Rowena’s daughter, Alicia, of course. She committed suicide not so long ago. Or so the doctor concluded. But some say the villa’s many ghosts might’ve given her a little … push.

The guests settle in for the séance, and Mrs. Roberts does her thing: She contacts Alicia. Or, at least, she seems to, before Poirot uncovers her accomplice in the chimney. The detective has done his work. He’s proved that Mrs. Roberts, while an excellent actress, is nothing but a frau—

But then the door crashes open. Mrs. Roberts’ chair begins to spin. And the medium—speaking in Alicia’s voice—screams the same word again and again.

“Murderer!” she wails. “Murderer!” It’s a shocking spectacle, to be sure. But one guest is more shocked than the rest. And if Alicia was murdered in this house, she’ll have company before the evening is over.

Positive Elements

It should not be a spoiler to say that not every guest makes it out of the villa alive. Murder is indeed afoot, and Poirot has spent his career bringing murderers and other malcontents to justice. We can laud his desire to get to the bottom of this little conundrum, too.

But we should note that the suspects he’s given are often better people than they first might appear. I’ll say little else about that, given what we learn about these characters may have a bearing on the outcome of this whodunit. But one relationship does deserve special notice.

Dr. Leslie Ferrier, a family friend of Rowena’s, is clearly a disturbed, brittle man. He hides in a room as children scamper through the villa (Rowena threw a party for the orphans—a nice act of charity itself), and he seems unable to deal with much. His young son, Leopold, now finds him in the confusing role of sometime caretaker for his own dad—making sure he’s as comfortable as he can be and reassuring his father that everything’s going to be just fine. When the doctor protests that he should be taking care of Leopold, not the other way ‘round, Leo generously tells him that he does . And indeed, we see Dr. Ferrier’s love and care for the boy demonstrated.

Spiritual Elements

We expect Hercules Poirot to investigate death. But in (the aptly named) A Haunting in Venice , he’s called to investigate something far more difficult to nail down: whether there’s life after.

Poirot comes into the story a firm skeptic. He does not believe in mediums, or the supernatural, or God. “I have lost my faith,” he says.

“How sad for you,” Mrs. Reynolds says.

“The truth is sad,” Poirot retorts.

But circumstances force Poirot to, perhaps, doubt his unbelief. He (and we) must ask whether he can trust what he sees and hears, or whether something else is burbling under the surface.

Mrs. Reynolds is, obviously, a standard-bearer for a more spiritual understanding of our world. Rumor has it that she was the last person arrested under centuries-old witchcraft laws. (She dislikes the word witch and instead prefers the moniker medium .)

She claims to talk to the dead: If she’s for real (as characters remind us), it’s proof of the soul, of the afterlife and of a more complex reality. Some argue that her visions prove that there is a God, and one who cares enough about us to give us the gift of an immortal soul. But Poirot doubts the spirits—even if they existed—would speak to Mrs. Reynolds. “If there is a God,” Poirot says, “He would not break His rule for her .”

Olga Seminoff is not a fan of Mrs. Reynolds, either—but for a far different reason. She believes the medium is indeed “unholy,” and she quotes Exodus 22:18 (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”) as evidence that Mrs. Reynolds’ activities violate nature and God. When Poirot asks why she would even agree to attend the séance, Olga responds, “There is only one to whom I must answer,” she tells him. “And that is not you.”

Opinions about whether Mrs. Reynolds is a fraud or not run the gamut, even among those who know her well. She certainly talks a good game, though. And when Alicia appears to speak through her, “Alicia” claims to be “thirsty” and in torment (perhaps an echo of Luke 16:24).

The villa itself is home to a gruesome legend. It was once a children’s hospital. But when war broke out and wore on, the home’s Catholic overseers reportedly deserted the children and left them to die. Ever since then, the villa has been allegedly cursed under something called the “children’s vendetta,” where the children’s spirits torment those in the house.

We see nuns chaperone orphans, and we learn that a character used to be a nun. A shadow-puppet show features nuns and a priest, too. An elaborate clock features Adam, Eve and the snake in the Garden of Eden. A cross is shown in the background of the séance scene. A character crosses herself.

We hear references to Ouija boards and crystal balls (though Mrs. Reynolds uses a typewriter). Supernatural happenings appear to take place throughout the film. We hear someone say that every house in Venice is “either haunted or cursed.” Even the film’s poster features five of the film’s characters positioned to look like arms on a pentagram.

Sexual Content

A young couple kisses during the villa’s Halloween party. Ariadne sits next to the couple and signals a “nun alert,” and the two vamoose. One suspect secretly loves another.

Violent Content

There’s no question that Alicia is dead. In flashback, we see her fall from a villa balcony and into the water below, and several scenes show her corpse being pulled out of the water.

It’s not the only dead body we see. We’ll skimp on the details here, given the nature of the film. But some character arcs end violently and grotesquely, even though the blood we see on screen is fairly minimal. Corpses are covered with shrouds, and sometimes those shrouds can be stained with blood.

Someone tries to drown Poirot—dunking his face into a basin of water. The mark of the “Children’s Vendetta” includes bloody claw marks. (Alicia’s own body bore such marks.) Two characters get in a fistfight, and one is nearly shoved into a shard of broken glass. At least one desiccated corpse is found in the house. Someone’s punched in the face. Another character trips over a speeding trunk.

Vitale is an exuberant defender of Poirot’s privacy. When someone tries to ask Poirot to investigate some mysterious happenings, Vitale punches the man and tells him, “Touch him again, and I take your hand.” He pushes another would-be client off a bridge.

We hear several references to wartime traumas and villages burned.

Crude or Profane Language

One use of the s-word and a small assortment of other profanities, including “a–,” “b–tard,” “h—” and “d–n.” God’s name is misused three times, and “Christ” is invoked as a profanity twice.

Drug and Alcohol Content

When Dr. Ferrier looks particularly distraught, son Leo asks him if he needs a “pill.” Ariadne complains that critics called her last three books “small beer.” She’s looking for a “big beer” book now. Characters sip liquor and aperitifs. We hear a reference to opium.

[ Spoiler Warning ] A hallucinogen plays a part in the mystery.

Other Negative Elements

Two characters have fake IDs and checkered pasts, and they admit to stealing in order to survive some harsh post-war years. Characters scheme, lie and keep secrets. A couple admits to being bad at their jobs.

During the children’s Halloween party, housekeeper Olga Seminoff sidles up next to mystery writer Ariadne Oliver and tells her she’s a big fan. Ariadne’s murder mysteries underline God’s ultimate plan, she says, and prove that “the wicked will meet justice.” Ariadne acerbically laments that if only life was so clear-cut—so obviously the work of a good, just God.

A Haunting in Venice is primarily a murder mystery. It’s secondarily a horror story. But underneath it all lies that central, spiritual tension: that of a divine plan juxtaposed against the mess of the world.

Perhaps that’s why murder mysteries—in spite of all the hidden motives and secret affairs and blood on the floor—have long had an appeal for Christians, both in their reading (and watching) and writing. Some of the best mystery novelists were (and are) Christian. And those sometimes-gruesome books, in a way, are an echo of the biblical creation story: Out of chaos comes order. Out of murky, murderous darkness comes the clear light of reason, of truth, of justice. Fitting that Agatha Christie’s most famous detective, Hercules Poirot, was written as a practicing Catholic.

Director/actor Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot (whom he’s played in  three movies) has no such religious bent. Secularism has claimed the light of reason as its own these days, and most Christians seem willing to cede the point. While the film takes place in 1947, its leading figure embraces a far more 21 st -century stance, where science and religion are increasingly—albeit often falsely—at odds. It seems that this Poirot has thrown religion in the same closet where mysticism and superstition reside and pocketed the key.

And yet, the doorknob turns.

The spiritual questions at the core of A Haunting in Venice makes this film the most interesting of the three—even if those same elements make it very un-Agatha Christie-like. It’s an effective horror flick, filled with atmospheric details and cheap jump scares. It’s a clever little mystery. And in terms of content, it’s far cleaner than, say, 2022’s needlessly problematic Death on the Nile .

Certainly, the movie’s supernatural and occultic elements should give anyone pause. As Olga says, such things are not meant to be trifled with. But for those who choose to see this flick, those same elements can provide some interesting discussion points—to get your own little gray cells working.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Latest Reviews

Despicable Me 4

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Space Cadet

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• AP Buyline Shopping
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• Auto Racing
• 2024 Paris Olympic Games
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Movie Review: Kenneth Branagh crafts a sumptuously spooky ‘A Haunting in Venice’

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, left, and and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver in a scene from “A Haunting in Venice.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from “A Haunting in Venice.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake in a scene from “A Haunting in Venice.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left,Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver, Michelle Yeoh as Mrs. Reynolds, and Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in a scene from “A Haunting in Venice.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in a scene from “A Haunting in Venice.” (20th Century Studios via AP)

• Copy Link copied

Kenneth Branagh indulges in the kind of macabre theatricality that only a crumbling Venetian palazzo on a stormy Halloween night can provide in “ A Haunting in Venice. ”

Moviegoers probably long ago made up their mind one way or another about Branagh’s stately and flawed Hercule Poirot franchise, but should there be any curiosity left for this third installment is worth it. It is spooky, fun and features Tina Fey, looking smart and sleek in post-war suits as the fast-talking author of wildly successful whodunnits who says things like “I’m the smartest person I know” in a mid-Atlantic accent.

Set in 1947 on a particularly foggy night in the city of canals, “A Haunting in Venice” is beautiful to look at, with costumes by Sammy Sheldon, production design by John Paul Kelly and cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos. And it’s embellished with moody but palatable scares that feel reminiscent of classics like “The Innocents” and “The Others,” that are enhanced by Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score. In other words, this might not excite a “Saw” enthusiast, but for the more easily scared and skittish it hits just the right notes.

Agatha Christie takes a bit of a backseat here, as Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green take only the loosest inspiration from her 1969 book “The Hallowe’en Party” for their haunting, firstly by moving it to Venice. It’s where Poirot has chosen to live out his self-imposed retirement (an enviable exile if there ever was one). His whereabouts are hardly a secret though — desperate folks line up outside of his picturesque apartment hoping he’ll take a stab at their cases. But for now, a handsome Italian bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio) is there to make sure they don’t get close enough to ask.

Fey’s Ariadne Oliver gets through the gates, though, with a different kind of offer: She wants Poirot to accompany her to a séance. This medium, she says, appears to be the real deal and only he’ll be able to figure out if it’s all a trick. Soon he, reluctantly, finds himself at a Halloween party for the city’s orphans, held by a famous opera singer, Rowena, (Kelly Reilly) with a famously dead daughter whom they hope to contact later that evening when the children depart.

Branagh recruited a few of his “Belfast” stars into this ensemble, including Jamie Dornan as doctor still haunted by the war and Jude Hill as his precocious son Leopold. Camille Cottin is a housekeeper, Kyle Allen is the dead girl’s ex-fiancé, and Michelle Yeoh is the theatrical medium Mrs. Reynolds, who seems to be having a grand time chewing the scenery as a possible femme fatale. It is a distinct shift in tone from the previous films — sadder and more serious, with grief and death everywhere. Even before Alicia’s mysterious death (off a balcony, into the canal with a horrific scrape on her back) the grand palazzo had a body count: It’s where doctors are said to have locked up children to die during the plague.

And this crew is in for a long, stormy, claustrophobic night with finger pointing, more deaths and some inexplicable phenomena at play. Poirot’s existential crisis is probably the least interesting aspect of the whole thing, despite its centrality to the plot, but Branagh doesn’t waste too much of his time diving into those self-indulgent waters.

Maybe Branagh should have been leaning more into horror this whole time with this franchise. Or maybe it’s a case of underestimating a director whose work is prolific and not always personal. It can be hard to take stock of a filmmaker’s career when they’ve made great Shakespeare and Cinderella adaptations as well as “Thor” and “Artemis Fowl.” But it’s always a pleasant surprise when it works as “A Haunting in Venice” very much does.

“A Haunting in Venice,” a 20th Century Studios release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “some strong violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.” Running time: 107 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

'A Haunting in Venice' review: A sleepy Agatha Christie movie that won't keep you up at night

Another Agatha Christie movie, another old-school whodunit that doesn’t measure up to Kenneth Branagh’s amazing mustache .

“A Haunting in Venice” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Hulu ), Branagh’s third go-round as ace Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot (and third time manning the director’s chair), is only marginally better than the previous two stale outings, 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and last year’s “ Death on the Nile .” For his newest starry murder mystery , based on Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” Branagh challenges Poirot’s deductive mind and supernatural belief system and surrounds him with spookiness that can only spiff up a creaky plot and thin characters so much.

Set in 1947 – 10 years after “Nile” if anyone’s counting – this tale finds Poirot retired and living in Venice, Italy. After a career of seeing the worst of humanity while solving murders and witnessing the horrors of war, the ex-detective is content gardening, hiding from potential clients and waiting for his pastry delivery (like a post-war Postmates).

Who's the murderer? The biggest changes between the book and movie 'A Haunting in Venice'

“Cakes for cases,” Poirot’s friend Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ) teases him when she comes to visit. The world’s top mystery writer is in Venice to attend a Halloween seance held at a supposedly haunted palazzo, which was once an orphanage but is now said to house the spirits of tortured children.

The palazzo's owner is opera star Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a soprano who hasn’t sung a note since her ill daughter Alicia suffered a broken engagement and bizarrely took a header into a nearby canal, and she’s hired renowned psychic Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ) to hold a gathering to communicate with the dearly departed.

Knowing Poirot will think all this is hooey, Ariadne convinces him to come along and debunk the “Unholy” Mrs. Reynolds as a charlatan. But a long and twisty night kicks off in murderous fashion: One of the guests winds up dead, the survivors are trapped by a nasty storm, and Poirot gets back to what he does best, though our hero is thrown off his game when he starts to see and hear strange things.

An intriguing lot rounds out the suspect list, including “Belfast” co-stars Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill as a doctor suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and his clever son, Kyle Allen (“West Side Story”) as Alicia’s ex-fiancé and Camille Cottin (“Stillwater”) as Rowena’s loyal housekeeper. Fey’s Ariadne is the only supporting player that really pops, as a wry foil to the reserved Poirot. The detective himself gets another decent fleshing-out from what Christie had on the page courtesy of Michael Green’s screenplay, which takes more freedom with the source material than "Orient Express" and "Nile" did with their better-known tomes.

Like Branagh’s previous mysteries, “Venice” is awfully nice to look at and Oscar-winning "Joker" composer Hildur Gudnadøttir's darkly classical score sets a pleasingly creepy vibe alongside masked Italian gondoliers and costumed kids. Yet aside from Yeoh’s character and the occasional odd figure in a mirror, it’s not nearly as scary as it should or could be – the family-friendly “Haunted Mansion” is more unsettling, honestly – and the narrative is a grind to get through before Poirot finally reveals all.

From 'Nun 2' to 'Exorcist: Believer': Peep these 20 new scary movies for Halloween

The main problem with these throwback Christie adaptations is that, while sufficiently stylish and serviceable, they just don’t have the infectious, go-for-broke energy of a “Knives Out” movie or even a more relatable version of a classic literary sleuthing type like the “Sherlock” TV series. Multiple bodies drop dead, Poirot’s facial hair is still on point, but “Haunting” can’t exorcise ghosts of the past enough for a thrilling case.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

They Came by Night

Published in 1969, Agatha Christie’s “ Hallowe’en Party ” is largely set in the fictional town of Woodleigh Common, “an ordinary sort of place,” thirty or forty miles from London. Thanks to the director Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriter, Michael Green, the book has become a new film, “A Haunting in Venice,” and the action has shifted to Italy in 1947. Now, that’s an adaptation—a bolder metamorphosis than anything essayed by Branagh and Green in “ Murder on the Orient Express ” (2017) or “ Death on the Nile ” (2022). I’m already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: “The Body in the Library,” perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart.

Branagh returns as Hercule Poirot, who has retired to a Venetian fastness. There, ignoring the pleas of the importunate, who bug him with their private mysteries, he tends his garden, inspecting his plants through a magnifying glass as if to expose any guilty aphids. A local heavy named Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), who sounds like a stockbroker but is actually an ex-cop, functions as a gatekeeper. The one outsider to whom he allows entry is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a crime novelist on the make. She urges the sleuth to accompany her to a séance, where a celebrated medium, Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), will make contact with the beyond. Ariadne’s plan is that Poirot, as an arch-rationalist, will debunk the claims of the paranormal. And Branagh’s plan, as a guileful filmmaker, is to rebunk them to the hilt.

Prepare yourself, therefore, for all the tricks. A palazzo, said to be stuffed with ghosts and currently occupied by an operatic soprano, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), who hasn’t sung a note since her daughter, Alicia (Rowan Robinson), fell into a canal and drowned. A parrot called Harry, who has kept his beak shut for the same reason. A housekeeper (Camille Cottin) given to speaking in Latin, who alone has access to the daughter’s room. A British doctor (Jamie Dornan), traumatized by his wartime experience. A handsome and reliably vacant rotter (Kyle Allen), who was once betrothed to Alicia and jilted her, apparently for money, which seems fair enough to me. A concealed basement, complete with skeletons. A knitted rabbit. Missing bees. A typewriter whose keys depress themselves. A lashing nocturnal storm so wild that, when death descends, the police cannot reach the scene, meaning that Poirot must lock everyone in and— mon Dieu —solve the crime before breakfast.

I remember being scared by “Hallowe’en Party” when I read it as a child, because the first victim was a child: a girl of twelve or thirteen, whose head was forced down into a bucket of water while she was bobbing for apples. (Christie could be cruel, when she wished, in the matter of fun gone wrong.) As if by way of redemption, the most interesting figure in “A Haunting in Venice” is another kid—Leopold, the doctor’s son, played by Jude Hill, who was the rascally tyke at the heart of Branagh’s “ Belfast ” (2021). Here, Hill is scrubbed clean of any cuteness; instead, he presents us with a kind of precocious mini-Poirot, solemnly clad in a dark suit and tie. Leopold cares for his quaking father, reads Edgar Allan Poe, and, asked about his sympathy with the dead, replies, “Some of them are my friends.” He and the boy in “The Sixth Sense” (1999) would have plenty to talk about.

For the constitutionally morbid, such as Leopold, nowhere can outgloom Venice. “The most beautiful of tombs,” Henry James called it, and I am always bemused by its reputation as a romantic refuge. How can you honeymoon in a city defined by dissolution and decay? Think of Joseph Losey, who took a Hollywood potboiler, James Hadley Chase’s “Eve,” and, like Branagh, moved the plot to Venice. The result was “Eva” (1962), a memorial to disenchantment, in which Jeanne Moreau, as a heedless hedonist, left her lover with his dignity drenched and his heart in ruins. Part of the film unfolded on Torcello, in winter, far from the dazzle of the Grand Canal.

If every Venetian tale has been told, then, and every view exhaustively documented in print or paint, what can “A Haunting in Venice” hope to add to the mix? It’s only a couple of months since Hayley Atwell and Rebecca Ferguson were busy battling a villain on one of the city’s bridges in the latest “Mission: Impossible,” and, for the Venetian mourning of drowned daughters, there is nothing to rival “Don’t Look Now” (1973). Yet Branagh’s film has the charm of ridiculous excess: stylistic flourishes are piled high into a treasury of gothic camp, and the camera is tilted, regardless of provocation, at the most alarming angles—Dutch angles, as they are known in the trade. If you really want to feel at home, M. Poirot, forget Venice. Onward to Amsterdam!

According to the historical record, Augusto Pinochet , who came to power in Chile after a military coup fifty years ago, was born in 1915 and died in 2006. According to “El Conde,” on the other hand, a new movie from the Chilean director Pablo Larraín, Pinochet was around for centuries. He began as Claude Pinoche, a young French officer in the army of Louis XVI, who observed the excesses of the French Revolution at close quarters—so close that, after the execution of Marie Antoinette, he snuck up to the guillotine and licked her blood from the blade. This was no regular brute, you see. He was a vampire.

Such is the conceit that drives this unusual film. Tracking the course of Pinochet’s misdeeds, it jumps forward to the modern age, passes swiftly over the span of his dictatorial reign, and alights on his casket as he lies in state. A small window shows the peaceful visage of the deceased, who opens his eyes and steals a glance, clearly impatient to rise again and resume his thirsty trade. Simple blood, we learn, does not satisfy Pinochet’s discerning palate; instead, he plucks out his victims’ hearts, pops them in a blender, and quaffs the liquidized gloop. Aside from a last-minute coda, “El Conde”—“The Count”—is entirely in black-and-white. The gore is as dark as tar.

The bulk of the story is set on a remote Chilean ranch. The sole occupants are Pinochet (Jaime Vadell), his wife, Lucía Hiriart (Gloria Münchmeyer), and their servant, Fyodor (Alfredo Castro), who takes great pride in the chronicle of his sadism, as meted out during the rule of the junta. To this desolate spot come Pinochet’s five children, who profess a feeble strain of love for their father but are mainly after his money. An accountant by the name of Carmencita (Paula Luchsinger) arrives, to sort out the family finances, not least the funds that were stashed away like a squirrel’s nuts. Carmencita, however, has a secret plan; she is a nun, in civilian disguise, and her suitcase is filled with the tools of an exorcist. The stakes are high.

Vampires notwithstanding, no one in the movie makes a more striking impact than Luchsinger. Close-cropped, sharp-featured, round-eyed, and beaming, she radiates a militant innocence. Yet her character’s purpose becomes perilously blurred, and there is something slack and unfocussed at the core of the plot. The more that Larraín tries to grab your attention with moral grotesquerie, as the Pinochets bicker over the legacy of the undead, the less inclined you are to yield. My suspicion is that “El Conde” is a one-trick tale. The image of a tyrant as an actual bloodsucker, rather than as a harsh subduer of his compatriots, would be meat and drink—especially drink—to a political cartoonist, but it has no narrative force to match its satirical bite. Few jokes, no matter how sick and strong, can be told over and over without beginning to fade.

The film is narrated in the unmistakable tones of Margaret Thatcher (Stella Gonet), who deigns to make a guest appearance in the later stages. It is true that, after Pinochet was indicted for human-rights violations in 1998, and held under house arrest in Britain, Thatcher (and George H. W. Bush) argued that he should be released. Anyone watching “El Conde,” though, and knowing little of that period, will be left with the impression that she was not so much Pinochet’s ally as his monstrous mate—even, perhaps, his superior—with savage tastes of her own. Like him, she flies serenely through vast gray skies, her cape spread out in a bat’s wing. Being a lady, she sips blood from a china cup, as if it were Earl Grey tea.

The fact that Thatcher, unlike Pinochet, was fairly elected, and that she governed a country in which you could call the Prime Minister a vampire without getting thrown out of a helicopter or beaten to a pulp, may be too fine and too dull a distinction to trouble Larraín. His is a curious case: his work has grown sillier, not wiser, in his maturity. The baroque paranoia of “Jackie” (2016), “Spencer” (2021), and “El Conde,” bulging with nightmares of conspiracy, is less persuasive than the urgency of “NO” (2012). That was Larraín’s best film, firmly grounded in the campaign to defeat Pinochet in a referendum of 1988, and peopled with ordinary Chileans who had endured more than enough and gathered themselves to hit back. Where are such folk in “El Conde”? Who needs a movie that is almost all predators, with barely a word from their prey? ♦

New Yorker Favorites

Summer in the city in the days before air-conditioning .

My childhood in a cult .

How Apollo 13 got lost on its way to the moon— then made it back .

Notes from the Comma Queen: “who” or “whom”?

The surreal case of a  C.I.A. hacker’s revenge .

Fiction by Edward P. Jones: “Bad Neighbors”

Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Jason's Movie Blog

A movie blog for movie reviews, trailers, and more.

A Haunting in Venice (2023) Review

DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING…

In 2017, actor / director Kenneth Branagh brought the classic and beloved murder mystery drama of novelist Agatha Christie to the silver screen with the release of Murder on the Orient Express. Directed and starring in the lead role by Branagh himself, the film, which also had the talents of Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench amongst several others, followed the exploits of one eccentric, yet super sleuth detective Hercule Poirot as he pieces together a murder case that occurred upon the Orient Express train. While this wasn’t the first adaptation Christie’s famed, this version of  Murder on the Orient Express  boasted a solid cast and the production value and, while some drew criticism on the feature’s screenplay and sluggish pacing, the film still managed to collect over $350 million at the global box office against its $55 million production budget. This was enough for the studio at the time (20 th  Century Fox) to move forward with a follow-up adventure of Christie’s Poirot detective, with 2022’s Death on the Nile being released several years later. With the movie following yet another mystery surrounding the death of a wealth heiress on her honeymoon trip in Egypt, Branagh himself returned to both directing and starring as Poirot was once again, with his co-stars Annette Bening, Russell Brand, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Rose Leslie, and Letita Wright filling out the supporting characters in the movie. Death on the Nile received mixed reviews from critics and moviegoers, with the film grossing $137 million at the box office worldwide against its production budget of $90 million. Now, a year after the release of last film, 20 th Century Fox and returning director Kenneth Branagh return to the classic tale of an old-fashioned murder mystery capper with the release of A Haunting in Venice . Does this latest Hercule Poirot tale follow the clues to its satisfying ending, or does it spooky nuances become a distraction from Christie’s famous detective story?

Ten years after solving the murder case of heiress Linnet Ridgeway in Egypt, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is retired, trying to find solace and peace of mind within the comforts of Venice, Italy, protected by manservant bodyguard Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio), who keeps the public away as they beg for assistance from the famous detective. Breaking through his solitude is Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a popular mystery novelist who is stuck in a rut with her recent releases and looking for new inspiration, pulling Poirot into a nearby Halloween visit to the nearby venetian villa of Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), a retired opera singer who is looking to hold a séance, attempting to reach “the other side” and contact her daughter, Alicia (Rowan Robinson), who suddenly died a short time ago. Skeptical, Poirot is a non-believer in the supernatural, joined by Ariadne, who’s hoping for something “special” to happen, but strangeness arrives with Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), a known medium who is confident in her psychic abilities, ready to connect the great beyond and locate Rowena’s daughter. During her ritual ceremony, Reynolds achieves her goal, but Poirot plans to debunk the performance as a setup. However, such motives are tested when a dead body is soon after discovered, inspiring the detective to lock down the villa and learn more about the partygoers, including Alicia’s ex-fiancé Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen), Rowena’s housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), Rowena’s family doctor Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan), and several others, and their personal motives.

THE GOOD / THE BAD

Borrowing my lines from my review of Death on the Nile , I will be the first admit that I loved Kenneth Branagh’s  Murder on the Orient Express . Of course, like many out there, I knew a vague understand of Christie’s classic murder mystery novel, with the tale being told having that iconic pop-culture reference. Despite that, however, I really didn’t know the actual story of the Orient Express, with maybe the exception of Hercule Poirot, Christie’s Belgian eccentric detective. Looking past all of that, I do like a good murder mystery, especially one that has that classical feeling of “old school murder mystery” feeling throughout as well as having that visual aesthetics of a period piece drama. Thus, the combination of all that works in Branagh’s favor with his 2017 remake film of the beloved murder mystery novel. I did see the original 1974 film, with actor Albert Finney as Poirot, but I did see it after watching Branagh’s version. Of the two, I think that Branagh was slightly better, which is mostly due to the more diverse cast that fill out the “suspected” supporting players of the story as well as the stylish production quality in updated filmmaking cinematics. Still, I did feel that the new movie didn’t bring much difference from the 1974 version, which I understand why several people had mixed opinions on this new iteration. Altogether, I think what Branagh did with Christie’s narrative is something cinematic / technical great and perhaps one of the main reasons why I found his interpretation of  Murder on the Orient Express  to be enjoyable and entertaining to watch every now and again.

Of course, I was excited to see Death on the Nile to see Branagh returning to play Poirot again, but, while I was expecting to see the film come out a year or two after the 2017 Orient Express , the film was delayed several times, with one being Disney’s acquisition of 20 th Century Fox (shuffling scheduled releases) as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which further delayed the project until 2022. So, when I did finally get to see the movie, I enjoyed it. Of course, my thoughts on this follow-up sequel were better than most, but I still found that it was a bit inferior to its predecessor. Perhaps it was because of the sluggish pacing in the first half and that the actual “murder mystery” aspect of the feature doesn’t really start until halfway throughout the feature. Still, for better or worse, Death on the Nile managed to be entertaining, especially since I love Branagh coming back to play Poirot and I did like the ensemble cast for this project.

This brings me around to talking about A Haunting in Venice , a 2023 murder mystery drama and the follow-up sequel to both Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express . To be quite honest, I wasn’t expecting a Branagh’s Poirot to make a return, especially with the “lukewarm” reception that the last movie received. So, I was quite surprised when the third Hercule Poirot film from Branagh was announced sometime after the release of Death on the Nile , with (of course) Branagh himself returning to participate in front and behind the camera once again as well as the cast involved in the upcoming feature, including Fey, Dorman, Hill, Reilly, and Yeoh just to name a few. After the film was announced, I really didn’t hear much about this movie until the film’s movie trailer began to appear online and in theaters (during the “coming attractions preview). From the preview alone, the movie definitely looked enticing, but perhaps the biggest (and most striking) was the introduction of a more “horror” style elements that was being showcased. It was a somewhat of departure from the previous two films and one that I felt could “make or break” the new film. It wasn’t unheard of, but something bold. And I kind of liked that idea. So, I was excited to see A Haunting in Venice when it was set to be released on September 15 th , 2023. Unfortunately, I was out of the country on vacation when this movie first opened up, so I did have to wait a few weeks to get to see this movie. Now, with my schedule “back to normal” I am ready to share what I thought of this latest Hercule Poirot movie. And what did I think of it? Well, I actually liked it. Despite some limitations that the movie is structured, A Haunting in Venice is still an engaging endeavor, with special attention from its visual style and horror-like elements as well as in its solid cast all the way around. It’s not the best of the three Branagh directed and starred murder mystery cappers, but it’s definitely an improvement from the 2022 release….and that’s a good thing.

As mentioned,  A Haunting in Venice  sees the return of Kenneth Branagh to the directing chair for the project as well as the lead protagonist of the feature. I’ll mention his acting in the movie and little further down in my review. For now, let’s talk about the directing portion of Branagh. For those who don’t know, Branagh has dabbled in film directing for quite some time. Not just only helming 2017’s  Murder on the Orient Express , but also other notable projects like  Hamlet ,  Thor , and  Cinderella . Thus, the credibility of the Branagh’s direction is sound. Well, maybe not 2020’s  Artemis Fowl , but we don’t talk about that movie. For this film, Branagh seems quite focused at the task at hand and jumps right into the main plot of the feature. This, of course, is a much improvement made from Death on the Nile that had its first act feel very elongated and slowly plodding away through characters and events before actually getting to the main plot of the tale. Branagh seems to realize the problems with the previous installments and approaches A Haunting in Venice with a much better sense of what’s important to the main story and sort of “jumps” right into the plotting of the tale after a brief introductions sequence. Thus, majority of the movie feels like its part of the “murder mystery” aspect rather than “setting up” characters and their motives. To be sure, those said character motivations are still present and play out as one would expect in this type of genre presentation, but it’s a bit more refined and pulled together with a tighter feel, which is a good thing for both Branagh’s talent as a director and for the film itself.

One of the more interesting nuances that Branagh utilizes in A Haunting in Venice is to play up more of the horror style elements within the feature’s presentation and overall thematic tone of the tale. As mentioned above, this particular projection was somewhat of a departure from the previous two films, which were lighter in tone (beyond the murder portion) and felt more like a period piece drama. In this movie, Branagh still has those moments where the costumed period piece efforts are still in use (mostly bookending the feature), but the overall “mood” of the feature has a more foreboding and ominous feeling; something that can be find in horror movie. Sudden twists and turns and several darker shadowing and lightening definitely play a part of the movie’s visual presentation, which definitely plays up the “spooky” aspect of the feature, especially since the story involves a murder on Halloween night. It definitely works as Branagh creates an atmospheric film that still retains all the fundamentals of a murder mystery drama, yet also generates enough scary / brooding motifs and aesthetics to keep the narrative’s presentation unsettling (by design) as well as a great setup for the events that unfold. Plus, I do have to mention that the overall “scary” elements aren’t exactly frightening, so those who don’t like horror movies can rest assure that the movie isn’t filled with terror violence or gory blood. Again, it’s more atmospheric in its thematic tones.

One particular aspect that I liked about what Branagh does is make the film feel accessible to all, even if one has never watched the previous two installments that preceded this one. While Orient Express and Death on the Nile introduces Poirot (and his inane quirks), A Haunting in Venice doesn’t require a prerequisite necessity to view those two endeavors to fully enjoy this film. Yes, maybe a little bit of backstory of his character is needed, new viewers can easily “catch up” quickly on what Branagh wants to project and convey in this detective sleuth and his ability to “sniff out” the mystery that lies before. Thus, the accessibility of the movie is palpable and easy to digest without prior knowledge of the first two Poirot endeavors by Branagh. Overall, I felt that the movie was pretty good, with Branagh staging a more focused narrative that’s both familiar and unfamiliar, especially with the “moodier” nature of mystery and murder detective work.

For its presentation, A Haunting in Venice does exceptionally well for its usage of background visual aesthetics and setting to “set the stage” for the narrative’s locale and primary centerpiece. Interestingly, the movie itself is very much so a “low budget”, especially in comparing the previous two, but that doesn’t mean that the film’s setting has to be sacrificed, with the backdrop placement of Venice, Italy. While production took place in Pinewood Studios, the film did shoot sequences in Venice, which was used as the primary stetting for the story and this notion help encapsulate the venetian visual look and style aesthetics. Plus, as mentioned above, the interior shots of halls, rooms, and corridors also played a part in the feature (almost like a character unto itself) and definitely provide plenty of nerving feeling against the faded / tarnish luxury of the decrepit Italian villa. Thus, the film’s “behind the scenes” key players, which includes Susanna Codognato, Peter Russell, and Chris Stephenson (art direction), John Paul Kelly (production design), Celia Bobak (set decorations), Sammy Sheldon (costume design), and Lucy Donaldson (editing), for their efforts in bringing this movie’s visual background aesthetics and nuances to cinematic life. As such, the film’s cinematography work by Haris Zambarloukos is solid across the board, with plenty of dramatic shots, angles, and shadowing that help build upon the setting’s horror-esque atmospheric appeal and presentation, including long and narrow corridors and claustrophobic rooms / holdings. Also, it seems like recent movies of late have utilized some great sound editing / mixing within their endeavors, with A Haunting in Venice being another prime example of this noteworthy post film editing practice by using many sound effects and overlap utilization to make the scenes come alive through such mystery and foreboding. Lastly, the score for the picture, which was composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir, is also another vital component in the movie’s presentation, with the composition boasting that “moody” feeling that keeps one’s attention heightened through moments of mystery and intrigue as well as character dialogue driven scenes.

Unfortunately, A Haunting in Venice does have a few elements that hold the feature back from being the best Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot installment. How so? Well, for starters, the movie sort feels quite predictable and formulaic. This, of course, was a problem with the previous two entries that Branagh helmed, but that mostly comes with the territory of doing a murder mystery project. Yes, the familiar (even to the uninitiated of a Hercule Poirot film) can see the classic tropes and cliches that are customary for a murder mystery plot. Introduction to a slew of ambiguous individuals, an unexpected murder, suspicion around every turn, the obvious culprit who turns not to be the killer, and so on and so forth. It’s definitely been done many times before in similar stories. Thus, while the story is still engaging, the movie itself does breed a lot of familiarity within its murder mystery tropes and formulaic nature. Again, it sort of comes with the territory, especially in adapting a tale from Agatha Christie (the cornerstone of murder mystery stories), so it didn’t bother me as much. However, there are moments where that familiar overtones and cliches do stick out a bit and it would’ve been nice to see Branagh “shake things up” in the overall flow of A Haunting in Venice .

Another problem that I noticed with the movie is some of the “jump scares” moments that are scattered throughout, which do seem slightly out of place. Of course, it helps build up some of the tension in some of the scenes as well as the horror style elements, but comes a bit off-putting to use such tactics. Luckily, the film isn’t like modern horror flicks of late and only uses a handful of “jump scare” tactics here and there and not overstaying their welcome. Also, I felt like some of the narrative beats fell a bit empty-handed in a few crucial areas. Of course, each of the side characters, especially the “suspect” characters, have their own moments to shine and backstory components to fill out this “whodunit” mystery, yet there is still some incompleteness to the tale being told. With so many characters running in and out of the spotlight, I definitely can see why the script, which was adapted from Christie’s work by Michael Green, finds a struggle to juggle some many characters properly, especially since many are presented rather quickly and bunched together. I think this is where the film’s script making could’ve been “beefed up” and give a better understanding of who these people are, spending more time within their backstory. In conjunction with that, the film’s conclusion feels a bit rushed, with the overall “aftermath” conclusion to A Haunting in Venice . Once the culprit is caught and unmasked, the wrapping-up the feature notion seems a bit hurried to a certain degree and doesn’t leave a strong, lasting impression as much as I excepting it to be. Thus, I kind of wished the ending of the film would’ve had a better understanding of bring closure to the main narrative in a better way. Heck, even the ending for Death on the Nile offered a better closing statement to Poirot and the murders that took place within its aftermath segment. A Haunting in Venice , while good, still leaves a linger “meh” within its final five or so minutes.

What helps elevate some of the criticism is that the cast for A Haunting in Venice is up to the task to make their respective characters come alive, with a mixture of such boldness and subtlety to make their performances work. Of course, as mentioned above, some characters are limited in their screen time, so their personalities and backstory aren’t completely fleshed out beyond their dubious “murder mystery” duplicity, but the acting talent involved certainly helps motive those points to make them enjoy and engaging to watch. Much like the other Poirot films, none shine more (and the best) in the entire project than Kenneth Branagh himself, who once again steps in the role of detective super sleuth Hercule Poirot. Known for his roles in Wallander , Hamlet , and Henry V , Branagh has always been considered a very  “classical trained” actor, who relishes the chance to play such dynamic and complex characters with plenty of theatrical gusto and “substance” to the role. Playing a character like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot is definitely right up Branagh’s alley of thespian nuances and theatrically boldness, which is why he has played the character previously in both Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile . So, to see him return once again to the meticulous and methodically thinking character of Hercule Poirot is a delight treat to be sure. Heck, I don’t think many people would see this movie if not for Branagh’s performance as Agatha Christie’s famed detective. Like before, Branagh easily slides back into the shoes of Poirot and certainly doesn’t miss a beat by making sure to play up all the quirks and inane tactics that he’s portrayed previously. In the case of A Haunting in Venice , the movie plays up the more practical and pragmatic ways that Poirot is known for while trying to solve a case, which butts heads against the more paranormal and supernatural elements that are in play. It’s a classic nuance of believers vs. non-believer character arc that, while not the most original, has been proven to work and does so with Poirot, who faces more than just the case at hand, but also seeing if he seeing truth or something else.

Perhaps the only aspect that I felt a bit disappointed with Branagh’s Poirot is that the movie doesn’t delve into any type of additional backstory material into the film. While this character nuance is just a minor one, the past two films hint around Poirot’s past, including his time serving in WWI, why he grew out his thick moustache, and his relationship with Kathrine. In A Haunting in Venice , there’s little to no backstory snippets or tidbits that are explored with Poirot, which seems a bit awkward, especially since there could’ve been a lot of flashback and / or specter imagery that the movie could’ve utilized in many of the film’s horror-esque scenes. To me, it’s a missed opportunity. Regardless, Branagh’s return as Hercule Poirot is still quite magnificent and continues to be the “beating heart” of these classic whodunit mystery  cappers.

Who plays as almost a “co-lead” in the movie alongside Branagh’s Poirot would have to be actress Tina Fey as Poirot’s friend and crime mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver. Known for her roles in 30 Rock , Sisters , and Date Night , Fey is more accustomed to doing comedic performances throughout her career and have made a special niche for her placement in that category. So, to see her participate in a period piece murder mystery endeavor does seem like an odd choice, especially starring opposite someone like Kenneth Branagh. Surprisingly, however, Fey actually does a pretty good job in the movie and definitely meshes well with Branagh’s Poirot. Of course, one can argue that her character of Ariadne Oliver is merely a character for Poirot to bounce off thoughts and ideas throughout the narrative (much like Tom Bateman’s Bouc from the previous two installments), but Fey certainly knows how to handle herself in the movie and comes off as a slick American female within her character and makes for a compelling “sidekick” character against Branagh’s Poirot.

The other notable supporting characters in the movie, such as actress Kelly Reilly ( Yellowstone and Pride & Prejudice ) as retired opera singer and Alicia’s mother Rowena Drake, actor Jamie Dornan ( Fifty Shades of Grey and Belfast ) as Rowena’s family doctor who is suffering from PTSD Dr. Leslie Ferrier, and actress Michelle Yeoh ( Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere all at Once ) as fame and suspicious psychic medium Joyce Reynolds, give some great character performances, with the respective talent utilizing their screen presence the correct way. These characters felt like there could’ve been more to them as if there development was expanded upon in an earlier draft for the feature, but was trimmed down for a final print. Still, for better or worse, these characters are quite effective. Also, I do have to give a special mention to young actor Jude Hill ( Belfast and Magpie Murders ), who delivers a very convincing and compelling character performance as Dr. Ferrier’s mature son Leopold Ferrier.

The rest of the cast, including actress Camille Cottin ( Stillwater and House of Gucci ) as Rowena’s housekeeper Olga Seminoff, actor Kyle Allen ( West Side Story and All My Life ) as Alicia Drake’s ex-fiancé Maxime Gerard, actor Riccardo Scamarcio ( John Wick: Chapter 2 and Burnt ) as former police officer and Poirot’s bodyguard Vitale Portfoglio, and Ali Khan ( The School for Good and Evil and Red Rose ) and actress Emma Laird ( Mayor of Kingstown and The Crowded Room ) as half brother and sister / Reynold’s assistants Nicholas and Desdemona Holland make up the remaining “suspect” players in the movie. While not as palpable as the characters mentioned above, each one of these characters do get their moment in the spotlight, with the acting talent delivering some solid performances. Lastly, even though shown in flashback snippets in the movie, I do have to say that actress Rowan Robinson ( The Fight in the Dog and Gym ) does a pretty decent job in playing the part of Alicia Drake, Rowena’s recently deceased daughter.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Retired from the spotlight, Hercule Poirot’s faith is tested when a murder is committed, and he must trust his instincts against suspicious suspects and supernatural paranoia in the movie A Haunting in Venice . Director Kenneth Branagh’s latest film sees the actor / director return to playing the famous detective super sleuth and delivers another classic iteration of murder mystery that’s one part drama and one part atmospheric of spooky thrills within the venetian setting. While the movie does stumble in some of his predictable nature that comes with the territory of the genre as well as some underdeveloped areas in plot and character (due to its limited scope), but the film still manages to rise above those parts, with special details thanks to Branagh’s direction, a great visual presentation, some good horror tones and thematic nuances, and a solid cast across the board.  Personally, I liked this movie. Yes, it definitely had its limitation in both scope and storytelling elements as well as trying to juggle some of its side characters properly, but I felt it was an improvement made from Death on the Nile for a more compounded narrative and a tighter presentation all the way around for a more effective “whodunit” yarn. Much like before, the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but merely refines it, which is a good thing in my book. I think that Murder on the Orient Express is still the best of the three, while this movie is better than Death on the Nile . Thus, my recommendation for this movie would be a solid and favorable “recommended”, especially those who were a fan of the first two movies as well as those who crave that particular “murder mystery” angle in their cinematic viewings. The future for Branagh’s Hercule Poirot is left open-ended, much like the character at the end of the movie, with the possibility left elusive. Will Branagh adapt another Agatha Christie novel or will this film wrap up the endeavor as trilogy style structure. Who knows….only time will tell. Yet, I for one, would love to see another movie. Regardless of if one materializes or not, A Haunting in Venice is still an entertaining watch and takes a familiar (yet differentially bold) path through the classic capper of murder, suspicious, and betrayal within the cinematic visual work of one quirky Belgian detective who is known to the world as Hercule Poirot.

3.9 Out of 5 (Recommended)

Released on: september 15th, 2023, reviewed on: october 14th, 2023.

A Haunting in Venice   is 107 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for some strong violence, disturbing images, and thematic elements

Share this:

10 comments.

NICE POST 💚💯

I saw this and really enjoyed it!

That’s great to hear! I, too, enjoyed it!

Excellent review. I found the story predictable, but Branagh nailed the atmospheric style and feel. Plus, Venice is just the perfect, haunting setting for any spooky story.

Thank you for your comment and for reading my review. Definitely agree with you. The story was predictable (usually that goes with the narrative territory), but the movie was still engaging and fun.

Agree with your analysis. I watched this a while ago and I enjoyed it, even though there was quite a number of weak or overcooked moment. Not sure I’d agree that it’s inferior to Orient Express, though. I find OE messier.

Thank you for reading my review and for your comment. So what would you say is the best one of three Branagh Hercule Poirot films?

I finally saw it last night. While not as good as Orient Express, I quite enjoyed it. I liked how it leaves a little ambiguity about the supernatural elements.

Yes, I agree with you. I still find Orient Express to the best one of the three movies, but Venice was still quite enjoyable. And yes, the horror supernatural elements were quite interesting and effectively utilized in the film.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Discover more from jason's movie blog.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

'A Haunting in Venice' is a Serviceable Yet Predictable Adaptation of Agatha Christie's Novel

Actor/director Kenneth Branagh delivers another solid performance as Hercule Poirot but the movie falters with a predictable outcome to the central mystery.

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Opening in theaters on September 15th is ' A Haunting in Venice ,' which is the third film in actor and director Kenneth Branagh ’s Agatha Christie trilogy following 2017’s ‘ Murder on the Orient Express ’ and 2022’s ‘ Death on the Nile .’

A Haunting in Venice

What is the plot of 'A Haunting in Venice'?

Following the events of ‘Death on the Nile,' the world's greatest detective, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), has retired and is now living a quiet life in Italy. One day he is visited by his old friend and mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver ( Tina Fey ), who invites him to a séance on Halloween to expose a fraudulent psychic named Joyce Reynolds ( Michelle Yeoh ). But when someone if murdered, Poirot vows to catch the killer.

Who is in the cast of 'A Haunting in Venice'?

• Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot
• Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver
• Michelle Yeoh as Joyce Reynolds
• Jamie Dornan as Dr. Leslie Ferrier
• Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake
• Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier
• Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff
• Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard
• Ali Khan as Nicholas Holland
• Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland
• Riccardo Scamarcio as Vitale Portfoglio

Initial Thoughts

(L to R) Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

'A Haunting in Venice' feels more like an epilogue than an actual third installment but is still a fairly entertaining yet predictable mystery movie. Kenneth Branagh gives another good performance as Hercule Poirot but the film never really seems to come together as a whole. The new supporting cast create interesting foils for Poirot, but ultimately, the mystery is not that hard for the audience to solve.

Story and Direction

(L to R) Director Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot and crew on the set of 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The movie begins by introducing us to an older and weathered Hercule Poirot (Branagh), who is now retired from detective work and living a quiet life in Italy. One day he is visited by his old friend, an American mystery novelist named Ariadne Oliver (Fey), who’s most popular literary character is based on Poirot himself. Oliver invites Poirot to a séance on Halloween night at the house of the wealthy Rowena Drake (Reilly), who recently lost her daughter in a tragic accident. The séance is being conducted by a medium named Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh). Oliver believes she is the real deal and wants to base her next novel on her, but needs Poirot, ever the skeptic, to witness her work and confirm she’s for real.

Poirot is not impressed by Reynolds, and confirms his suspicions but is then attacked by an unknown assailant. Not long after, one of the guests is murdered and with a storm closing the canals, the remaining guests are trapped in Drake’s house, presumably with the killer, and with nowhere else to go. While waiting for the weather to clear, Poirot begins to investigate and questions everyone, including Oliver, Drake, her doctor, Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan), and his young son, Leopold Ferrier (Jude Hill).

I enjoyed both of Branagh’s other Agatha Christie movies, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘Death on the Nile,’ but 'A Haunting in Venice' lacks the scope or style of its predecessors. It feels rushed, truncated and lacking of any real purpose. In fact, Branagh’s performance is really the only bright spot in the movie, which is otherwise tedious. But as a director, Branagh adds no style or freshness to the movie. It’s pretty much a paint-by-numbers mystery, and nothing is added to make that more sophisticated or cinematic. The first two movies benefited from the exotic locations which Branagh shot in an epic manner, but the director does not utilize his backdrop here, as most scenes take place at night, in the rain, or inside.

A scene from 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting in Venice.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Hercule Poirot

Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting in Venice.' Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Related Article: Movie Review: 'Death on the Nile' 

Supporting cast.

(L to R) Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver, Michelle Yeoh as Mrs. Reynolds, and Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

This is where the movie starts to fall apart, and it’s not the fault of the actors, who are all very good, but their characters are either poorly written or not fleshed out enough. Now some may not care for Tina Fey’s performance as Ariadne Oliver, as she is basically doing a Katherine Hepburn impression, but I actually thought the characterization fit well considering the movie’s 1940’s setting. Oliver is feisty and smart, and a good companion to Poirot, and Fey has nice chemistry with Branagh. However, without giving anything away, a twist in the third act renders the character unreliable.

Jude Hill, who was last seen in Branagh’s Oscar-winning ‘ Belfast ,’ gives a good performance as the precocious Leopold Ferrier and has strong chemistry with Jamie Dornan, who once again plays his father as he did in ‘Belfast.’ As Dr. Leslie Ferrier, Dornan is solid and plays a man with PTSD well, but the character is not given enough to do and is basically used as a red herring to the mystery.

Recent Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh has a few fun scenes as the psychic Joyce Reynolds, but again, is really not given a lot to do. You don’t really get a chance to know the character or understand her motivations in her limited screentime, and again, it’s a shame the character was used as a bit of a red herring. It was nice to see ‘ Yellowstone ’ actress Kelly Reilly return to the big screen, and while the actress plays the role to the best of her abilities, the character was terribly written and weakens the mystery at the core of the story.

Predictable Mystery

Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The real problem with ‘A Haunting in Venice’ is that the mystery is too predictable and easy to solve. While there was a bit of a twist in the third act, I knew who the killer was from the beginning and it just seemed too obvious. While the previous movies had third act twists as well, they seemed fresh and original at the time and this one just feels like we’ve seen it before.

Final Thoughts

(L to R) Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver and Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot in 20th Century Studios' 'A Haunting In Venice.' Photo by Rob Youngson. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

While 'A Haunting in Venice' is a serviceable and entertaining enough movie that includes another fine performance by Branagh as Poirot, it lacks the fun and urgency of the previous films and features an extremely predictable mystery at its core.

'A Haunting in Venice' receives 5 out of 10 stars.

Other Movies Similar to ‘A Haunting in Venice:’

• ' Alibi ' (1931)
• ' Murder on the Orient Express ' (1974)
• ' And Then There Were None ' (1974)
• ' Death on the Nile ' (1978)
• ' The Mirror Crack'd ' (1980)
• ' Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery ' (1981)
• ' Evil Under the Sun ' (1982)
• ' Ordeal by Innocence ' (1985)
• ' Appointment with Death ' (1988)
• ' Ten Little Indians ' (1989)
• ' Innocent Lies ' (1995)
• ' Mindhunters ' (2005)
• ' Murder on the Orient Express ' (2017)
• ' Crooked House ' (2017)
• ' Belfast ' (2021)
• ‘ Death on the Nile ' (2022)

Buy Tickets: 'A Haunting in Venice' Movie Showtimes

Buy kenneth branagh movies on amazon.

‘A Haunting in Venice’ is produced by 20th Century Studios, Scott Free Productions, The Mark Gordon Company, and Genre Films. It is set to release in theaters on September 15th, 2023.

Jami Philbrick has worked in the entertainment industry for over 20 years and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Moviefone.com. Formally, Philbrick was the Managing Editor of Relativity Media's iamROGUE.com, and a Senior Staff Reporter and Video Producer for Mtime, China's largest entertainment website. He has also written for Fandango, MovieWeb, and Comic Book Resources. Philbrick received the 2019 International Media Award at the 56th annual ICG Publicists Awards, and is a member of the Critics Choice Association. He has interviewed such talent as Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey, Quentin Tarantino, and Stan Lee.

Related News

More News on Moviefone

Movie Reviews

Follow Moviefone

Latest trailers.

A Haunting In Venice Review: Enough Disappointment To Fill The Nile

• Fun supporting performances
• Michelle Yeoh steals the show
• Plays its silly source material too straight
• The supporting characters are all underwritten

There is no blockbuster movie franchise right now that's quite as tonally inconsistent as Kenneth Branagh's adaptations of Agatha Christie's classic Poirot mysteries. His dryly comedic take on the Belgian detective debuted in 2017 via a straightforward retelling of "Murder on the Orient Express" — a modest hit that didn't make the source material fresh so much as attempt to distract from its familiarity via a starry cast of A-listers. For the long-delayed sequel " Death on the Nile ," the franchise pivoted from being a straightforward whodunnit into something far more bizarre.

Nearly two years later, and I can't work out if it was a work of knowing-camp that was in on the joke of its sheer ridiculousness, or completely oblivious as to how every performer felt like an alien trying to pass off as human, and each of its oddball sex scenes felt like the result of an AI prompt asking for a "PG-13 Showgirls." It wasn't a good movie, but it was as delightfully deranged as its predecessor was unremarkably ordinary.

At the press screening of "A Haunting in Venice" I attended, I got the sense that many of my fellow critics were priming themselves for a similar so-bad-its-good experience in the hands of director-star Branagh, with the first 15 minutes or so routinely soundtracked by what can only be described as forced laughing. Every mundane incident was greeted with knowing guffaws from viewers who were clearly desperate to seek out a moment that could be as instantly memeable as Gal Gadot's " Enough Champagne to fill the Nile " speech; the sight of Poirot measuring two eggs at a market stall (a mildly amusing depiction of his eccentricities) was treated like the wackiest comedy set piece this side of "Dumb and Dumber." There is nothing in "A Haunting in Venice" anywhere near as memorable as Gadot's bizarre line readings. This is a perfectly functional murder mystery, which aspires to Edgar Allan Poe more than it does Christie — and when placed in comparison with its predecessor, is clearly the better of the two films.

Playing it straight

This is the extent of the faint praise with which I'll damn Kenneth Branagh's movie, which I feel has been given a pass from many critics simply because it's being placed in direct contrast with "Death on the Nile"; this isn't a ridiculous romp in the same light and treats its central mystery with far more seriousness. It functions as a conventional whodunnit and never descends into pantomime, which may satisfy fans of the genre (it's already been hailed as the best of the trilogy) but felt pretty deflating considering just how joyously bonkers the previous film was. This just feels boring placed next to it. By the halfway point, the most unexpected thing of all happened: I found myself longing for Gadot to reappear to liven things up a bit.

This isn't to say that "A Haunting in Venice" is played straight. Instead, its over-the-top aspects are all in its overt nods to the gothic, nodding to the horror literature of the past (direct references to Poe's work), and the horror movies of the present (Branagh has discovered jump scares, and tries to mine as many as he can from this material). We open in 1947 when Poirot has become a semi-recluse, refusing to take on any new cases, until he's greeted by old friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), an author of detective novels inspired by Poirot's real-life cases who's in desperate need of a hit after three consecutive flops. Considering Branagh's box office track record of late, I'm sure this is a struggle he empathizes with.

Dragged to a Halloween party, Poirot reluctantly agrees to attend a séance, which Ariadne hopes will get his juices flowing again so she can track one of his cases first-hand. Unfortunately, what the medium (played by a game Michelle Yeoh) discovers is underwhelming, with Poirot initially sensing he's at the center of a lazy practical joke — that is, until bodies start to pile up outside, and he hallucinates the recently departed girl they were all trying to contact. Nobody else can see this, so does it mean the house is haunted, or is it the physical manifestation of his PTSD built up over years of dealing with deadly cases? Before we know it, he proudly announces that after a few years away, "Hercule Poirot is on the case!"

Everyone's a suspect — and nobody is fleshed out enough for me to care

As with Kenneth Branagh's prior Poirot films, it's hard to get fully invested in the mystery when the suspects are barely fleshed out. Three films in, and our wacky protagonist — increasingly closer to "The Pink Panther" detective Inspector Clouseau than his traditional characterization — largely remains more of an interconnected set of quirky mannerisms than a fully imagined character, the trauma of his past that should offer us greater insight relegated to flashbacks. Tina Fey is afforded the most backstory as Ariadne, but this is largely because she was a mainstay of the novels, and a not-so-subtle surrogate for Agatha Christie herself, even if the actress has made the choice to play her like a journalist from a fast-talking 1940s screwball comedy. Of the new additions, Yeoh reminds us that prior to her Oscar win, she was synonymous with elevating franchise dreck by treating silly material with utter solemnity; there's no winking to the audience here as she opens a monologue with "I like the term 'medium,' because I am neither big nor small" — a quote that should land screenwriter Michael Green in jail.

None of the characters feel drawn from the same film; more so than the two prior efforts, broader comedy archetypes sit awkwardly when placed next to quiet figures still struggling to process their traumatic pasts. Jamie Dornan, as Dr. Leslie Ferrier , is defined by his lingering PTSD following WWII — attempts to fashion this into a mismatched buddy comedy with his Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed son Leopold (Jude Hill — yes, the kid from "Belfast," playing Dornan's son for a second time!) taking the role of the parental figure. This is the closest the movie gets to genuine sweetness, but the screenplay keeps trying to find jokes within this dynamic in a way that undermines it; a recurring issue for this film, which I felt was holding itself back from fully committing to the comedic moments so it could ensure a greater tonal command than its predecessor. It once again left me wishing it would just become an out-and-out pantomime, instead of taking itself more seriously than this franchise needs.

If you're looking for a straightforward murder mystery, "A Haunting in Venice" sees Branagh play Christie's source material far straighter than before, even if this is his least faithful adaptation to date. Purists may have a greater appreciation for it because of this — I just wish Branagh would let his hair down a bit more and once again deliver something every bit as eccentric as his mustachioed protagonist.

"A Haunting in Venice" premieres in theaters on Friday, September 15.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.

• Games & Quizzes
• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center

A Haunting in Venice

Learn about this topic in these articles:, role of yeoh.

…from 2023 include Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice , an adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel featuring detective Hercule Poirot. The following year she did voice work for several projects, including the animated movie The Tiger’s Apprentice . Also in 2024 Yeoh received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. Pres.…

Shawshank Redemption Director Describes This as 'The Best Script I Ever Wrote & the Worst Movie I've Ever Seen'

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Quick Links

Frank darabont says frankenstein 'was my waterloo', prince charles attends the premiere, 'what can happen to a good script in the hands of a bad director', frankie goes to hollywood, kenneth branagh had become the mad scientist himself, a broken branagh leaves hollywood.

The same year that writer and director Frank Darabont 's film The Shawshank Redemption was released, earning him an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, another production of a Darabont script hit theaters — 1994's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . While The Shawshank Redemption is now considered one of the best films ever made and Darabont is rightfully proud of it, almost the opposite could be said about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . In fact, as Darabont said in an interview with Creative Writing . " I’ve described Frankenstein as the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen. " Now that's saying something. What happened?

First off, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was not an amateur production. In fact, in 1994, it was the most expensive movie to ever be filmed in the UK. Francis Ford Coppola bought the original script from Steph Lady (Darabont wrote a second draft) following the success of Bram Stoker's Dracula — why not do what Coppola did there but with the other most iconic Victorian horror novel? Robert De Niro, of all people, starred as Frankenstein's monster alongside a variety of heavy-hitters — Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, John Cleese, Hugh Bonneville.

And then there was Kenneth Branagh . Since 1989, Branagh had been directing and starring in acclaimed films and plays in the UK, focusing mainly on William Shakespeare's canon. His 1991 classic, Dead Again , showed that he was skilled at directing supernatural-themed works (later confirmed by 2023's A Haunting in Venice ). Branagh was thought to bring both a literary respectability and a supernatural edge to this production of Frankenstein , and made it obvious to everyone that this was his film as an auteur, that this was the definitive film version of the story, that this was truly Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . Hubris would be his downfall.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

*Availability in US

Not available

Considered the most faithful film adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, despite several differences and additions in plot from the novel, the film follows a medical student named Victor Frankenstein who creates new life in the form of a monster composed of various corpses' body parts.

Branagh gives a melodramatic performance as the mad Victor Frankenstein in the film, a fitting role for a director trying to create something as immortalized as film. He turned Hollywood in many ways, trading Shakespeare's stage for the gym and bulking up. Perhaps he got too into character; when the production itself began in the UK, Branagh refused to let the writers or producers on set.

Based on what both writers of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein have said, Branagh's finished film totally rejected the spirit, mood, and feeling of the script. " There’s a weird doppelgänger effect when I watch the movie ," continued Darabont in his interview with Creative Writing. "It’s kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote." He added:

"Cumulatively, the effect was a totally different movie . I don’t know why Branagh needed to make this big, loud film…the material was subtle. Shelley’s book was way out there in a lot of ways, but it’s also very subtle. I don’t know why it had to be this operatic attempt at filmmaking. Shelley’s book is not operatic, it whispers at you a lot. The movie was a bad one. That was my Waterloo. That’s where I really got my ass kicked most as a screenwriter. "

It's truly a loss to cinema that Darabont's version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein never accurately made the screen (though you can read it in full on the Internet Archive ). Darabont not only wrote two of the more dramatic and acclaimed Stephen King adaptations , The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile , but his work in the horror genre is tremendous — A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob, The Fly II, Buried Alive, The Mist, The Walking Dead . One can only imagine how interesting or downright cool his take on Frankenstein would've been.

10 Most Underrated Frankenstein Movies

These are the films about the classic movie monster created by Dr. Frankenstein that most people don't know about.

Frank Darabont actually wrote the second draft of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein after Francis Ford Coppola bought the original draft from an amateur scriptwriter named Steph Lady , who had never sold a script. Lady would go on to sell 13 or 14 more scripts, but only one other has been produced — Doctor Dolittle , which was completely rewritten by Eddie Murphy's team.

"I’ve described Frankenstein as the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen." — Frank Darabont

Steph Lady is a fascinating man (and writer). In his 20s, he hitchhiked across the country, drilled oil in Texas, worked in a mental hospital in Tennessee , and did a variety of other jobs before landing in Los Angeles and working as a Spanish teacher while studying scripts and films and doing his own screenwriting. Nine years later, he found himself in Francis Ford Coppola's office at American Zoetrope, selling his script for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein .

The 10 Best Portrayals of Frankenstein's Monster

Many actors have portrayed the iconic monster over the years, and each of them have put their own spin on the character.

In May 2020, Steph Lady spoke to Territory Story , a small podcast that interviews people who live in work in the Northern Territories of Australia, where Lady moved (specifically Darwin, the capital city). " It was a terrible disappointment for me and for Hollywood ," And this was the most expensive movie that had ever been shot in the UK at that time.

" It was one of the biggest premieres, even by Hollywood standards. Prince Charles was there ... I'm sitting there with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Danny DeVito was right next to me... Finally, Prince Charles comes in and sits right behind me and Danny DeVito, and Danny turns around and says, 'I don't care who you are, man, just don't kick my chair!'"

One imagines Lady exiting the theater thinking, "What happened?" Avoiding eye contact with others, perhaps; returning polite smiles here and there, perhaps seeking out Kenneth Branagh with clenched fists. Lady knew that the film would not be received well. He was right.

Best Frank Darabont Movies and Shows, Ranked

Mostly known as the guy who created The Walking Dead and Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont has a long career you probably don’t know much about.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone put Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in his "Worst Movies of 1994" list (The New York Times did the same), describing the film as, "Kenneth Branagh’s career-crushing attempt to update the Boris Karloff creature, played by Robert De Niro, as a silly, frantic MTV video."

While not everyone was as brutal, reviews of the film were almost universally negative, save for the excellent production design and Oscar-nominated makeup. That was also a high point for Bram Stoker's Dracula two years prior, which won Oscars for makeup, costume design, and sound editing, but was also lauded for its unique visuals and original interpretation of the titular character, along with excellent performances. That was not the case with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein .

While some people praised De Niro's empathetic and emotional portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, the consensus was that it was simply weird, overly ambitious miscasting. De Niro, of course, is most often associated with tough guys and gangsters, though he's obviously capable of much more than that. But most critics agreed that he stood out like a sore thumb as 'The Creation,' and Branagh strips the monster of scares, making him an angsty, philosophizing loner instead.

The biggest complaint about Mary Shelley's F rankenstein , though, was that it was too amped-up, too frenetic, as if Branagh had embraced Hollywood far too much. One critic called it "Frankie Goes to Hollywood." As Darabont said:

It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for the quiet moments. It has no patience period. It’s big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn.

"I was just so crushed by what he had done to the movie," said Steph Lady. "In fact, I have a very good friend who now runs Ellen DeGeneres' company, a guy named Jeff Kleeman. Very briefly, Jeff taught at USC's film school, and he said, 'You know Steph, I hope you don't mind, but I use your screenplay as the main text of my class.' And I said, 'How's that?' He goes, ' I use it to show what can happen to a good script in the hands of a bad director .'"

The 10 Best Frankenstein Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes

These Rotten Tomatoes rankings of Frankenstein movies are as fresh as the corpses used by Doctor Frankenstein.

All of this is somewhat ironic, bitterly so, considering Frankenstein is all about an egotistical man whose ambition would ultimately destroy his life. If Branagh had become Victor Frankenstein, the film itself was now Frankenstein's monster, and treated as such. As Hannah Searson eloquently writes for Film Obsessive :

"Branagh, in an act of ego and desire to create something lasting, attempts to direct an adaptation of one of the most celebrated, revered works of literature in the world. But what he creates is a jumble of influences, patchworked together by sheer force of will. And so, it is rejected. Both by the community at large and, most hurtfully, its creator . Forced to limp along in pop culture history for years, dismissed as an embarrassing misstep and error."

Both of the script's original writers, Steph Lady and Frank Darabont, have added to this notion. " Branagh became sort of the metaphor for the movie itself ," explained Steph Lady, who added:

He banned executives from the set. He got crazy, just like Victor Frankenstein, he got crazy. He was married to Emma Thompson, lovely. Meanwhile, he's shacking up with Helena Bonham Carter on the set and everybody knows it. It became a really scandalous situation.

Best Movies That Kenneth Branagh Directed, Ranked

Kenneth Branagh is a prolific actor and director whose current film, A Haunting in Venice, has hit theaters. These are the best movies he's directed.

Branagh and Thompson would be divorced within a year. Darabont, of course, felt the same way; when asked if people still associate him with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, he told Creative Screenwriting:

"No. Branagh had made himself such a visible target by proclaiming himself the ultimate auteur of this work, that when people started shooting bullets, they were only shooting at him. They were punching holes in his hide, not mine . He really took the brunt of the blame for that film, which was appropriate. That movie was his vision entirely. If you love that movie, you can throw all your roses at Ken Branagh’s feet. If you hated it, throw your spears there too , because that was his movie."

Kenneth Branagh, the mad scientist himself, seemed burnt out through and through after making Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . The Shakespearean star turned Hollywood hunk had experimented with a giant studio genre picture and failed. He spoke with Alex Witchel of The New York Times the week of the film's release, saying, " I'm sort of spent with this project . There have been so many big things consuming me while making it. An obsession with death. The usual pathetic search for the meaning of life. It's friendship and love that make life worth living, and even those things are tremendously confused."

I think I'm tired. I've said a lot in my work, and now I want to enjoy the massive sense of relief that this film is over.

"I'd like a little more peace of mind. I'd like a break from existential despair — why are we here and what's the point of anything... I've put all that effort into this movie. I know there are the people lining up to say, 'Isn't that awful.' Being at the epicenter of that is not very pleasant," added Branagh at the time. And so what did he do? Branagh abandoned Hollywood and immediately made a very small film (the first of his directorial works that he did not star in), In the Bleak Midwinter , that continued the process of art imitating life. The film is about a very depressed, out-of-work actor who decides to put on a small production of Shakespeare's Hamlet in a village named Hope.

Here’s Why Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie Adaptations May Be Over

Kenneth Branagh’s gothic reboot of the Hercule Poirot film series failed to expand the franchise’s dwindling audience.

Branagh intentionally made a tiny movie written specifically for his friends and UK actors he loved. He was looking for solace after Frankenstein and divorce. Of course, it focused on producing Hamlet , and that's what Branagh would return to directly afterward, directing and starring in a four-hour production of the play that's considered either the best or second-best Hamlet film ever made. One wonders if Mary Shelley's Frankenstein would've been better if he had an extra 30 minutes, much less two more hours. He was Oscar-nominated for writing Hamlet , and followed it with two more Shakespeare movies and an adaptation of Mozart's The Magic Flute .

Those movies made very little money, and so Branagh would, of course, return to Hollywood and submit to the most commercialized baseline of mainstream movies. He directed Thor, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Cinderella, Artemis Fowl, and several Agatha Christie movies (a step up from Jack Ryan, a step down from Shakespeare). And so the cruel irony now is that the derided and disappointing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein , 30 years later, is much more vibrant, wild, and intelligent than anything Branagh has done since returning to Hollywood .

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not currently streaming but is available on 4K UHD Blu-ray and can be rented on digital platforms like Apple TV, Google Play, or Prime Video through the link below :

Watch Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

• Frank Darabont

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far)

This list is updated monthly with new “best of the year”–worthy titles.

In the first three months of the year, all eyes are often on the films that came before — the contenders that dominated the fall, vying for Academy Awards. But while studios usually save their glitziest, prestige-iest films for the horse race, there are , in fact, many movies worth your time and attention that have come to us during the first half of this year. Some may be epic blockbusters ( Dune: Part Two ), but most of this year’s best so far are smaller films released without a major studio’s marketing budget. One is a violent, swashbuckling adventure film, and another is a brilliant comedy as bleak as it is funny. Two mark the debuts of commanding new voices in film; another is a bittersweet good-bye to a great composer and musician. All will reward you for seeking them out. Here, the best of the many dozens of movies we’ve seen this year so far.

Movies are listed by U.S. release date, starting with the most recent titles.

Horizon: An American Saga, Part One

The first part of Kevin Costner ’s sure-to-be massive western epic feels like the opening chapters of a grand novel patiently rolling into place, carefully delineating characters and offering telltale glimpses into their lives. ( Part two is in the can and will open in a couple of months; parts three and four are currently being filmed. Whether we’ll get to see them in theaters may depend on how the first two chapters fare financially.) This part of the film is rich in period detail and filled with majestic vistas that seem to match the expanse of its story. But this can be a curse, too, at least while the picture exists as just this one installment: The power of those big, sweeping, novelistic stories (think Lonesome Dove ) lies in the ways we watch those characters change, in how fate brings them together and pulls them apart. Something of this size needs a shape, and right now Horizon is basically just a rising line. While the movie doesn’t entirely work on its own, what’s onscreen is mostly promising and bodes well for future installments. The stately pace never feels boring. It’s a gorgeous, sprawling, and at times moving blast of old-fashioned storytelling — even if, for now, it’s just half (or maybe a quarter) of a movie. —Bilge Ebiri

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Horizon: An American Saga, Part One .

Last Summer

No director is better suited to making an uneasy movie about an older woman and a younger man than Catherine Breillat, France’s reigning provocateuse, who with Last Summer makes a triumphant return to filmmaking after a decadelong break. Léa Drucker brings a fascinating flintiness to her character, Anne, a lawyer whose work representing young victims of sexual abuse doesn’t stop her from falling into bed with her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher). Anne and Théo come together in the dreamlike bubble of summer, but the film gets more interesting when the real world intrudes on their idyll and Anne proves that, in order to protect herself, she’s capable of wielding the same language used to discredit the victims she represents. — Alison Willmore

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Last Summer .

Green Border (June 21)

Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border forces us to confront raw human behavior shorn of all niceties and posturing. Her epic new film tackles the European refugee crisis from several angles as a game of uniquely cruel political football is played between Poland and Belarus with real, terrified humans — most fleeing wars in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa — caught in the middle. Built around exhaustive research into real-life incidents, the cruelties inflicted on people in this picture are beyond evil: starving refugees forced into bribes and robbed blind; thirsty men forced to drink broken glass; children torn from their families; sick old men beaten to a pulp; a heavily pregnant woman tossed over a fence like a sack of potatoes; the freezing and the wounded left to die in the cold. Holland is a humanist, not a sadist, so she doesn’t dwell on these actions. But she doesn’t flinch from letting us witness such horrors amid the intimate urgency of her filmmaking. Her structure replicates the process of dehumanization these people go through. Thus, the film’s form forces us to confront our own inaction. It’s an unforgettable movie in all senses of the word. —B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Green Border .

Janet Planet (June 21)

Annie Baker’s wondrously delicate directorial debut manages to be equal parts mysterious and relatable — a portrayal of restless adulthood as seen through the eyes of a girl on the cusp of adolescence. As Lacy, who spends the summer adrift at home after finagling a way to come back from camp early, Zoe Ziegler is an achingly accurate 11-year-old whose anxieties about the future are balanced by a beyond-her-years solemnity. But it’s Julianne Nicholson who gives a career-best performance as Lacy’s aging hippie mother, Janet, whose love for her daughter doesn’t eliminate her need to keep looking outward for meaning — a quest that leads to a string of lovers and friends coming through the western Massachusetts cabin she and Lacy share, each visitor shedding new light on the relationship between mother and daughter. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Janet Planet and Jackson McHenry’s interview with director Annie Baker .

Writer-director Josh Margolin’s film follows a 94-year-old woman who goes on a quest to locate the crooks who scammed her out of $10,000. Somehow, it manages to be so charming and heartfelt that the laughs never feel lazy, cheap, or cruel. It’s anchored by a delightful performance from June Squibb , a marvelous actor who has never gotten a lead role like this; she turns what is otherwise a pretty simple, cute setup into something far more profound. The protagonist’s quest to find the people who did this to her becomes about more than righting a wrong or getting her money back; it’s a way to prove to everyone (and herself) that she still has agency in her life. That doesn’t stop Margolin from riffing on spy movies and action flicks. One of Thelma’s inspirations is the spectacle of Tom Cruise sprinting across the rooftops of London in Mission: Impossible — Fallout . For her, he becomes a symbol of persistence and resilience in one’s advancing years, and for us, she becomes the same. There’s a compelling universality to the film: As the world spins ever forward, we all wind up out of touch with it soon enough. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Thelma and Rachel Handler’s interview with star June Squibb .

I wandered into Ghostlight early one afternoon this past January at the Sundance Film Festival. I didn’t know anything about the picture; I urge you to see it that way as well. But if you do need more information, here goes: The movie follows one traumatized family, in particular the father, Dan (Keith Kupferer), a burly, easily distracted road-crew worker with a hot temper. One day, after another one of Dan’s blowups at work, a curious woman, Rita (Dolly De Leon), beckons him into the semi-abandoned storefront where she and a ragtag group of actors are busy rehearsing a no-budget amateur production of Romeo and Juliet . He’s soon drawn to the easy camaraderie of this makeshift theater troupe and the elegant power of Shakespeare’s prose, even though he admits he doesn’t understand any of it. For much of its running time, the film only hints at what’s actually troubling Dan and his family. It’s not a secret, exactly — the clues are pretty easy to put together — but the revelation of their tragedy still hurts like a kick to the teeth. For all the muted realism of its performances and its everyday milieu, Ghostlight plays at times like a kind of spectral fantasy. Or more accurately, like one of those experiences when real life briefly feels like it has edged into a spectral fantasy. In the end, it becomes a film about the world-changing power of artistic communion, about how creativity, compassion, and forgiveness — of oneself and others — are all pit stops on the same human journey. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Ghostlight .

Robot Dreams

Pablo Berger’s animated adaptation of Sara Varon’s 2007 book , the story of a dog and its pet robot in mid-1980s New York, was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar earlier this year. But its hand-drawn, fablelike style, along with its entrancing and melancholy beauty, feels old-fashioned in a contemporary animation world largely defined by clutter and smarm. With zero dialogue , the film follows a lonely dog (known simply as Dog) who purchases a robot companion by mail. Dog assembles Robot, and the two of them proceed to spend a wonderful summer in the overcrowded, sweaty city. But then they’re suddenly separated, and their lives diverge. The always awkward Dog finds another companion while Robot has encounters with the rest of the world that are sometimes dreams, sometimes real. Though the story seems to take place over the course of one year, we see New York change around these characters as well. Watching Robot Dreams , we find ourselves reflecting on how our own lives have changed as we’ve grown: the friends we’ve left behind but haven’t forgotten, the cities that have transformed around us, the wisdom we’ve accrued, and all the ways in which we’re still slightly damaged from all that living. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Robot Dreams .

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

A prequel, a revenge tale, and even something of a bildungsroman, George Miller’s prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road follows the travails of the young Furiosa (played as a child by Alyla Browne, an adult by Anya Taylor-Joy) as she’s kidnapped by a motorcycle warlord named Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and later traded off to Immortan Joe (the villain of Fury Road , here played by Lachy Hulme, in slightly younger, less pustule-filled form). Until now, the characters in the Mad Max films — yes, even the children — have arrived mostly fully formed, their minds and attitudes shaped by this dead world. Here, however, we watch a bright, young innocent lose everything that has ever meant anything to her, and her heart hardens. A pall of hopelessness hangs over the movie as we absorb the lessons of the wasteland along with our heroine. But the film is also thrilling in its own right. Action sequences charge forward and build and build, casually leaving all manner of bodies in their wake. The director also indulges his fondness for yarn-spinning, as he did in his previous film, the masterful Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022). It might not be a huge hit , but it’s nice to know that, after all these years, George Miller seems determined to stay true to his mad self. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ; Ebiri’s close look at the ending ; Fran Hoepfner’s chat with actor Tom Burke ; and James Grebey on Dementus’s cape .

“How many of you really know yourselves?” Philosophy lecturer Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) posits this question early on in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man . “What if your self is a construction, an illusion … a role you’ve been playing since the day you were born?” It turns out that he’s about to become a walking answer to the question, as this amiable, bird-watching Everyman pretends to be an assassin for the New Orleans police department’s sting operations. As a fake hit man, Gary is effectively playing a figure out of our collective imagination — and that liberates him. He can make up the character as he sees fit because the people he’s playing quite simply don’t exist. Hit Man works simultaneously as an indulgence in and a deconstruction of the basic transaction of stardom: It presents us with a guy we can never be, then makes us believe for a moment that we can be him, even as it tells us that such a guy doesn’t exist in the first place. If Glen Powell’s not already a star, this picture might well make him one. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s f ull review of Hit Man .

A number of filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, have over the years attempted to adapt the remarkable true story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy in Bologna who was taken from his family by papal authorities in the mid-19th century and raised as a Catholic. But it’s perhaps appropriate that the film was finally made by the legendary Italian director Marco Bellocchio, a man who has spent his entire career questioning the power of social institutions. Bellocchio is also a master of depicting the way madness functions in families as both an external and internal force. In the sweeping, melodramatic Kidnapped , he shows not just what happened to Edgar, but also the toll it took on his family. It’s a multicharacter saga that is at once thoroughly entertaining and thoroughly terrifying. — B.E.

I Saw the TV Glow

Haunting, unsettling, and so emotionally raw it feels like an open wound, Jane Schoenbrun’s film is an exploration of dysphoria, suburban isolation, and the imperfect refuge that is fandom. It’s easy to see traces of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks in The Pink Opaque , the dreamy supernatural drama that outcasts Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) fixate on and bond over in high school. But while the show’s mythology seeps into their lives and serves as a metaphor Owen steadfastly refuses to acknowledge, the most compelling moment is the one when, a little older, Owen revisits the source of his obsession and finds that it’s nowhere near as compelling as it was in his memory. Pop culture can serve as a life raft and a refuge, but Schoenbrun’s film makes it achingly clear that Owen has to take the steps necessary to save himself in the real world. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of I Saw the TV Glow ; Esther Zuckerman’s interview with filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun ; and Rachel Handler’s interview with Caroline Polachek about her song for the soundtrack.

Gasoline Rainbow

The latest movie from the Ross brothers is another freewheeling creation inhabiting a limbo between fiction and non, where first-time cast members play characters inspired by — but not confined to — their own lives, improvising scenes within the boundaries of a scripted scenario. In Gasoline Rainb ow , the story takes the form of a road trip to the coast embarked on by a group of five longtime friends fresh out of high school, though the journey is less about the destination than it is the picaresque adventures the group experiences along the way, as the kids meet rail-hopping crust punks, nautically-inclined skateboarders, and Lord of the Rings -loving metalheads. It’s ragged and exhilarating, like taking a hit right off the feeling of being 18 and sure your true self is out there, waiting to be discovered. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Gasoline Rainbow .

Evil Does Not Exist

The quietly wandering, elliptical quality of the early scenes in Ryūsuke Hamaguchi ’s Evil Does Not Exist might feel like a departure from the Drive My Car director’s recent and best-known work. We spend time with widower Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), who lives with his daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) and makes a living doing odd jobs in and around the village of Mizubiki, chopping firewood, harvesting plants, collecting water from the springs for the local ramen joint. The peaceful life of this village is interrupted with the arrival of two representatives from a talent agency that’s planning to open a “glamping” business nearby. In the film’s most bravura scene, a presentation to a group of locals devolves into an extended confrontation when the villagers begin to ask questions about a variety of concerns, most notably the placement of the site’s new septic tank, which is too small for the number of expected customers and also upstream from the town’s fresh-water source. Evil Does Not Exist rings unnervingly true in its particulars, from the bizarre bedfellows created by modern capitalism to the quiet contempt with which city folk treat poorer villagers. But Hamaguchi also doesn’t give us obvious villains, instead portraying different people from different worlds, each trying to survive in their own way. Even so, in its own discreet, modest way, the film leaves us with a haunting sense of a personal and ecological apocalypse. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Evil Does Not Exist and Rachel Handler’s dispatch from the Venice Film Festival .

The Fall Guy

David Leitch’s action-comedy mystery romance set in the world of stunt professionals is an act of pure movie love, mixing and matching genres while tossing off in-jokes and references to its illustrious (and not-so-illustrious) forebears. Ryan Gosling , whose comedic talents were criminally undervalued until last year’s runaway hit Barbie , gets to flex them again here, bringing his deadpan, affably dim charm to the role of Colt Seavers, a hot-shot stunt double for megawatt movie star Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). After an accident seems to end his career, a forlorn Colt gets a call to come perform a stunt on the Sydney set of a new flick being directed by Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), the woman he once loved, and is sucked into a shaggy-dog missing-persons case. The stunts are spectacular and Gosling is very funny, but maybe the most surprising thing about the film is how genuinely romantic it is. Blunt and Gosling have splendid chemistry — the kind of onscreen magnetism shared by people who are not just insanely hot but also simply know how to look at each other. The film invests us in wanting Colt and Jody to get back together; we’re willing to accept any ridiculous situation so long as it reunites them. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of The Fall Guy ; Ebiri’s behind-the-scenes look with the stunt team ; and Ebiri’s conversation with director David Leitch .

The conversations around Palestine and Israel often don’t leave much room for nuance, but Firaz Khoury’s moving coming-of-age film offers a corrective. Not everyone realizes that there are Palestinians in Israel, living in Palestinian neighborhoods, going to schools with Palestinian teachers — but they’re taught Israeli history, seen from Israel’s perspective, all under an Israeli flag ( alam is an Arabic word for banner). So they learn about Israel’s battle for independence, even though for them it’s known as the Nakba — the “catastrophe,” in which their families were displaced in 1948. In Alam , a group of middle-class students wrestles with romance, authority, and political awakening in the days leading up to Israel’s Independence Day. These are kids with means and prospects, with families and teachers who want them to keep their hands clean. To them, the political (and physical) battles being waged over their homeland sometimes seem abstract, and yet they can’t help but look for ways to be involved. This is a marvelous, mesmerizing film that offers no easy answers. — B.E.

Challengers

It’s sexy, it’s sweaty, it’s mean, and it’s just so fun — Luca Guadagnino’s tennis romance is one of the year’s treats, a film that revels in the baby-movie-star qualities of leads Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor , and Zendaya , allowing them to be larger than life even as their characters act hopelessly petty. A BDSM drama as told via sporting events, Challengers manages to make tennis look hot and to make the romantic maneuvers among the three characters into athletic competitions. All that, an oomph-oomph score , and a finale that includes shots from the POV of the ball? What did we do to deserve this, and how do we do it again? — A.W.

➽ Read Angelica Jade Bastién’s review of Challengers ; Matt Zoller Seitz’s review of Zendaya’s movie performance ; and Joe Reid’s explanation of who won in the ending scene .

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Joanna Arnow’s feature directing debut is an unclassifiable deadpan comedy about a Brooklyn woman, Ann (played by Arnow herself), whose entire life seems to revolve around humiliation: She’s in a sub-dom relationship with an older man whose reluctant, disaffected approach to her needs might be part of their whole thing; she endures constant awkward conversations with her parents (played by the director’s own parents); she’s completely ignored at work even when she’s being given an award. There’s a surreal quality to the film, and yet it all feels so true. Arnow has captured something about the authentic and mortifying absurdity of modern life — and she’s done it in a thoroughly entertaining way. Her filmmaking style is episodic, but not in the exhausting, indulgent style of so many other plotless dramedies: Her vignettes vary from extended sequences to comically brief snippets, giving the picture a unique and irresistible cadence. — B.E.

What makes Alex Garland ’s controversial new film so diabolically clever is the way that it both revels in and abhors our fascination with the idea of America as a battlefield . The film is set in what appears to be the present, but in this version of the present a combination of strongman tactics and secessionist movements have fractured the United States into multiple armed, politically unspecified factions. Smoke rises from cities; the highways are filled with walls of wrecked cars; suicide bombers dive into a crowd lined up for water rations; death squads, snipers, and mass graves dot the countryside. How we got here, or what these people are fighting over, is mostly meaningless to the journalists covering this war, who gather in hotel bars, get drunk, and loudly yuk it up with the jacked-up bonhomie we might recognize from movies set in foreign lands like The Killing Field s, Under Fire , and Salvador . They’re mostly numb to the horrors they’re chronicling. The movie’s lack of a political point of view has received some understandable criticism, but the conceit here is to depict Americans acting the way we’ve seen people act in other international conflicts, be it Vietnam or Lebanon or the former Yugoslavia or Iraq or Gaza or … well, the list goes on. It doesn’t want to make us feel so much as it wants us to ask why we don’t feel anything. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Civil War ; Matt Zoller Seitz’s interview with director Alex Garland ; and Roxana Hadadi’s essay on the movie’s final shot .

Could we call In Flames , Pakistan’s submission for last year’s Best International Film Oscar, a horror movie? How could we not ? It looks at the life of a young Karachi woman whose world is upended after the death of her father: Men stare at her, attack her, obsess over her, ignore her. The prying eyes of a patriarchal society see her as both victim and prey. A brief, seemingly promising relationship ends in tragedy. She’s pursued by haunting visions as she begins to lose the line between reality and illusion. Director Zarrar Khan depicts both supernatural shocks and real-life terrors with the same jump-scare-laced bravado but does so without ever shortchanging the very real drama at the film’s heart. — B.E.

Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi epic is Henry James by way of David Lynch, a beguiling, slippery creation that spans three time periods and settings, and that manages to constantly surprise and unsettle. As Gabrielle, Léa Seydoux is a tragic costume-drama heroine, a stalkee in a horror film, and a frustrated seeker in an aloof futurescape, and she manages to create a sense of continuity over these very different lives, into which Louis (George MacKay) inevitably appears. The Beast is wistful, scary, and unsettling, and more than anything, it’s a big swing — a movie about being afraid of vulnerability that is itself fearless. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of The Beast .

The First Omen

Directed by Arkasha Stevenson, this prequel to 1976’s The Omen is another modern horror movie that speaks to our current moment even as it tells a fantastical story rooted in the past. In this case, the year is 1971, and young novitiate Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free) has just arrived in a turbulent Rome to work at an orphanage. She becomes intrigued by the odd, introverted Carlita Skianna (Nicole Sorace), one of the orphans. She sees something of herself in the girl and tries to forge a bond with her. Then a rogue priest warns her that Carlita might have been bred by the church specifically to give birth to the Anti-Christ — this is, after all, an Omen movie — and our protagonist becomes determined to save the girl. The film will surely leave you with more questions than it answers, but like the best studio horror directors, Stevenson understands that we’re not here for logic. The movie is soaked in style and mood with images that are both textured and shocking and that tap into tantalizingly visceral fears. If horror is all about loss of control, about feelings of helplessness conjured in the audience to reflect the helplessness of the characters, then this is a true horror film. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of The First Omen .

Alice Rohrwacher’s film follows Arthur Harrison (Josh O’Connor), a strange man with a strange gift for robbing graves, finding and lifting the antique knickknacks the ancient Etruscans of central Italy used to bury with their dead. A former archeologist, he seems haunted by his own exploits, and this occasionally rambling, often gorgeous film’s queasy dream logic suggests that we’re watching a man halfway between this world and the next, struggling to find his place. Rohrwacher, one of Italy’s foremost filmmakers, makes earthy movies with a dash of what we might call magical realism. The performances are naturalistic, the location shooting authentic and ground level, but the stories often hover on the edge of fantasy. The director fills the picture with folk ballads, naif art, playful asides to the camera, and bursts of sped-up slapstick, giving it all the quality of a ramshackle operetta. But O’Connor’s concave, melancholy demeanor undercuts the picture’s levity, likely by design: The more the film goes on, and the more fanciful it becomes, the more Arthur seems unable to reconcile himself to the world around him. He’s a sad, walking embodiment of the notion that those who spend their time worrying about the next life will never feel peace in this one. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of La Chimera .

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Caustic and brilliant, Radu Jude’s latest is a comedy about the terrible absurdity of life under late capitalism that includes among its wide-ranging reference points classical haiku, Goethe, the German schlockmeister Uwe Boll, and a series of profane TikToks records by its main character, an overworked PA named Angela (Ilinca Manolache). Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World consists primarily of Angela’s encounters as she drives around auditioning possible subjects for a company employee safety video, a worker-blaming production made even more absurdly bleak by the fact that Angela has been putting in such long hours she’s in danger of falling asleep on the road. But woven in, brilliantly, are clips from a communist-era film about a female taxi driver, also named Angela (Dorina Lazar), whose state-sanction dramas under the Ceaușescu regime provide a counterpoint to the present day Angela’s gig economy life, until the two characters converge for the final act, which involves the shooting of the corporate production, and is one of the most blackley funny sequences you’ll see this year. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World .

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

A few months before he died in March 2023, Ryuichi Sakamoto recorded what he suspected might be his final solo concert. It had been created across a few days out of prerecorded segments that were then assembled and streamed around the world. An expanded version of that concert now exists as a feature film directed by the late musician’s son, Neo Sora, and it’s a moving, spare, and self-reflective work. Sakamoto was a savvy and thoughtful performer, always aware of his audience and in playful conversation with them. Now, as he communes with his music, we feel like we may be intruding on a private requiem. He doesn’t seem particularly frail during this performance; the fragility lies in the music, in the vulnerability with which he plays it, and in the austere cinematic presentation. The shimmering black-and-white photography and elegant camera moves heighten the intimacy of the performance. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus .

Dune: Part Two

If the first Dune was Timothée Chalamet’s movie, the second belongs to Zendaya, and it’s better and more emotionally accessible for it. Denis Villeneuve’s Frank Herbert adaptation continues to be a spectacular and genuinely alien epic about genetically engineered messiah figures, space witches, massive sandworms, and BDSM-inflected goth fascist planets. But it’s Zendaya’s character, the Fremen warrior Chani, who provides the film’s heart, as a fierce-hearted rebel who’s won over by Chalamet’s Paul despite knowing better, and despite being aware that he’s saying all the right things to win her community to his side for what may be his own purposes. Dune: Part Two has incredible sweep, but it also manages to have recognizable human drama, and that comes entirely from Chani’s perspective as the representative of a people whose own desires are forever subsumed by the machinations of much larger powers. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Dune: Part Two ; Matt Zoller Seitz’s behind-the-scenes look with cinematographer Greig Fraser ; and Roxana Hadadi’s analysis of the ending .

Noora Niasari’s debut is based on her own childhood experiences, which is evident from the tangibility of its details, but also from the poignant sense that it’s a film about revisiting turbulent young memories with the distance and knowledge of an adult. Holy Spider ’s Zar Amir Ebrahimi gives an astounding performance as the title character, an Iranian immigrant in Australia who’s fled an abusive marriage and brought along the young daughter, Mona (Selina Zahednia), that she’s terrified will be taken from her. Shayda deftly lays out the dynamics of the womens’ shelter, and of the local Iranian enclave, pitching its story of escape as a kind of intimate thriller in which Shayda must try to create a sense of normalcy and safety for her child while never being able to let her own guard down. — A.W.

Io Capitano

The Italian director Matteo Garrone likes to fuse the topical with the fanciful, and in this modern-day tale of the refugee crisis, he’s made one of his more shattering films. It follows the journey of two Senegalese cousins, Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall), who set off for Europe and find themselves confronted along the way with a variety of monstrous incidents, which feel at times like terrifying images out of an old storybook. Garrone mixes magical realism, epic sweep, and gruesome horror in a story that’s been built out of the experiences of real people who’ve made this journey. But he’s not interested in alarmism. His protagonists aren’t desperate to flee any kind of abject poverty or strife — they simply want to travel to Europe, the same way that First World youths have sought to see the world for decades, even centuries. That’s maybe the most novel (and heartbreaking) aspect of Io Capitano . It rejects the idea of its heroes as solely victims, instead placing them in a grander, nobler tradition of exploration and curiosity. In doing so, it asks an implicit, and pointed, question: Why don’t we in “the West” also see them in this light?

The Promised Land

Mads Mikkelsen is a phenomenally skilled actor, but he’s also clearly the kind of performer who understands the value of a good, cold, hard stare. This makes him uniquely well-suited for the role of Captain Ludvig Kahlen, an impoverished, stoic Danish war veteran who sets out in the mid-18th century to try and tame the Jutland Heath, a huge and forbidding area where no crop can grow and where lawlessness reigns. The Danish title of the film,  Bastarden , translates as “the bastard,” and could be both a literal and spiritual description of Kahlen. He was born to an unwed servant, and he is a tough, at times heartless taskmaster. As he learns that he has to learn to rely on others in order to survive, Kahlen also finds himself at odds with a local landowner, a preening and sadistic aristocrat named Frederik de Schinkel. And so,  The Promised Land  transforms from a stately and lyrical tale of rural survival to something more primal and intense; think Terrence Malick’s  Days of Heaven  crossed with Michael Caton-Jones’s  Rob Roy , only with more scenes of people being boiled alive. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of The Promised Land .

Pictures of Ghosts

This terrifically bittersweet documentary from Bacurau ’s Kleber Mendonça Filho is part memoir, part history of the director’s hometown of Recife, and part meditation on the nature of photography that outlasts the subjects it has captured. But more than anything, it’s a tribute to a life shaped by cinema that manages to avoid the syrupy sentimentality of so many other movies about movies. Filho starts his film in the childhood apartment where he shot so much of his work, and then guides it outward, to the city’s once-grand downtown, studded with cinematic palaces that have mostly been repurposed into other businesses. In doing so, he gracefully reflects on the faded glories of his favored medium. — A.W.

➽ Read Alison Willmore’s full review of Pictures of Ghosts .

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Phạm Thiên Ân’s first feature can be elliptical to a fault in the way it chooses to unfold its story of a drifting young man named Thiện (Lê Phong Vũ) who, after the death of his sister-in-law, inherits custody of his nephew and embarks on a journey to find his brother, the child’s father. But the virtuosity of its filmmaking is remarkable, and some of the shots that Ân composed (with the help of his cinematographer, Đinh Duy Hưng) have lingered with me like persistent afterimages. In particular, there’s the sequence that starts the film, in which the camera drifts from a nighttime soccer game in Saigon, past street vendors and spectators and over to a bustling outdoor cafe where three men are talking about faith over beers until they’re interrupted by an off-screen collision. It’s impressive in its complexity and utterly haunting in its execution, as if it contains the whole world before its focus narrows in on one particular figure. — A.W.

There have been many movies about Frida Kahlo over the years, but none have given us such a sense of the artist as an actual living, breathing person as Carla Gutiérrez’s innovative new documentary. Gutiérrez, an award-winning editor, has built the movie entirely out of archival material, using Kahlo’s own words and pictures to present her life as seen through her own eyes. Thus, we hear Frida’s own achingly confessional words (spoken by Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero) as she narrates her childhood, growing up with a deeply religious mother and an atheist father; her vivacious teen years as a hip young medical student, adored by many; her lengthy, turbulent marriage to the lecherous, revolutionary muralist Diego Rivera, who overshadowed her in her time; as well as her own passionate affairs with both men and women. The director has also taken Kahlo’s drawings and paintings, including some of the most immortal ones, and animated them so that the images now shift before our eyes to reflect her emotional transformations, with pictures often mutating into one another. It’s an inspired path into the work of an artist who often painted her own visage in visually striking arrangements. By the time the movie is over, we feel, perhaps for the first time, like we’ve gotten to know this legendary, almost mythical figure. — B.E.

➽ Read Bilge Ebiri’s full review of Frida .

• dune part two
• frida kahlo
• the promised land
• ryuichi sakamoto: opus
• pictures of ghosts
• best of 2024

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 103: July 7, 2024
• The 11 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This July 4 Weekend
• Eddie Murphy ‘Forced’ Himself to Change Beverly Hills Cop Laugh
• All 15 Illumination Movies, Ranked
• No, They Weren’t Dead the Whole Time
• The Bear Season-Premiere Recap: Perfect Means Perfect

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

• The Boys Recap: Alt-right Cocktail Party

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.