Film Review: A Haunting in Venice

You can’t get much better than Kenneth Branagh. He’s been one of my favorites as an actor and director for years. But he’s just as good at doing both at once, as he proves in “A Haunting in Venice,” for my money the best film of the year, at least so far.

“A Haunting in Venice” is the first time Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel “Hallowe’en Party” has been adapted for film. I hope it’s never done again. This one is better than any I could even imagine.

Here he plays Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot for the third time, but the first based on a Christie source not previously adapted for film. This script was written by Michael Green.

We meet the retired sleuth tending his garden, well, okay, his spiffy manse, when he reluctantly attends a seance. Among the other guests are some of my favorite actors, Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Jamie Dornan among them. (That’s not to slight the rest of the fine cast: Dylan Corbet-Bader, Amir El-Masry, Riccardo Scamarcio and Fernando Piloni. I’m just not as familiar with them.)

But when strange and dark things start happening, Poirot is forced to put on his  sleuth hat and go to work. 

Yeoh plays Mrs. Reynolds, a psychic who quickly grows nervous as she senses evil in the room and sets out to determine what’s up. It’s murder and mayhem, of course, expertly directed and acted thanks to Branagh, and filmed brilliantly enough to scare even people like me, who tend to ho-hum this type of thing.

Tina Fey is wonderful fun as fellow writer Ariadne Oliver, a skeptic who quickly gets scared.

If you know the story, you don’t need me to tell you what happens. And if you don’t, I won’t ruin it for you. Be assured that you’ll be impressed, if not frightened out of your mind.

Don’t miss this cinematic masterpiece.