With two Agatha Christie adaptations –– ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘Death on the Nile’ should you need your little gray cells jogged –– Kenneth Branagh has carved himself out quite the murder mystery corner in his career as director and star.
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.
He’s back in Poirot mode for a third outing, this one promising to add a little more supernatural flavor into the story. The new trailer for ‘A Haunting in Venice’ finds the ego-tastic detective tempted to investigate both whether a medium is a fake and, when things go seriously scare-shaped, another mysterious death.
Branagh once more teamed up with writer Michael Green, who worked on the last two movies, and has some of the same crew again here.
What’s the story of ‘A Haunting in Venice’?
(Facing front, L to R) Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier, Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff, Michelle Yeoh as Mrs. Reynolds, Jamie Dornan as Dr. Leslie Ferrier, and Kyle Allen as Maxime Gerard in 20th Century Studios’ ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
A disconsolate Poirot finds himself at a Halloween party in one of the city’s creepier palazzos during a thunderstorm and, as it turns out, a seance. This palazzo is an orphanage, you see, and like all orphanages in ghost stories it’s got a deep, dark secret.
Invited by his friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) to judge whether Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) is truly able to contact the dead, Poirot soon discovers that something more might be going on.
A mother searching for a lost child thinks she can make contact, and over the course of an evening secrets start to unravel… Including for our hero…
Related Article: Movie Review: ‘Death on the Nile’
Who else is in A Haunting in Venice’?
(L to R) Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver in 20th Century Studios’ ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
As per usual, Branagh has assembled quite the ensemble around him, including Jamie Dornan, Camille Cottin, Kyle Allen, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarcio and Jude Hill, who played the nine-year-old lead in Branagh’s ‘Belfast’.
Branagh was clear when talking to Empire that he wanted to add in the extra ghostly mystery:
“That notion for Poirot could be the height of bunkum. And I think that he’s irresistibly drawn into trying to expose it. But when you are isolated, perhaps in a haunted palazzo, it can suddenly be very much more: across that long, dark night of the soul, the action taking place across a single murder-filled evening, it can challenge your previously firmly-held convictions that there’s nothing out there.”
And according to the director/star, we find the detective in a different place mentally as well as geographically:
“He’s lost his faith, so he says, but Michael [Green] had this idea that murder and the possibility of ghosts would be irresistible to a man with that mustache, and that nose for sniffing a culprit. Along the way he has lost friends. We know from his past that his experience in the war has also isolated him. So, I think he is no longer a believer. He’s a man whose confidence and composure has been rocked by the intense and scary pressure that his life has put him under. He finds himself here in an engagement with what he says he doesn’t believe in: in the other world. God, he thinks, has failed him. But Poirot in this film finds himself in a supernatural thriller, and the normal rules do not apply.”
‘A Haunting in Venice’ is in theaters from September 15th.
Michelle Yeoh as Mrs. Reynolds in 20th Century Studios’ ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
A scene still from 20th Century Studios’ ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
A scene still from 20th Century Studios’ ‘A Haunting in Venice.’ Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
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‘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.
