A Haunting in Venice, the year’s best and spookiest murder mystery, is now streaming
Don’t let the goofy mustache or the funny accent fool you: Kenneth Branagh has gotten really good at adapting Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories. While Murder on the Orient Express was a fine enough thriller and a serviceable update of a whodunit classic, A Haunting in Venice, now on Hulu just in time for Halloween, is his best mystery yet (and let’s just agree not to talk about Death on the Nile).
A Haunting in Venice is adapted from Christie’s novel Hallowe’en Party, but changes quite a bit of the story. Here, Poirot is pulled out of retirement at the behest of a mystery-writer friend in order to investigate the dubious supernatural claims of a medium. Of course, things don’t go as planned and a murder occurs, giving our heroic mustachioed Belgian detective no choice but to investigate.
Three Poirot movies in, Branagh is clearly gaining more confidence as a director in the murder mystery genre. Haunting is full of stylish visual flourishes and nods to some of the greatest directors of the era the movie is set in, from Fritz Lang to Orson Welles. The Venetian villa where most of the movie’s action takes place is shot like a Gothic castle, with massive, looming shadows that stretch all the way across the frame and swallow all the light in the room. Suits of armor lurk menacingly behind characters and at the edges of the frame, as if threatening to come to life. The whole movie is tremendously moody, filled with creeping dread and mystery, but never loses its momentum or sense of fun. Branagh can’t quite match the true masters in their originality of vision, but he’s becoming as adept at adapting and repurposing directing styles and camera movements as he’s always been at adapting stories.
The movie is far and away
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