[Content Warning: The following will contain mentions of suicide and genocide]
Horror is such a versatile genre to blend with others because horror, at its core, is about a very primal part of the human experience. Baked deep into our DNA is this fear of the unknown; since the first campfire illuminated the night, we have been afraid of what lies beyond that warm glow. Of course, those things were always there, but having that light and that feeling of safety makes the places where we’re unsafe that much scarier. So horror taps into that dread that we have locked in the back of our brains that doesn’t get a whole lot of action during a normal, relatively safe day that most people in the modern world have. Applying dread to other genres and using horror mechanics can lead to some very satisfying mash-ups. I just wrote about the blend of horror and war, and, of course, you know my affinity for the subversion of the horror-comedy. But what about the horror-whodunnit?
It’s easy to see why the two would work well together, even though it doesn’t seem like a blend we see often. If you’re talking about the traditional Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, you have a lot of shared elements. A group of people together, often in a secluded place (like a cabin in the woods), cut off from help and the rest of the world (often by inclement weather), and then, well, people start dying. Whether it’s supernatural or human, the end result is the same—people are dead and they need to find out why and stop it from happening again. And we are talking Agatha Christie here, as we return to Kenneth Branagh’s (Hamlet, Oppenheimer) Hercule Poirot films with A Haunting in Venice, based on Christie’s Hallowe’en Party and streaming on Hulu.
Instead of a cabin in the woods, we have an old house, a palazzo, in Venice, where Poirot has been enticed to join a Halloween party at the behest of his old friend, writer Ariadne Oliver, played by Tina Fey (30 Rock, Saturday Night Live), who wants his help to debunk a medium who seems like the real deal. The set and setting are excellent, as the house feels haunted when you’re in it and the atmosphere is properly chilling. Ariadne has made a bit of a career writing mysteries, basing her detective on the world famous Hercule Poirot. I actually like this lore drop here, because as a whodunnit super fan, I’ve seen a lot of shows and movies about world famous detectives, but I’ve been in the world for a little while now and I can’t name a single detective and I used to work for a judge. So the idea of a “world famous detective” has always seemed a bit silly to me and this explanation of her books feeding his fame helps to explain that. Anyway, she’s in a bit of slump. 30 books written, 27 best sellers, but three in a row that have been commercial and critical failures; she needs something to get her out of her rut and Poirot is the perfect person to help pull her up.
Unfortunately for Ariadne, it’s 1947 and we see Poirot as a retired recluse now, uninterested in seeing anyone but his bodyguard and the baker who delivers him fresh pastries by boat twice a day. A line of people hoping for his help gathers outside his door daily, but no one ever gets through. He’s lived through two World Wars (having fought in one) and feels the weight of the dead after a career of being surrounded by their mysteries. He is a man himself haunted; what use does he have for a Halloween party and a woman who claims to speak to the dead? He’s had enough of ghosts, he lives with them everyday. But, through a little teasing about him being past it and a great deal more cajoling, she was able to convince him. A party held at a house haunted in more ways than one. It was an orphanage at the time of the bubonic plague and, unfortunately, in times of great fear and panic, people make awful decisions. In this case, the doctors and the nurses locked the children away and left, allowing sickness and starvation to take them all, scared and alone.
This original sin of the house has led to the Children’s Vendetta, as it’s called, which causes tragedy to befall everyone who lives there. And they take particular pleasure in causing the demise of medical professionals because they’re the ones who left them to die. Not the house I’d want to spend the night if I were a doctor. Or so the story goes; so much falls to myth and legend, I remember being taught that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and used it to build a space skateboard so he could do a sick flip in from of some martians and I’m not entirely sure that happened. But, at the very least, tragedy has befallen the current resident, former opera singer Rowena Drake, played by Kelly Reilly (Yellowstone, True Detective), whose daughter Alicia fell ill after her fiancé left her and then fell from her bedroom into the canal under suspicious circumstances. Some say she was so heartbroken she committed suicide, others believe she was so out of sorts with illness that she accidentally fell over, and others still believe it was the children who took her, indiscriminately exacting revenge for the atrocities committed against them. Either way, Alicia is the one the medium is there to speak with and boy does she put on a show.
She shows up in a small boat, which in itself is unremarkable because it’s Venice and that’s just how you get around, but when boats and docks and shadowy nights are involved, it just makes everything feel more dramatic. If someone says they have to meet someone, no big deal. If they say they have to meet someone at night at the docks, that’s immediately intriguing. I want to know what they’re doing. And if the person shows up wearing a mask and cloak with two assistants in tow, then, well, all the more intriguing. She is Joyce Reynolds, played by Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once), and she insists that she is just like Poirot, someone who speaks for the dead, but in her case, more literally. Poirot, in his Ralph Anderson level of self-assurance, knows completely that she is a fraud, because like Ralph and like me, he doesn’t believe in any of it, so they must all be frauds. And so far every single one that Ariadne has come against in her recent stint of proto-Oh No, Ross and Carrie has turned out to be a fraud, so Poirot feels pretty confident. When pushed, Poirot answers plainly and brutally as to why he doesn’t believe. He has seen too much of the world; the wars, the countless murders, and as he put it, in a way that cut so deeply and poetically that I had to rewind to make sure I heard every word correctly, “the bitter evil of human indifference” to believe that there is any spirit or being that’s steering the ship.
There’s a whole cast of characters here. Their deeply religious maid, who attended to Alicia as she was sick. The ex-fiance back for answers after receiving a mysterious invite. The shell shocked, as it was called back then, family doctor and his creepy son who claims to speak to the ghosts of the house and says they told him Joyce is a fake. And of course, Reynolds and her half-sibling assistants, Poirot, Ariadne, and Poirot’s bodyguard. They conduct the seance in Alicia’s room, which was left untouched since her death months ago. Not even the teacup, half off the edge of the nightstand, was moved. The seance is properly dramatic, as unlike other mediums, Reynolds uses a typewriter instead of a crystal ball, and it types out responses on its own. It’s all very convincing until Poirot barges in and exposes the fraud. And that’s when it gets really interesting. It‘s kind of a thought exercise; just because someone is lying doesn’t mean they aren’t also telling the truth. Knowing what theatrics charlatans get up to, Reynolds could be using the trappings of fraudsters to actually contact the dead, which might be a much more subdued experience than people expect. You know, she’s just jazzing it up a bit. Either that, or she sandbags the really good stuff for when things get dicey. The movie keeps things ambiguous, as the seance gets so intense it shakes everyone. Poirot is steadfast in his skepticism, but he is seemingly alone. Everyone is convinced, even Ariadne. “The woman who beat Poirot”, she says, noting that it will put her back on top when she writes it.
Poirot confronts Reynolds and they argue it out, Reynolds doing her bit to explain the theatrical aspect of her particular dog and pony show, ending with her telling Poirot to lighten up—after all, she’s seen the horrors of the world just as he has, but she does her best to find her way through rather than wallow in it. She tells him to trying bobbing for an apple, like the kids were doing at the party. I think that’s terrible advice, to be honest. First of all, bobbing for apples is disgusting, that’s a lot of people sticking their open mouths in a barrel full of water and then you going to do that right after. No thank you. I don’t even know why people thought sticking your face in water to grab something with your mouth was supposed to be fun. And what’s the prize at the end of it all? Is it a Switch 2? No, it’s an apple; a readily available piece of fruit. Hardly worth drowning for. And drowning is exactly what happens to Poirot, as he is attacked during his attempt and held under. He was revived by his bodyguard after a brief moment being mostly dead only to come to a grim realization that he wasn’t the target. But it’s too late and the body drops. Literally. Through all the ghost stories, the jump scares, the whispers in the hallway you convince yourself is your mind playing tricks on you, we now have a real live corpse. And it won’t be the last.
But, if you’re going to have a party with a murder, having the world’s best detective on the guest list seems to be a pretty convenient thing, like falling ill right outside a hospital. Sure, things would be better if that weren’t happening, but if it’s going to happen, there are worse places for it to go down. The first thing Poirot does is lock them in. The murderer is in there with them, so no one can leave or enter. Not that there’s much of a need to lock them in; with the inclement weather causing the waterways to become dangerously choppy, there are no boats that are safe for them to leave on. So now we have our classic horror setup and our classic whodunnit setup. A dead body, an isolated group, and one steadfast protagonist, keen to get to the bottom of it all. He may be rusty, but Poirot is the man for the job. Or is he? Is the house getting to him? Is he losing his grip on reality? Or are all the stories true? Poirot wrestles with the mystery as the situation gets stranger and stranger and things become harder to explain. The doctor’s creepy son even says to him that the dead consider him one of their own now, because he briefly crossed over to their side and he shouldn’t be surprised if they contact him.
It’s always a fun experience for me to watch Branagh go through Poirot’s process because I do really like his approach to the character. He’s methodical and humorless, that sort of maestro who has given up everything in life to pursue his craft. When Agatha Christie thought up Poirot, she did a wonderful job. Even the two previous movies, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, despite their flaws, were really enjoyable films for me because of Branagh’s performance. Yeoh also does a great job as the questionable medium, but I will admit the acting is not the main draw of these movies. The usually reliable Tina Fey plays Ariadne with a kind of flapperish lilt to the way she speaks, which feels less authentic and more Janet Snakehole than anything else, but still, her performance is passable. Kelly Reilly as the grieving mother does a good enough job, though her accent changes through the film so often that even in my fourth time watching this, I’m unsure whether she’s supposed to be American or English. Suffice it to say, this isn’t a perfect movie.
The doctor, though, Dr. Ferrier, played by Jamie Dornan (Belfast, Fifty Shades of Grey), is convincingly traumatized by his time in the war and the things he saw and had to do, as he was one of the first medical personnel to be sent to the horrific concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. I’ll spare you the details of what went on there (click if you want more information), but I fully understand why he walked away from the war with PTSD. Even just knowing what happened there is more than troubling enough for me without having witnessed it firsthand. And that’s really what this movie is about. There’s a lot going on here and a lot of what we get to see of the characters is interesting, but A Haunting in Venice takes time to tell a story about trauma with these two characters, Poirot and Dr. Ferrier. When we see Poirot at the beginning of this film, he’s living in seclusion, wondering if he just happens upon death or it follows him around. He may not show it the same way as the good doctor, but he is also traumatized. The death of his captain, the death of his fiance, the horrors of trench warfare, the murders that beckon to him; how could he not be carrying something after all that? By WW2, humanity had found all new ways of killing each other, all the more brutal and in the hands of people willing to be brutal and the horrors that Ferrier saw were even greater than what Poirot endured. Even Reynolds has her past in the war as well and she deals with it in a different way; whether or not you believe she can communicate with the dead, it certainly feels like more than a charade to her.
After all, what is a haunting other than trauma that surrounds you like so many specters and phantasms? Even the palazzo where Rowena lives and her daughter died is haunted by its trauma, the Children’s Vendetta. And it’s only by working through that trauma that you can get past it. And there’s no one way to deal with it, for each person it’s different and there are healthier ways than others. Maybe it’s realizing that getting back to your passion is the way you move forward. Maybe it is freshly delivered pastries two times a day, I’ve never tried that. Maybe it’s rigging a typewriter in a masquerade to bring false comfort to the bereaved, since maybe false comfort feels the same as the real thing if you don’t know it’s false. Maybe it’s ruining the lives and/or murdering people who move into your house after you’ve died tragically there (don’t do this one, this is on the unhealthy side of the scale). But certainly burying it down and trying to numb the pain isn’t the way forward. Ghosts have to be exorcised.
The movie has some genuinely spooky moments and some well timed jump scares that complete the horror movie experience, even though as a PG-13 movie, it avoids gore. Which I honestly don’t mind, but if you’re looking for a splatterfest, you’ll be better served with a movie like Abigail than this, but if you want a spooky ghost story, A Haunting in Venice delivers it. It’s already become one of my go to Halloween movies, this being the third year I’ve watched in the run up to the holiday since its release in 2023. It really has become a Halloween favorite of mine because it so successfully marries the spooky elements of ghostly horror with the style of the traditional whodunnit that I love so much. It has flaws, of course, and I’ll not yell at clouds about it deserving an Oscar or anything, but it’s a solid mystery and a solid spooky film rolled into one and it’s definitely worth putting the well-paced 1 hour and 43 minute film in your Halloween rotation.
