Quick synopsis: (sing to the tune of Eleanor Rigby) Agatha Christie, puts a Poirot in a house where a murder has been, ghosts cause a scene.

I very much enjoyed the Branagh version of Murder On The Orient Express (or MOTOE, pronounced Moe-toe). I wasn’t quite as enamoured by Death On The Nile (or DOTN, pronounced Dot-en) but it had its moments. With both of those I had some sense of expectation going in, I had witnessed the trailers enough times that I had a general idea of what to expect. This? This felt like it was secretly released. This is the blindest I’ve gone into one of these, I was aware of how MOTOE ended and had a general idea about DOTN, but I knew nothing about A Haunting In Venice (AHIV, pronounced A-heev). It’s (loosely) based on Halloween Party, which is not exactly a well-known Christie book. So it would have been useful if the studio bothered to promote it AT ALL to let the audience know what they were in for. I didn’t see a single trailer being played at the cinema and very few posters. There didn’t seem to be any excitement pre-release, it just felt like the studio was saying “Okay it’s out now, deal with it”, treating it with all the pomp and circumstance of a silent fart.

I was really hoping my trepidation was wrong and that this wouldn’t turn out to be as painful as a hole in the head. It’s……..alright. It’s decent enough and doesn’t reach the lowlights of DOTN, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to the highlights of MOTOE. Part of that is because the mystery itself just isn’t as narratively satisfying. It’s not set up well enough, the clues aren’t given in such a way that you could conceivably guess the ending and important points are moved past VERY quickly. It also pulls the “maybe magic, maybe mundane” card too much. It’s explored brilliantly with the séance scene, where Poirot works out how they’re pulling off the tricks. But then later on you have the main villain seemingly killed by a ghost. The fun in a film like this is seeing how it’s done, so when death is reduced to “a ghost did it” it cheapens it somewhat.

The performances are all pretty damn good, but I do wish we got more Yeoh. Branagh continues to shine as the lead and is usually the most captivating presence on screen. Part of that might be because of the strange directorial choices. Branagh doesn’t have much of a background in horror movies, and that much is clear in this. The physical geography of some of the scenes is a bit muddled, and there are some moments where it feels like the characters are reacting to camera movements, which obviously don’t exist in their reality, so really they’re reacting to nothing.

It does have some highlights; the aforementioned séance is a lot of fun to watch unfold. The puppet story about the plague children is hauntingly beautiful, and the ending is nice to watch.

In summary; a spooky detective story that is essentially unessential.