2023-09-14 06:17:32
If a film is very successful, it usually doesn’t take long before a sequel is announced. The artist who then has to implement this is faced with the challenge that, on the one hand, fans and the production studio expect something new, but on the other hand, it should and should hardly deviate from the old in terms of quality, feeling and success.
With “Death on the Nile” (2022), director and actor Kenneth Branagh has proven that he is capable of building on the success of his first Agatha Christie film adaptation “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017). How do you repeat this coup a second time? Branagh, who always plays the main character, the detective Hercule Poirot, in these films, leaves the well-trodden narrative path and this time adapts “Hallowe’en Party”, a work from Agatha Christie’s late work (it was published in 1969), which has only been published once so far , thirteen years ago, was adapted for British television.
Poirot has actually retired
Michael Green, who already wrote the scripts for the two previous Poirot films for Kenneth Branagh, this time only used the original novel as a rough template and saved a lot on staff (no wonder, since Christie has almost thirty people). The action for “A Haunting in Venice” was moved from Britain in the 1960s to Venice in 1947. The war is just over, the last remnants of the Allied troops are still in the city, but Hercule Poirot doesn’t want to know anything about it. He has retired here in a large palazzo, enjoys Italian pastries and has a bodyguard keep people away from him who intrusively ask him for help on his walks through the city (Riccardo Scamarcio, in this role, jostles such harassers with obvious pleasure Bridges).
Of course, the retreat into private life doesn’t last long. One day, crime writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey plays Agatha Christie’s alter ego) knocks on Poirot’s door and asks him for a favor. He should go with her to a famous medium’s séance and prove that the woman is a fraud. Poirot hesitates, grumbles and then allows himself to be persuaded by his charming acquaintance. Fey shines in the dialogue with Branagh with quick, funny exchanges, as she recently did in the best moments of her series “30 Rock” alongside Alec Baldwin.
Then it gets scary: The palazzo in which the necromancy is supposed to take place is a former orphanage in which dozens of children had to die in agony during a plague epidemic after doctors and nurses left the house and locked the children inside. The screams of these children are said to have later driven the current owner’s daughter to jump from the balcony.
Anyone wondering whether this would be more suitable as a background for a ghost story than a crime thriller is already on the right track. This time Branagh changes the tone, flirts with a new genre and lets a touch of gothic horror waft over the scenery, without, however, completely leaving the boundaries of the crime thriller. After all, Hercule Poirot is a master of reason who solves his cases solely through observation and factual analysis.
He explains this principle to the medium, played by Michelle Yeoh, in the foyer of the palazzo: “If there are spirits, there is a soul. And if there is a soul, there is a God and a divine order. But I’ve seen too much to believe it.” She then just gives him a pitying look and a short time later she will tear her hair out and roll her eyes in a furious spirit possession. Then she also falls from a balcony.
It’s a cross with this job: Kenneth Branagh investigates as detective Hercule Poirot in a scary palazzo in Venice. : Image: 20th Century Studios
The film owes its scariest effects primarily to the camera work. Right at the beginning she shows a Venice that has gone awry: instead of romantic shots full of foggy melancholy, the steps on St. Mark’s Square cut the picture almost vertically, and the statues in the Doge’s Palace tilt onto the screen at an angle as if they were about to fall down . When Branagh’s Poirot climbs the stairs into the horror palazzo with Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh, the edges of the scene are distorted by a fisheye camera to make you feel dizzy. All of this is not a technical gimmick, it is rather a foretaste of what Poirot will experience in the house during his investigations – because not only do some of the people present at the séance mysteriously die here, Poirot also begins to see things that… cannot be real.
Patrick Heidmann Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 19 Maria Wiesner Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 22 Dietmar Dath Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 27
With the detective’s struggle to hold on to the principles of reason and reason, even when his senses tell him otherwise, Branagh gives his Poirot a new character dimension. Where Peter Ustinov, who also portrayed Christie’s detective three times in feature films, highlighted Poirot’s weariness and weariness with solving crimes in his third portrayal and thus anticipated that he would not appear in the role again, Branagh seems to be doing it again here to warm up properly. This gives his Poirot several facets that could be explored further.
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