Following its thought-provoking predecessors, Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022), detective Hercule Poirot returns for another thrilling murder mystery in 20th Century Studios’ A Haunting in Venice, only in theaters this Friday. What separates this third installment from the first two films, which followed the beloved Agatha Christie novels quite closely, is that this latest tale is more so inspired by the world that Christie envisioned in her 1969 book Hallowe’en Party, but allows for a fresh series of events and an entirely new ending that will keep you guessing.
With a captivating screenplay written by Michael Green and celebrated actor Kenneth Branagh returning not only as Poirot but also in the director’s chair once again, A Haunting in Venice re-visits the famed detective, now retired from his crime-revealing ways and living in post-World War II Venice.
He is soon persuaded to return to his clever methods when his old friend and mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (played brilliantly by Tina Fey) arrives on his doorstep, seeking his help to potentially debunk a medium (played by the wickedly talented Michelle Yeoh), who says she has the ability to communicate with the dead. However, when the gathering for this Halloween séance goes unexpectedly under Poirot’s careful supervision, the question of murder soon ensues.
Co-starring Jamie Dornan and Kelly Reilly, alongside a sharply-acted ensemble cast, this layered A Haunting in Venice story that is centered around confusion, secrets and lies could only be so convincing to moviegoers, thanks to the imaginative visions and sounds from its filmmaking team.
Composer Hildur Guđnadóttir, previously known for her Oscar-winning film score in Joker (2019), brought along her life-long intrigue for these types of stories to better benefit her music choices for A Haunting in Venice.
Guđnadóttir told me, “I really grew up reading Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew. Growing up with the genre, I have a very strong sense of what I feel works for this genre and what I feel doesn’t work, so I like that kind of classical approach to the genre and for it to be very straight-forward and concentrated on the story.”
James Pritchard, an executive producer on these three Poirot films and the real-life great grandson to Christie, informed me why he believes his great grandmother’s stories from yesteryear continue to intrigue modern audiences.
Pritchard said, “She had a genius for plot – it’s the reason she’s the bestselling novelist of all-time, and great stories don’t age. They don’t go out of fashion and you can adapt them in all sorts of ways. You can put them in different settings, as we’ve done here, moving Hallowe’en Party from an English country village to Venice. The story still works because it is the story that is central.”
A Haunting in Venice production designer John Paul Kelly went on to tell me that the film production shot in Venice for only a week, with the rest being built from the ground up and filmed on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios, located just outside of London. He said the film’s aging Italian palazzo backdrop “needed to be a space that was going to evolve with the story – that was going to reveal itself gradually.”
Kelly added, “In this case, the house sits alongside the actors. It’s one of the suspects, you know? Is it them or is it, it? So, it has a prominence that allows it to really standout. That’s really unusual for a production design.”
Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, having also worked on all three Poirot films, said that A Haunting in Venice was a departure from the two previous films, calling it a lesser known film, something he found to be liberating for the filmmaking team. While preparing to film this more dark and sinister story, Zambarloukos focused much of his efforts on ensuring that the lighting throughout the film matched the mood of the story taking place.
Zambarloukos said, “We decided to shoot this at very low light levels, so I looked into what was the authentic lighting of the period. How would a palazzo on Halloween night be lit at that time? It would have been lit with a combination of candles and certain very low light levels – tungsten light levels. I looked into cameras that would record at that low light level and a decent depth of field. It was a very dark set. It also created the correct atmosphere for our actors to perform.”
With Branagh continuing to steer the ship as the visionary leader on A Haunting in Venice and the two previous films, both in front of the camera in embodying Poirot and behind it as the ongoing director, I wondered what it was like for this creative filmmaking team to work alongside Branagh on this latest project.
Zambarloukos said, “You kind of have to start every new film as if it’s your first and your last, and you give it your all and you take nothing for granted. You discover the story from the first day of prep together. You look for ways that you can enhance and help, and be a participant in the storytelling.”
Pritchard joked by saying, “All Ken does is make me feel completely inadequate. There you have one of the most talented directors, talented actors of his generation. An intellect the size of a planet. A guy who, as far as I can work out, works harder than anyone else I have ever come across and he wants to work on these films. It’s just a joy – it’s a privilege.”
Kelly added of Branagh, “It’s an incredible process and he really loves his detail. He’s an absolute perfectionist to the extreme, as you’d imagine, as is the character Poirot. Sometimes, [you’re] not quite sure which of the two you’re talking to, but he’s a wonderful collaborator. His notes are very specific. His attention to detail was extraordinary and was lovely to work alongside.”
I concluded my conversation by asking Christie’s great grandson Pritchard, who was only a young boy when she passed away in 1976, what he believes the beloved novelist would think of all of these film adaptations of her work, as they continue to be developed for the big screen.
Pritchard said, “I think she would basically be amazed. She was a very modest, very quiet person. I think she would be incredibly surprised that here we are, nearly 50 years after her death, still talking about her – still talking about her work and still making her movies. I hope she would actually be proud. She should be proud.”
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