A Haunting in Venice review: Branagh’s new Poirot is smooth and sinister

For the next eight months, it reminds us, there will be no guilt about spending a perfectly good afternoon shut away indoors watching a murder mystery.

Smooth, sinister and studded with stars, A Haunting in Venice is precisely the kind of feet-up matinee entertainment that has rounded off generations of Sunday roasts, just as its David Suchet and Peter Ustinov predecessors did.

Give us a whodunnit, a super-sleuth, and a carefully arrived-at gotcha and you won’t hear a murmur out of us for a good two hours.

The success of the recent Knives Out series has confirmed that for all our fleeting attention spans and smartphone addictions, an appetite persists for all-star ensembles being put through the wringer by a thickly accented gentleman inquisitor.

This is a rare and satisfying brand of screen justice – like watching an eloquent, dapper locksmith methodically crack open a safe.

​Branagh and screenwriting foil Michael Green tweak Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, transplanting it from the English country manor to Venice and blending in elements from one of Christie’s supernatural short stories, The Last Séance.

We’re a decade on from the events of Death on the Nile (that film’s release last year somewhat overshadowed by the casting of Armie Hammer, who has been at the centre of some disturbing abuse allegations).

World War II has been and gone, and Poirot has lost his faith in humanity. Between the murders he has solved, and the atrocities of two European conflicts, he has seen enough to choose a self-imposed exile in Venice.

Ably watched over by bodyguard Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio) and living with a queue of hopeful clients camped outside his lodgings, Poirot now concerns himself with gardening and local confectionery.

A call from friend and celebrated mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) is not something he entirely welcomes, but she assures him that he will not be dragged back into solving some murder case. She merely wants him to accompany her to a Hallowe’en party for local orphans at the palazzo of retired opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly).

A former orphanage rumoured to be haunted, Drake’s eerie home was the scene of her daughter Alicia’s tragic demise a year previously. As part of the night’s festivities, she intends to host a private séance conducted by renowned medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).

Oliver wants Poirot to observe the ceremony and help her debunk it. But the séance turns out to be far hairier than either Poirot or Oliver predicted – and when one of the guests becomes the victim of a grisly murder that night, Poirot rolls up his sleeves, locking everyone in until the killer is revealed.

A likely cast of suspicious houseguests gets his double-winged moustache twitching; Drake’s PTSD-riddled family doctor (Jamie Dornan) and his independent son Leopold (Jude Hill, who, along with Dornan, Branagh reunites from the cast of Belfast); a devout housekeeper (Camille Cottin) who seems emotionally involved with her employers; the is-she/isn’t-she medium and her two assistants (Ali Khan and Emma Laird); and Alicia’s bitter ex-fiancé (Kyle Allen).

But the waters are muddied considerably by a spooky aura lurking in the shadows. The detective famous for his rationale and skills of deduction is seeing and hearing things. Or is he?

Branagh and Green wield a noticeably gothic dread that occasionally breaks out into cricket-bat horror that tests the film’s 12A rating. This is not the insidiously chilling Venice of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. It does, however, milk the city’s labyrinthine, crumbling decadence to good effect, even if some of its old-world exotica can feel rinsed through an Instagram filter.

Inside the palazzo, meanwhile, lamplight flickers across damp walls and knowing glances. Slightly over-iced the horror cake may be, it does give a by-numbers routine a new gloss, and that is welcome.

Branagh’s Poirot is among the most cartoonish portrayals of the Belgian sleuth, and lovers of Ustinov or Suchet may never take to him fully. Behind the camera, however, he knows just what we Autumn matinee-goers are after. ​

Four stars