A Haunting in Venice

[sjankis630]

I just got back from seeing this on a Thursday night. I had 2 others in the theater with me.
I was pretty disappointed. I knew that it was based on the Agatha Christie novel Halloween Party. When they say "based" on they mean it contains Poirot and has characters with the same name as the novel. All of the rest is completely different.
So basically this is essentially Poirot in a non Agatha Christie movie.
it was boring, uninteresting and seemed to add the "touch of horror" solely to fool anyone who would come and see this thinking it was a semi horror movie.
Those people will be disappointed too as it is in fact a very boring, convenient and somewhat clunky mystery.
Oh and it was filmed in Venice. At least I know they spent some time in Venice because they show Poirot walking around in Venice at the beginning of the movie.
95% of the movie is filmed in an old "scary" house which is drafty, leaky and with a creaky plot.
I would not recommend this to a Christie fan as this is not an Agatha Christie movie. I also would not recommend this to anyone for light horror as it fails there too.
If anyone has seen this please comment and maybe you can tell me what I missed.

Also why they made Ariadne Oliver into a mean pushy His Girl Friday mixed with a National Enquirer reporter I cannot fathom.

[millie7]

Thank you for the review! I’m a Christie fanatic (my grandmother had an entire wall full of English mysteries — including all Christie’s — introduced me to her books at age 12). I could tell just from the commercials it would have only the most tenuous connection to the source material. But I was interested to hear what people who saw it thought.

For me, Suchet is impossible to beat as Poirot — though some of his adaptations are also abominations. At least he was on point. Branagh, though I’ve loved some of his movies, just isn’t Poirot to me.

[Ladybug]

Thanks for the heads up. I was considering seeing this in the theater, but I'll probably wait until it's streaming.

[bluemuna]

‘Twas indeed boring and very predictable.

Of the three Branagh movies, this was the worst. I didn’t love either of the other two, but at least they have been pretty to look at. This one was so damn dark you couldn’t even appreciate sets or costumes.