What genre does “A Haunting in Venice” belong to?
Twirl a mustache and join me on the case. Our first clue is that Kenneth Branagh is playing Hercule Poirot in his third adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. So, this would appear to be an open-and-shut case. Add a murder in a spooky house peopled by suspects, and you have all the hallmarks of a classic locked-room mystery. But Christie fans will quickly deduce that the screenwriter Michael Green has departed considerably from “Hallowe’en Party,” the original source material from 1969, one of her later, lesser books, adding elements that move into the realm of supernatural horror. Be on guard for misdirection.
A glum Poirot, retired from solving cases, has been invited to attend a séance where a famous opera singer, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), wants to contact her dead daughter. The medium (or fraud?) is played with brio by Michelle Yeoh, and her psychic powers present a challenge to the stony rationality of the aging…
