- Directed by Kenneth Branagh
- Written by Michael Green, Agatha Christie
- Stars Kenneth Branagh, Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEddsSwweyE
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This Hercule Poirot mystery is presented like a ghost story, and it’s very well done. It’s atmospheric and creepy, with a good cast. It really does make us wonder if there’s something supernatural or not right up to the end. We liked it a lot.
Synopsis
Hercule Poirot has a nightmare about birds. Credits roll.
When Poirot goes out in public, he’s swarmed by people wanting help. His bodyguard is not having it, and knocks one of them down. Ariadne Oliver comes to see him; they are old friends. She’s a bestselling mystery writer, and she has a case for him. She tells him about Mrs. Reynolds, a spiritualist and medium, and Ariadne can’t figure out how she’s doing it– what’s the con? She’s gotten them both invited to a seance tonight– on Halloween. Can Poirot debunk Mrs. Reynolds?
We all stop to watch a children’s puppet theater production about the plague. It seems a bit excessive for the tiny children in the audience. Little Leopold would rather read Poe than play at the children’s party. Leopold offers his oddly behaving father a pill; his mother, Roweena, is the hostess of the party. They live in an old orphanage, and the house is said to be cursed. Alicia, Roweena’s daughter, died here just last year, and she’ll be the focus of tonight’s seance.
Mrs. Joyce Reynolds arrives. She has many titles, but she prefers “Medium.” She knows Poirot, who says he is retired, but Reynolds knows he is there to debunk her. He welcomes the challenge and says he hopes he’s wrong, but he’s sure he isn’t. Just then, a huge chandelier crashes to the ground in the next room.
Poirot checks out Alicia’s room and her pet parrot, who hasn’t spoken since Alicia died. Reynolds says she is listening, and there’s “so much pain here.”
They get set up for the seance, and instead of a crystal ball, Reynolds pulls out a typewriter. Even little Leopold thinks she’s a fake. She begins and says the house is “filled with the souls of the dead.” The typewriter works on its own. Well, enough of that, Poirot immediately proves that she’s a fake. Just then, Reynolds goes into a fit and channels Alicia. She says Alicia didn’t commit suicide, “You killed me!” It’s all very dramatic.
Ariadne and Poirot talk about the reality, or not, of what they just saw. Dr. Ferrier checks out Reynolds, and she’s fine. She plans to come back tomorrow for another sitting. Poirot has words with Reynolds; he still doesn’t believe she’s legit.
Someone comes out of nowhere and tries to drown Poirot in an apple-bobbing bowl. He thinks someone was trying to kill Reynolds since he was wearing her mask. Outside, Mrs. Reynolds is impaled on a statue; she’s clearly dead for real.
Everyone immediately starts accusing each other. Poirot locks all the doors so no one can leave. He says one of the people in the house tried to kill him and did kill Reynolds.
Poirot questions Roweena and then the maid, Olga Seminoff, who were both together. He talks to Dr. Ferrier about his past; he’s got serious PTSD from liberating a concentration camp. He treated Alicia, who was going mad and hearing voices. Poirot has “war neurosis” as well, something that Leopold explains; he’s a very creepy kid. He says he talks to dead people.
Poirot then questions Desdemona and Nicholas, Mrs. Reynolds’s assistants. She says Reynolds was a complete fraud, but he believed it all. Poirot starts hearing children’s voices, but no one else other than maybe-psychic Leopold hears them.
They all go down into the dungeons beneath the house. All manner of craziness ensues, and Dr. Ferriera goes berserk, attacking Maxime. Maxime was engaged to Alicia, but he broke it off for some reason. He blames Alicia’s mother, Roweena, who hates him.
Poirot then questions his own bodyguard, Portfoglio, who used to be a policeman. He was the policeman on duty when Alicia was found dead. Poirot thinks that Portfoglio was working with Ariadne and Mrs. Reynolds to discredit him. This was all to make him believe the impossible and restore her writing career. Ariadne admits it, and she’s not really very nice. She does deny killing Reynolds.
There’s a yell, and they all run into the next room, where Dr. Ferriera is dead, stabbed in the back. He died in a locked room, so how did it happen? Poirot calls them all together and explains that the murderer is… Roweena. He’s been seeing things due to drugged honey in his tea. She’d been poisoning Alicia’s tea. She didn’t drown in the canal; she overdosed on the poison, and Roweena dumped her body in the canal.
Also, he explains that someone has been blackmailing Roweena about the poison. It was Dr. Ferreira and Mrs. Reynolds. She killed them both, actually coercing the doctor to stab himself by leaning into a big knife braced against the wall.
Roweena locks them all out and runs upstairs to the roof. Poirot chases her, but Alicia’s ghost grabs her and pulls her off the roof. Or does it?
In the morning, the police cart away all the bodies. Poirot forgives Portfoglio. Olga adopts Leopold. It turns out that little Leopold was the blackmailer all along, not Reynolds or the boy’s father. He has quite a bit of money from that and gives Desdemona and Nicholas the money to move to America. Poirot and Ariadne talk about the things he saw… were they all his imagination? He’s not so sure anymore.
Poirot goes home and starts accepting cases again…
Commentary
Venice looks like a very damp place in this film.
Is there a supernatural explanation, or is it all a Scooby-Doo mystery, with a real murderer hiding behind ghosts? It’s filmed as a supernatural horror, but it’s Poirot, so you can’t be sure which way it will go until the end.
It’s notably bereft of the huge star-studded cast of the previous Poirot films, with only a handful of recognizable faces. This is Tina Fey’s first non-comedic role, and she does fine with it. Michelle Yeoh isn’t onscreen for long, but she’s suitably weird.
The previous Poirot films were typical murder mysteries, and so was this one, but it’s framed as a horror story, has a lot of the usual tropes, and is filmed like a haunted house story. We’re led to believe that there are ghosts all throughout the house.
It’s got a big budget, it looks great, and the cast is all very good.