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A Haunting In Venice: an Agatha Christie murder case with Gothic horror and supernatural elements that all turn pretty camp.
Agatha Christie frequently used the paranormal to create an air of unpredictability. We, the spectator and the cast of characters, are only given vague details about a murder.
In the end, this uncertainty relates to a fear of dying. Is there anything more evil, perilous, and paranormal at work here? In order to create these ominous undertones, witches, seances, and hauntings frequently made an appearance in Christie’s literature.
The Sittaford Mystery involves a staged séance. In the movie Sleeping Murder, a ghost is said to haunt a home. In Murder is Easy, Endless Night, and The Pale Horse, witchcraft is a red herring.
While the supernatural components add to the story’s ambiance, the “whodunit” logic required that these perhaps supernatural parts be explained away as the actions of a criminal seeking to cover up their tracks.
Accepting Gothic (A Haunting in Venice)
Christie adaptations have a long tradition of incorporating Gothic and horror motifs.
All of Sarah Phelps’ BBC adaptations are more sinister than the original works. The witches in The Pale Horse actually possess supernatural abilities, while Ordeal by Innocence embraces numerous Gothic tropes, such as the lonely, gloomy, and frightful mansion. while Then There Were None features ghostly visions.
The murder mystery is more of a slasher in Ils Etaient Dix, the French television rendition of And Then There Were None. Many early Christie adaptations, like the 1947 television play Three Blind Mice, contained aural and visual characteristics connected to the macabre, as Mark Aldridge points out in Agatha Christie on Screen.
The New York Times praised René Clair’s 1945 rendition of And Then There Were None, noting that it is “perfect for black cats and Hallowe’en goblins” and has “humor with a light macabre touch.”
Having a Ghost in Venice (A Haunting in Venice)
A Haunting In Venice- Kenneth Branagh carries on this trend of horror-infused Christie adaptations in A Haunting in Venice. Following Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, both of which got mixed reviews from critics and Christie devotees, this is his third adaptation of Christie’s novels.
Branagh has lightly adapted Christie’s 1969 novel A Hallowe’en Party for this appearance as Hercule Poirot.
Ariadne Oliver, a fictional mystery writer who served as a humorous stand-in for Christie, calls Poirot in the first book and asks him to travel to a small village where a kid had been murdered at a Halloween party. No one had ever believed the young girl who had claimed to have seen a murder. She is discovered dead after the celebration is done after drowning while bobbing for apples.
By selecting a lesser-known Christie book, Branagh avoids the pressure that comes with adapting a well-known classic. Oliver (Tina Fey) asks the retiring Poirot to attend a séance at a great ancient Palazzo in Venice, where Branagh moves this story. Oliver requests that Poirot look into the legitimacy of the renowned medium Joyce Reynolds (a stunning Michelle Yeoh), rather than a murder.
A Haunting In Venice- The mystery’s action is framed by the whodunit device known as the closed circle, in which a group of suspects is cut off from the outside world and it is seemingly impossible for anybody to enter or exit the area. Poirot locks everyone inside the Palazzo during a horrible storm that occurs the night of the séance in order to investigate the crime.
The primary mystery has a wonderful Gothic tinge thanks to the Palazzo’s dark background. The Palazzo, now owned by retired opera soprano Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), formerly housed children who perished during the plague. Rowena conducts a séance at a gathering for abandoned kids to make touch with her recently departed daughter Alicia.
Because A Haunting In Venice is set in 1947 Venice rather than 1960s England, many of the characters are still scarred by the horrors of World War II, and as a result, all of the visitors are also haunted by their pasts.
The Palazzo’s many chambers serve as highly stylized interrogation rooms, where secrets are disclosed and charges are leveled, similar to many closed-circle mysteries. Branagh gives the movie a Gothic horror vibe to the point where the set design is pretty cheesy. When lightning illuminates a room briefly, ghostly images emerge in candlelight and looming shadows.
The music by Hildur Gunoadóttir does a good job of bringing these grim concepts to life. The cinematography of Haris Zambarloukos is breathtaking in crucial scenes where characters are dwarfed by the magnificent Venetian architecture. Other times, the audience is confused and perhaps distracted by tight framing, Dutch angles, and extreme high and low angles.
Leaping into the extraordinary (A Haunting in Venice)
The film is at its best when the narrative adopts the fantastic mode, which Tzvetan Todorov used to characterize the area where natural and supernatural phenomena coexist but cannot be categorically separated.
An intriguing setting for a whodunit, which is essentially about reasonable answers, is the fantastic. There is this hesitancy, both for Poirot and the audience. The Palazzo is said to be haunted. Can the supernatural exist in the realm of reason?
When the movie adopts Poirot’s viewpoint, this hesitation is effective. Although there are some cheap jump scares in this movie, the main cause of the uneasy feeling is the general air of unpredictability.
However, like with other whodunits, if the reveal isn’t particularly clever or thrilling, no amount of excellent atmosphere will be able to redeem a movie. Any viewer who pays attention will be able to figure out the film’s main puzzle, which has been significantly altered from the original text.
The climax comes as a bit of a letdown, like a theme park ride that ends too quickly, despite the fact that the movie is amusing.
Now playing in theatres is A Haunting in Venice. Watching A Haunted in Venice is an extremely suspenseful experience.