Brief Story Line
Set in 1947 in Venice, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) had decided to retire from solving cases and had a personal bodyguard named Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio - John Wick: Chapter 2, The Ruthless etc). But when Poirot's old friend the famous novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey - Only Murders in the Building TV series, Sisters etc) convinced him to attend a séance, he could not resist it. So on Halloween night, the three of them went to the house of former opera singer Rowena (Kelly Reilly - 10x10, Flight etc) where it would be held.
Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh - American Born Chinese TV series, Last Christmas etc) the medium, came that night to the house with her assistant Desdemona (Emma Laird - Mayor of Kingstown TV series etc). The séance was attended also by Rowena's housekeeper Mrs. Seminoff (Camille Cottin - Call My Agent! TV series etc), the family doctor Ferrier (Jamie Dornan - Heart of Stone, The Tourist TV series etc) with his young son Leopold (Jude Hill - Belfast etc) and Rowena's deceased daughter's ex fiancee Maxime (Kyle Allen - Rosaline etc).
However, one of the guests was later found dead and Poirot decided to lock everyone in the house and try to find the murderer. So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
To be honest, when I saw the trailer to this movie more than a month ago, I was surprised by the tone that looked scary like it was a horror film instead of mystery kind. So I made sure that my wife was OK with seeing this one in the cinema as she is not a fan of horror movie. Since she was quite confident, we went ahead and see it in the cinema that we knew for sure it would not be too dark on the screen. And we were happy that we did it cause the film was almost entirely set at night in a very old dark house which would be difficult to see had the studio's screen not that bright.
Like in previous movies (this was the third one which I am not sure yet if there is going to be another later), the formula was also similar where a murder occurred and Poirot had to interview all the people and deduce who did it. This time though, there was an additional horrifying element which felt supernatural and made it a bit scary. However, it was not so much that made it become a complete horror movie.
The factor that made us always excited seeing such film was how we had to try to guess who the culprit was. There were clues (few were quite obvious) that we could use to help us find out. Somewhere in the middle, my wife already had a guess of the murderer while I came to the same conclusion only a bit later. Both of us guessed few things right but the revealing done by Poirot was always the part that we loved as it would explain things that we were not able to do.
Once again Kenneth Branagh managed to direct the movie nicely with a wonderful story telling. The movie was based on the novel titled Hallowe'en Party which somehow I completely forgotten ever read. And surprisingly after reading more on the general plot of that novel, apparently there were some changes made in here which made me in awe of the writing. The screenplay was by Michael Green who co-wrote some successful films like Logan, Jungle Cruise and few others, including Murder on Orient Express which he wrote by himself. The cinematography was amazing too with the 1940s setting looked realistic and made us wanted to see Venice for ourselves.
The cast in general were good enough to us in their roles. Aside from those names I mentioned above, there were also the appearance of Amir El-Masry (Limbo, Industry TV series etc) and Ali Khan as a quite important character. I was also surprised by the acting of young Jude Hill who was convincing as the mature kid of his age and eerie at the same time. I also read that some critics praised the cast performance, though few of them were quite critical. Btw, the film had a duration of 103 minutes and did not have any mid or post end credit scene.
Overall this was an entertaining whodunit movie for me and my wife. Both of us liked what we experienced of guessing the killer and the joy of watching Poirot at work when he revealed the actual murderer and how it was done. The horror element here did not make it a completely scary movie but it did make it a bit different from the previous films and made it more enjoyable too. So if you are like us who have not seen this movie yet till now, you could go and do it before it's completely gone from the cinemas, as it would be fun.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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