A Haunting In Venice: well firstly let’s start off with the trailers shall we?

Yeah this one is a unique film…..it’s a kind of a horror movie yet not….it’s the third installment of the Agatha Christy novels, with the famous detective Hercule Poirot…who still has that goofy-looking mustache from

Murder on The Orient Express

And Death On The Nial

Yes, This is the third installment from those previous 2 films…..so let’s get into this review shall we?

So in this movie, Hercule Poirot (played by Kenneth Branagh) has retired and now living to stay low-key…..also he has a bodyguard named Vitale Portfogilo (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) anyway after waking up from a nightmare of birds being attacked by a Crow, Hercule wakes up nervous….oh also I love the opening it’s of the lake of Italy just the calm lake of Italy with the title of the movie popping up….anyways so it turns out even when retired people still try to request him to help them out but he won’t be accepting any new cases….but this book author named Ariadne Oliver (played by Tina Fey) comes to recruit him to join her on Halloween night here on Venice to join a Halloween party where a Medium is gonna be at to do a seance…she wants him to prove that this medium is a fraud….

So she has him join her at the party as a friend, yeah she calls them a friend…..Anyway here’s a piece of the soundtrack it’s pure gorgeous and eeire, enjoy

So this music plays over the both of them being taken to the haunted house on 2 boats being paddled by men wearing black robes and a white pale beak like mask….ohhh eerie…..so they get to the so called haunted house, reason it’s haunted is because the family who owns the house has lost there daughter years ago….she was pushed out of her balcony somehow, she was found in the river underneath the house….it was a tragedy…..so after the lods have there fun at the party, which includes apples in a bucket…..that old trick, the medium shows up with her second in command named Desdemona (played by Emma Laird) anyways the medium comes in dressed up wearing a black robe and hood with a porcelain mask, eeire…..so they do the seance upstairs where the girl died because she says i feel alot of ghosts here even ur daughter….who ahe says to the woman named Rowena Drake (played by Kelly Reilly) she’s the mother who owns the house…….

But not for long because apparently get this she is having trouble paying to keep this house…..well I do wonder were all that money is going especially since she and her husband are rich? Yeah even Hercule Poirot has that same thought….yeah yall keep that thought for later…

Also Hercule Poirot doesn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife…..as he tells the medium, I’m sorry I’d love to belive there’s a God and a afterlife, but with all I’ve seen…the countless murders, evil people ect I have come to the conclusion no there’s no God, no heaven or hell…….I mean he does have a fair point, but then weird thing happens the chandelier falls all a sudden out of nowhere…..dunnn dunn dunnn

Anyways for now seance time…..unfortunately guess who shows up, Maxime Gerrard (played by Kyle Allen) he’s a rich snobby man who was the ex of the recently deceased girl who jumped out of her balcony…..heck he got remarried not to long after she died, so the mother is upset with him about that including the dad who btw is a war veteran who suffers from intense maniac compulsive movements and PTSD…..thats depressing, then u got his son who acts more like an adult….doesn’t partake in parties, talks to dead people, wait huh what? And oh yeah reads Edger Allen Poe books….which is weird for a 9 year old kid to be reading…also he helps take care of his dad, yeah he is basically being the parent…..

Also, there’s the housemaid named Olga (played by Camille Cottin) she used to be a nun, but she isn’t fully one anymore…..the reason I bring her up is that she’s important heck she thinks it’s bad of the medium to be here to be doing a seance bothering the parents about their deceased loved one…yeah I agree that is disgusting…..anyways so the seance starts which is the medium sitting in a chair with 4 tables surrounding her, with a typewriter that writes out the words from a ghost speaking to her….anyways long story short Hercule Poirot figures out this is all a fake because he suspects there’s another person in the room, so happens there is a guy up the chimney a guy who’s brothers with Desdemona…..he’s holding a machine that interferes with metal so he can use it to have the typewriter type whatever letter he wants it to…..

But then the medium gets possessed by the ghosts and Rowena’s daughter speaks through her which the ghost says I was murdered…..unfortunately, the ghost doesn’t say who murdered her…..so seance over, does this make Hercule Poirot a believer? Hell no, instead he talks to the medium in the kitchen which she says hopefully tomorrow the ghost will say who murdered her and he says how convenient because it’s a fake…….anyways she puts on her hood and mask onto Hercule Poirot and leaves, he goes and decides to enjoy himself by doing the apple in water bucket thing….as soon as he does that someone comes up behind him and tries drowning him, uh oh….

So the plot thickens as soon as the medium is found dead, impaled through the top of a statues hand…..ahhhhhhh, so now detective Hercule Poirot has to be on the case rather he likes it or not…..so he is given some tea by Rowena, she gives him tea with a special honey of hers she made herself…….anyways so after that he decides to go lock everyone in the building and says no one leaves until this murder is solved……ohhh finally he’s back…..

So he interrogates each guest individually, after figuring out that his author friend Ariadne didn’t murder the medium…he has her work with him which gets her excited, anyways so each time he interrogates someone he goes heads to the upstairs restroom for a breather because he’s not totally feeling himself for some reason……so then they interrogate Rowena, they ask her what’s up on the roof? She takes them up there where it’s pouring rain….guess what’s up there? A garden….yeah she has her own garden because she wanted to grow her own honey, hey nothing wrong with having Ur own garden…..she says my daughter always joked about how come we need to make our own honey when we could just buy a jar of it…..hmm,

Yeah keep that in mind for later, anyways so aftwr interrogating each person there, he also sees the ghost of the dead girl in the mirror behind him in the restroom, which startles him….ohhhhhhh is there ghosts here or not? Well let’s leave that one up to the imagination for now….whats important is the boy comes up to Hercule Poirot who’s leaving the restroom, Poirot asks the boy some questions, and the boy willingly answers he also says he talks to dead people….he’s friends with them, ok this kid is bizarre……

Anyways things get messy when Hercule Poirot and the book author find out that the mediums right hand woman and the guy are siblings and they want to go to uhhh I believe England…..he believes they might have murdered the medium to gain her money, granted the right hand woman doesn’t help by uhh running away….but luckily they tie both them up to 2 chairs which they put onto a table for some reason…….then some loud noise happens so our main character leave the 2 of them in that room alone, Poirot says the noise is coming from the basement which the mother says we don’t have a basement…..dunn dun dunn

So then he sees a ghost kid run off into thr corridors, he follows along which leads to a painting of a hallway which he breaks down revealing a basement behind the painting…..uhhhhhh that’s spooky so Hercule Poirot and his bodyguard head on down there alone while the others stay up there because and I quote I’m not going down there…..yeah I don’t blame them….so uh guess what they both find down there? The source of the noise it’s a log of wood banging against the Bars from the river….ah huh, also they find a child skeleton down there with bugs around it…..ewww….

Also while that happens both the Doctor and Maxime Gerrard start fist fighting each other….as the dad doctor guy is about to kill Gerrard his kid talks him out of it and takes him to lay down in room and give him his meds so he can rest, anyways as they leave the room to let him rest he grabs Hercules arm and says u saw it too didn’t u? Were the same u and i….

Anyway, they leave the room, and the wife hands Hercule the only key to that room to make sure no one can enter the room…..there’s no way in or out of it…..anyways so Hercule and the author interrogates Maxime who’s in the kitchen, he accidentally cuts himself with a knife…the author says put honey on the wound it helps, so he puts some honey on his wound and he says hm doesn’t smell like normal honey I cannot put my finger on it…..anyways Hercule gets him to tell them why he showed up there, turns out he left his ex girlfriend because he felt he wasn’t good enough for her…he knew he was spoiled and that would ruin there relationship….understandable, anyways when he realized what he done, and tired to rekindle they’re relationship….his ex girlfriend fell ill and the mother wouldn’t allow him to come see her for some reason….

Anyways so as there talking and Hercule Poirot looks at the guys invitation he got, Hercule starts feeling dizzy so the book author takes him into a room to sit down to catch his breath, but then he calls In his bodyguard asks him for a seat but then he says it’s for the bodyguard…then he now interrogates both them….he asks the bodyguard where he worked before, turns out he’s an ex-cop….

He also realizes that the book author and his own bodyguard set him up they made sure he’d come here so they can try to frighten the greatest Hercule Poirot……they admit they did do that and the book author says u cannot blame me for doing that I’m a news reporter a book author…which Hercule says I thought we were friends? Which she then scoffs and says remember u don’t have any friends u made that clear…..

Anyways before more arguing can continue the right hand woman of the medium comes running in asking for the key, they all run to that room…try getting the father’s attention but no sound so Hercule opens the door and they see in the corner the father slunched over with a sword in his back…..dun dun dunn, how is this possible? There’s no other way into that room? Don’t worry all is about to be revealed because now Hercule Poirot has about enough evidence to close this case once and for all….

So he then goes up to the girls room, where he sees a little girl…he says u been hiding this whole time? Ur ok nothing to be scared of ur not in trouble….then the book author comes up and says who u talking to which he turns around and the girl has vanished? Ohhhhh, so he sends his so called friend back down and he enters the room to find any evidence…..he ends up looking under the bed he finds a half cut Pic of Maxime Gerrard which lines up with the half cut picture of her he still holds onto…..

So he gathers the guests down at the boat dock area which is located under the house, he says tonight there was an attempt on my life, and there were 3 murders in this house…the murder of the medium, the murder of the father and the murder of that girl who jumped out her balcony several years ago…..but who done it? That’s the question…….ohhhh now it’s time to find out….

Take a wild guess who the killer is? The killer is Rowena, turns out her daughter didn’t fall ill no the mother poisoned her because she loved her to much to the point she just wanted to take care of her daughter, not let her run off away from her…wow what a selfish mother…..she murdered the medium because she knew that the mother murdered her own daughter, so she wanted to get rid of the medium to hide that info…..when she realized she accidentally attacked Hercule she stopped and went to find the medium which she killed by impaling her onto a statue….well that explains why Hercule was attacked…

Also he knows she poisoned her daughter because the poison came from the strange honey, that he was given with his tea earlier….yeah he was poisoned but not enough to kill him just enough to make him hallucinate……which explains the ghost encounters then…..wellllll, and he finally also realizes why the mother made her own honey on the roof it’s so that she would poison her own daughter, again such a good mother huh?

And as for why she killed her husband? Well she started getting blackmail which is of someone telling her I know you killed your daughter, pay me so and so money to shut me up….she assumed it was her dunce of a husband so she started paying off her blackmailer…..which explains where all the money been going to, also explains why she’s having trouble paying to keep the house a lift……so she called him up on the phone in that room, told him if he doesn’t kill himself she’ll kill his son…..what a shitty mother, and he does what she says, he takes the sword off the Statue and impales himself through the back against a wall….making it look like something supernatural attacked him….but nope nothing supernatural just a manipulative mother…

Now there’s a little more, so one night the mother went to bed to catch some sleep while her maid Olga watched an eye on the daughter, she saw the daughter was in pain so she gave her tea, put extra honey in it….that night later the mother comes back sees her daughter died, so she made it look like a legend of a ghost killed her daughter…she took a garden rake scratched her back and threw her off the side of the balcony…..creating this urban legend that the children touch is what got to her and killed her…..once again what an awful mother

So now everyone turns on Rowena, even Maxime he says u killed her how could u? And her son says u killed dad? Yeah do turn on her….she of course starts crying and saying no I loved her but yall didn’t then she exists closes and locks the door on them so now Hercule has to find another way to her while she makes her way up to the roof…..anyways Hercule makes it up to the roof where he sees Rowena holding a garden tool and she says I never meant to hurt her as she’s backing away from him….then off behind her we see lightning flash and a glimpse of her daughter’s ghost…..ummmm, then we see thr ghost again this time closer to her…..the mother turns around panics and falls off the ledge into the water where she dies…..

Ummmmm so did Hercule see a ghost or was he hallucinating? Actually, that’s what I like about this film, it leaves it open for interpretation….so we can decide if either there’s a supernatural presence afoot or if he’s hallucinating…..so take that as u will, u decide…..anyways film ends with our characters getting onto individual boats heading out, a cop boat takes the dead bodies away……before Olga and the kid leave on there boat Hercule confronts the kid he found out that the kid left the black mail letters to his mother which is true he did, he found it out that she killed her own daughter, wow what a smart kid so since he has tons of money Hercule gives them an idea of how to use it…

So they head out on the boat and tell the right-hand woman and her brother to come with them and that they will help pay for them too get to where they want to go….so they thank them, now all who’s left to leave is Hercule and the book author, he tells her don’t bring my name up again in ur stories and she says don’t worry I never want to hear ur name again….she says that because thanks to him she’s now done for, I guess he reported her in….which is good on him…

Anyway she can tell he saw something in that house she says u did see something didn’t u? And he said I’ve come to learn u have to burry ur ghosts rather if there real or not……then they head out on there boat, then we cut to Hercule going back to his retirement house where the same guy from earlier decides to follow him inside his house, he badly wants Hercule to figure out if his family is cursed since his brother died in a similar fashion as a couple of his family members….so he goes up to the roof to talk to Hercule, who is already reading the guys case file he tells him he isn’t cursed and to sit down we will discuss about it….

That’s where the film ends…..the end, overall I actually really liked this movie, this might be my favorite out of the 3 adaptations of the Agatha Christy novels…..I didn’t care about Murder on The Orient Express And I’ve not watched Death On The Nial….I have no interest in doing so, but this film really caught my interest…..so I’ll give this film a solid 10/10 I highly recommend it