A Haunting in Venice was truly something stunning, strange, and harrowing, featuring a spine-tingling sense of atmosphere and elevating suspense and unease throughout this claustrophobic mystery! Branagh is at his best, alongside a stellar ensemble. It is also by far the grandest of the series. The visuals, camerawork, and score are eerily chilling!

Inspired by the novel Hallowe’en Party and directed by and starring Oscar winner Kenneth Branagh as famed detective Hercule Poirot, A Haunting in Venice is set in eerie, post-World War II Venice on All Hallows’ Eve and is a terrifying mystery featuring the return of the celebrated sleuth, Hercule Poirot. Now retired and living in self-imposed exile in the world’s most glamorous city, Poirot reluctantly attends a séance at a decaying, haunted palazzo. When one of the guests is murdered, the detective is thrust into a sinister world of shadows and secrets.

The film is an ingenious, twisty, and surprisingly scary murder mystery. Stark and Spooky, Branagh’s third Poirot movie, successfully adopts a whole new atmosphere, It’s also all the better for adapting a lesser-known story, providing freshness and unpredictability. Throughout, the film becomes edgier and more haunting; it’s a tense, thoughtful, and satisfying mystery.

I find murder mystery movies to be solely entertaining, and I especially love, as the viewer, to watch out for clues and try my best to piece together who the killer was before the reveal and explanation. Agatha Christie's stories are timeless classics, and Branagh has now adapted three for the screen, which certainly tells me he knows what he’s doing. I loved seeing Poirot methodically piece together the killer’s motives and tie everything together while his sanity is questioned by these supernatural spectres. I would certainly love to see him revisit Christie’s world with another Poirot mystery to solve.