A Haunting in Venice

Celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot, now retired and living in self-imposed exile in Venice, reluctantly attends a Halloween 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 darkest entry in Branagh's Poirot series lands as a mixed but mostly watchable genre hybrid — part whodunit, part ghost story — with Haris Zambarloukos's cinematography and a Venetian Gothic setting doing much of the heavy lifting. Critics split sharply on whether the horror atmosphere and emotional weight around postwar grief give the film genuine depth, or whether thin character development and sluggish pacing drain it of life. The all-star cast drew both praise and complaints, with some finding the ensemble pleasingly committed and others arguing that too many actors were left with nothing to do.