Robb Del Casale

Some great performances, for sure, but just two things (well, 3) have always bothered me. I will only mention the first two. If the aliens were so advanced that they could move stealthily, even invisibly and communicate and navigate with sounds and signs, how could one of them not figure out a way to escape Ray (M. Night's) PANTRY? In the same vein, so advanced......but they don't like water (it is their Achilles heel. Why would they come to a planet that is 70% covered with WATER???????

Having always been an Agatha Christie fan, a mystery fan, a suspense fan, a whodunit fan and even a stylish-horror film fan, I was greatly anticipating “A Haunting in Venice” would check off the boxes in several of those categories. And with Kenneth Branagh at the helm, I expected it to be deftly done. I was wrong. The film tried to be too many of those things and achieved none of them. Consistently and annoyingly too dimly lit, you spend three-quarters of the film trying to discern what you are seeing, and causing this viewer to literally complain out loud “Why is it so dark?” Acting -wise, for some unexplicable reason Branagh, portraying Detective Hercule Poirot, and Tina Fey, portaying a writer, (though nothing about her characterization ever made you believe she was one )decided that an ego-driven one-up-man-ship would be their shared, and seemingly, sole motivation throughout the film. Consistently and only snarky, Fey looked completely outclassed and out of place in the film. There was zero on-screen chemistry between her and Branagh. I kept thinking throughout that Wynona Ryder’s quirkiness would have been perfect and Ryder so much more effective in Fey’s role. Sadly, Branagh, Fey, and almost every other actor in the film forgot that making the audience feel something, besides annoyance and distaste for them, is what drives an audience to care about what happens next. Nothing anyone, except what Michelle Yeoh brilliantly did (in too small of a role), caused me to feel any sympathy, empathy, fear, or advocacy for or against them. Combine that with Branagh’s directorial decision to annoyingly and unceasingly overuse hyper close-ups and a “climax” that was anything but climactic, and you are left with asking not “Whodunit?”,” but instead “When will this finally end?” Not surprisingly, even that was drawn out with two more scenes that left me wondering if the writer just couldn’t decide how to end this interminable mess. Save yourself the annoyance and watch an old Hitchcock film if you want to see a suspense film perfectly cast, acted and directed.