Now here's something BQ rarely encounters.......a movie that manages to greatly improve upon and surpass the book it's based on.
No surprise to see why.......director-star Kenneth Branagh and his screenwriter Michael Green extracted only a few story elements from Agatha Christie's 1969 Hercule Poirot mystery 'Hallowe'en Party'.
Both films feature a Halloween party, a pivotal apple-bobbing scene. a child's tragic, suspicious death. and the character of Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer who lures Poirot into taking on a baffling new case. Beyond that, the book and film look they come from separate planets.....
Hallowe'en Party (1969)
Let's start with the creaky, old fashioned whodunit, with Hercule Poirot summoned by his old friend Ariadne to figure out who killed an obnoxious 13 year old girl. At a Halloween party filled with uppercrust mansion residents and their assorted spawn, somebody jammed the kid's face into the apple bobbin' barrel, drowning her.
Wow, what a party pooper this murderer is......and as Poirot interrogates the usual suspects, he comes to realize the dead girl maybe wasn't the first victim and most assuredly not the last.
The consensus at the time of book's release, which I agree with, judged it as by-the-numbers, connect-the-dots Christie, reading like she phoned it in while chatting at a tea party. (With writing the book only slightly distracting her....)
It had been some time since I sat down and cracked open a Christie and I quickly remembered why,.......cardboard characters barely sketched out and moved around like chess pieces to fit Dame Agatha's master plan. And never much emotion or interest in who lives or who dies.....either from the author or her characters.
"Hallowe'en Party' does rack up a rather high body count before Hercule cracks the case but Christie displays her overall indifference with the book's abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion.......she doesn't ever bother throwing the sight of the sputtering murderer yelling, "How dare you, accuse me of such an odious crime, you annoying little foreigner!"
But I did chuckle to myself at the author's depiction of children.....who are either ethereal wood sprites straight out of Never Never Land or horrid little beasts whom you hope will one day drown in Willy Wonka's chocolate river if Christie doesn't kill them off first.
It's a Halloween party strictly for fervent Agatha addicts only 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2) So now let us bid ta-ta to the cozy drawing rooms of Britain and head for murky, spooky watery byways of Venice.....
A Haunting In Venice (2023) I'm thinking Kenneth Branagh didn't much care for the book any more than I did......
Which would explain why his third sumptuous Hercule Poirot film is by far the most entertaining, even as it veers as far away from its source material as can possibly get.
Set in 1947 Venice, the film thankfully doesn't present the city with blatant, sundrenched CGI prettiness. Quite the opposite, in fact. This looks more like the grim, vaguely scary Venice of "Don't Look Now", where death and horror lurk around every canal and down deep in the the lagoon.
More than ever, Branagh's Poirot assumes the gravitas of a weary soul who's witnessed too much of the worst of humanity. But in the middle of his reclusive retirement, whodunit author Ariadne (now changed to American wisecracker Tina Fey) drags him off to a kids Halloween party at an extremely haunted Palazzo.
The Palazzo's ghostly history is both gruesome and tragic, a vast forbidding place apparently teeming with the spirits of plague ridden children. The ghost lineup includes the child of its latest occupant, a wealthy widow (Kelly Reilly) and former movie star. She's hired a fake medium (Michelle Yeoh) to commune with the kid, who tumbled out of a window into the canal.
Which begs the question, did those child apparitions bedevil the girl enough to entice her into joining them? Hmmmm.........
Branagh takes a bold, genre-bending left turn into all out jump-scares here, breathing some frightening fresh air into the usual array of suspects, some of whom suffer shocking deaths at the hands of......somebody human? Something supernatural? (.....heh, he, heh, well that's for you and Poirot to find out, isn't it? Which of you can beat him to the solution faster, eh?)
The film gives its talented cast plenty of dark subtext to chew on, with their characters still struggling with still fresh memories of the torments they experienced in World War 2. So much of the haunting that transpires comes as much from real life horrors as it does from otherworldly threats.
And here's what impressed me the most......the film's clever balancing of all the traditional Agatha Christie tropes with that sense of overpowering dread that you'd expect from any worthy horror film. Mystery mavens can revel in the climactic stunning reveals, while those who love a good scare won't come away disappointed either.
Looking to put yourself in the mood for the upcoming Halloween season? Here's the first treat to drop into your big bag 'o candy......4 stars (****). Happy Halloween.....and Boo!
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