There is a reason most people don’t really know Agatha Christie’s Hallowe'en Party. It’s not one of her best books. Reading it you never feel that it was a finished story, but more like a draft she was fighting with. I think the only adaptions were the David Suchet complete run of Hercule Poirot stories on film and the most recent big screen Kenneth Branaugh film A HAUNTING IN VENICE.
To be honest I never heard of the novel until the Branaugh version. I read it in anticipation of the feature and I didn’t like it much. Still the trailers for the film looked spooky and the thought of a Poirot “horror” story was promising.
The film is set in Venice just after the Second World War Poirot (Branaugh) is a broken man, given up on cases and is just hiding in a villa. When his friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey who will make you forget she’s a comedy queen) comes to see him she insists he go with her to a Halloween Party and séance. Poirot is certain it will all be fakery, Oliver is not so certain. As the children’s party ends and the adult séance take places, weird things begin to happen. “Ghosts" appear and even the great detective is rocked to his very core by things he can’t explain.
An adult horror thriller was not what I expected from an Agatha Christie film, but some how Branaugh made something wonderfully unique. While there are several murders along the way, this is less a murder mystery and more an exploration to the psychic damage experienced by those who survived war. There may not (or there may) be ghosts but the trauma suffered makes them feel real.
This is a dark and oppressive film. It’s a film that crushes your soul just by watching it. I was half way into the film and I did not want to be in the head space that the film was putting me in. This is a true horror film, where the monsters are us. In its way it maybe one of the best horror films of the last decade.
The problem is that while Branaugh and his crew have made a bleak dark boogeyman of a film, the central mystery isn’t very good. Poirot fumbles his way through things and jumps to conclusions more than he does in most of Christies other mysteries. For me, the film, like the book, is not a satisfying mystery. It’s not fatal to the film, but it makes what is a great thriller just good over all.
Weak mystery aside, this film kicks ass and will make your knuckles go white.
Recommended
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