No amount of spooky jump-scares can save Kenneth Branagh’s latest Christie adaptation, which wastes its atmospheric setting and stellar castScreenwriter Michael Green and director-star Kenneth Branagh have coaxed another gold-effect egg from that plump goose which is the Agatha Christie estate.
Legendary moustachioed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, played by Branagh, is back for another ensemble outing with many biggish-to-big names phoning it in for the paycheck.
This movie appears to be trying for a tougher, nastier, horror-ish feel, perhaps to scoop up some of the younger scary-movie fanbase alongside the Werther’s Original demographic that normally turns out for this kind of thing.The timeline follows on from the previous Poirot case, Death on the Nile; the year is 1947, and Hercule Poirot is in genial retirement in Venice, where he employs ex-cop Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio) as his personal bodyguard.
But his friend, the bestselling American mystery author Ariadne…
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