The year is 1947 and our hero, Hercule Poirot, has retired to Venice. His friend, mystery writer Ariadne Oliver has dragged him to a séance in hopes that he can unmask the medium Mrs. Reynolds as a fraud, but there are murderous spirits about in “A Haunting in Venice.”

For those of us who find Kenneth Branagh not the ideal Poirot, you may struggle to forget David Suchet’s embodiment of Agatha Christie’s fictional Belgian detective for the ITV series “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” from 1989 to 2013. Poirot appeared in 33 novels (and two plays) and 51 short stories between 1920 and 1975.

Suchet is, at 5-foot-6 and still tall for Poirot, but he is egg-shaped as Poirot is described. According to IMDb, Branagh is almost 5-foot-10.

• Kenneth Branagh’s “Murder on the Orient Express” review
• Kenneth’s Branagh’s “Death on the Nile” review

Poirot is a short man (barely 5-foot-4 and portly) in a world that has a bias toward tall men. Short people develop different strategies that would be interpreted differently if deployed by an average to tall person.

That objection aside and any issues with that double ended mustache, this film is one interesting angles. This isn’t the Venice of happy romance or even doomed lovers. This is the Venice that will give way to a Halloween party for orphans gone wrong.

Despite his retirement, Poirot is still famous enough that people line up each morning, pleading for him to take on their murder mysteries. He has to employ a full-time bodyguard. An old friend who claims to have made him famous by fashioning him into a fictional character for her novels arrives. Her enticement is not a murder, but a mystery.

According to the brash American author, Adriane Oliver (Tina Fey), “I’ve look at it from every which way. I’m the smartest person I ever met, and I can’t figure it out, so I came to the second.”

Poirot replies, “You are up to something my friend.”

Oliver replies, “I’ve seen a million of these so-called psychics, each one a fake….Come with me to a seance. Spot the con I can’t.”

Based on the novel, “Hallowe’en Party,” the action has been transported from England to Venice. Oliver explains that the tradition of Halloween has been transported to Italy for the sake of orphan children. Hosting the party at a decaying palazzo, is a grieving mother, Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). Her daughter, Alicia Drake (Rowan Robinson), is the soul to be contacted. But there are rumored to be restless souls from the past in the house: children who were left to die by heartless doctors and nurses as explained in a puppet show for the children (David Menkin as the Puppet Show MC).

The medium, Mrs. Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), immediately knows Poirot is a skeptic, saying, “Detective, you are here to discredit me, but I can talk to the dead.”

Poirot has been through two world wars and numerous investigations. His faith in a God has been compromised by “the bitter evil of human indifference.” Poirot is, like Rowena, haunted by the past, something that has been set up in the previous films.

The suspects are: Dr. Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) who seems suffering from PTSD, his Ferrier’s young son Leopold (Jude Hill) who seems precociously mature having been forced to be his father’s caretaker, retired opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly), Rowena’s assistants Nicholas Holland (Ali Khan) and Desdemona Holland (Emma Laird), the housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin) who was the only person willing to work in this haunted palazzo, Maxime Gerard (Kyle Allen) is the chef who was engaged to Alicia and even Poirot’s body guard, Vitale Portfolio (Riccardo Scarmacio) is not above suspicion. Then there’s also Oliver and her true motivations. That’s more than six suspects, but some of them will be eliminated from life and crossed off the list of suspects. There will be three murders and six suspects and even the dead may be involved in some dubious activities before their demise.

Michael Green’s screenplay doesn’t keep true Christie’s novel. There will be apple bobbing, but in the novel Joyce Reynolds is a 13-year-old girl–not a glamorous but middle-aged medium, and Joyce is murdered after noting that when she was younger, she witnessed a murder, only now realizing what she had seen. Olga Seminoff was not a housekeeper, but an au pair. Leslie Ferrier is not a doctor, but a legal clerk. Other characters from the novel do not appear at all.

In his third Poirot outing, Branagh gives us a dark and stormy night. As director, he and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos give us extreme angles in the set up, perhaps to both put us off-balance and to visually force us to appreciate the different visual angles of life in a city which has canals instead of roads. There’s a feeling of centuries of life and recent neglect in the palazzo, which makes for a good haunting.

• Kenneth Branagh’s “Murder on the Orient Express” review
• Kenneth’s Branagh’s “Death on the Nile” review

In the end, of course, Poirot will figure out the mysteries and the murders.  And he will have an answer to his question of faith.

“A Haunting in Venice” isn’t top-notch Poirot, but it features an engaging cast with Branagh as a poignantly personally haunted detective and Yeoh as a mysterious medium whose presence is felt even after her murder. There’s something delightful in this casual diversity. There’s no attempt to explain how someone of Yeoh’s ethnicity has become a Mrs. Reynolds at all. The same holds true for the lesser known Ali Khan’s character although I’m not sure of Khan’s ethnicity as he is simply listed as English in IMDb (15 September 2023).

“A Haunting in Venice” was released 15 September 2023 in the US and on 14 September 2023 in Singapore and on 13 September 2023 in South Korea. Currently in theaters only.