I saw so many ads for this movie while it was in theaters and i was obsessed with seeing it! I love Ghost stories, horror movies, and Agatha Christie, so this seemed to be the perfect combo of all 3 of those things! Agatha Christie mysteries are still great to read even now, years after her death. I'vebeen obsessed with her books ever since I read "And Then There Were None" when i was 10 years old. i saw the movie back then too, and it was great. It had that perfect twist ending that Agatha Christie was known for, and 10 year old me ate it up. I still remember my excitement when I got to the end of that book and read the twist. I really hope this movie lives up to the hype built for me by the commercials. The trailer was full of jump scares, which are crude but effective (I'm easily startled so it's not hard to make me jump) but I hope this movie has more to offer than just jump scares. I guess we'll see what happens.
In this movie, famous detective Hercule Poirot is retired and living in self-imposed exile in Venice, Italy. I suppose if you have to live in exile, Venice is the place to do it. A colleague of his comes to him one day asking for his help. You see, she is a mystery novelist, and she is also a skeptic, but she has seen something she can't explain; a woman who claims to be able to speak to ghosts, and while typically such a person would be labeled a charlatan or a fake, this one appears to be the real deal. Such a thing cannot be in Poirot's easily ordered world, so his friend Ariadne Oliver (played by Tina Fey) enlists his help to either discredit the woman or announce that what she says is true, she really can communicate with the dead. Poirot initially demurres, of course, but eventually he relents and agrees to go, expecting only to discredit the woman (played by Michelle Yeoh). Things get complicated, however, when a very real murder occurs during the supposedly fake seance. Poirot must investigate the murder and figure out what is going on and who has committed the murder before it's too late.
The problem with the great Hercule Poirot, as summed up well by Ariadne Oliver in this very movie, is that he's not just a man, he's an ego, and a big, giant one at that. He has stunning powers of observation, which he uses to solve mysteries in a way that no one else can quite do, and this power makes him arrogant. He's so sure of his superior intellect that when something happens, as it does in this movie, to shake his belief in his own genius, it throws him for a loop. He spends a lot of time fumbling throughout this movie, trying to find his footing and solve the mystery in front of him. Once it becomes clear WHY he's struggling so much, he's on firmer ground and he can use his great powers of observation to solve the mystery, but it takes him awhile to get there. This movie isn't bad, per se, it's just that Poirot tends to act as though other people are simply pawns in his game, and the same thing happens here that happens in all his movies: he solves the murder and gives a big speech explaining how smart he is. It would seem that he's wrong about the existence of ghosts; he's sure they don't exist but it certainly seems like one shows up in the end of the movie, and the little boy never wavers in his belief in ghosts, just as he insists that the fortune teller is indeed a fake, but not because ghosts don't exist, just because she lies about being able to see them. It's Poiro's ego that stands out most plainly in this movie, and that takes a lot of fun out of trying to figure out the mystery. Which is a shame, because this movie could have been a lot of fun if it featured someone like Miss Marple, who is just as observant and intelligent as Poirot is, without the huge ego the size of Rhode Island. Alas, we have to put up with Poirot in this movie, and that sucks all the fun out of it for me.
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