A Haunting in Venice ending explained: Who was the murderer?

❘ Updated: 2023-09-16T14:53:45

20th Century Studios

A Haunting in Venice’s ending is pretty well elaborated on within the film, for the most part. Still, if you were still left confused or want to annoy your fellow moviegoers by “guessing” the ending ahead of time, we’ve got you covered.

A Haunting in Venice marks the third occasion in which Kenneth Branagh has directed and starred in an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s works. Returning as the ornately mustachioed, gentleman detective Hercule Poirot, this time the mystery takes on a supernatural bent.

You may think it easy to deduce the events of A Haunting in Venice based on a prior read of Halowe’en Party, the novel that inspired it. Not so. The film has made a number of significant departures from the source material including the location and featured characters.

While some parts of A Haunting in Venice’s ending are relatively concrete, there’s some ambiguity regarding certain elements. So, who is the murderer in A Haunting in Venice? Is there really a supernatural presence in the palazzo? Let’s get into it, but first: SPOILER WARNING!

Synopsis

Who is the murderer?

Who is the blackmailer?

Is there a supernatural presence?

What happens in A Haunting in Venice?

Before we answer the burning questions from the film, we should go over a bit of context. A Haunting in Venice centers on the aforementioned detective Hercule Poitot (Keneth Branagh).

He’s dragged out of retirement by mystery novelist and Agatha Christie insert Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) who seeks his help to disprove the exploits of a seemingly legitimate medium (Michelle Yeoh). To do this, he attends a Séance hosted by altruistic ex-opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) who wishes to commune with her deceased daughter.

After the sinister medium reveals that Drake’s daughter didn’t commit suicide and was in fact murdered, guests of the séance start getting murdered themselves. Poirot locks down Drake’s famously haunted palazzo and resolves to solve the murders.

His suspects include the money-hungry fiancé of Drake’s daughter, the superstitious maid of the house, a World War 2 medic suffering from PTSD, and ghosts. With that out of the way, we can get to the whodunnit of this mystery.

A Haunting in Venice ending: Who is the killer?

Without a shadow of a doubt, the murderer in A Haunting in Venice is Rowena Drake. That’s right, the charitable host of the party and the pivotal séance is not only (partially) responsible for her daughter’s death, she’s also guilty of two murders after the fact.

Dissatisfied with the prospect of her daughter Alicia leaving the nest with her fiancé, Rowena took matters into her own hands by secretly micro-dosing Alicia with hallucinogenic honey. When her maid Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin) accidentally gave her daughter a lethal dose of the toxic honey, Rowena staged a suicide, which was made more legitimate by her daughter’s manufactured insanity.

Her decision to host the séance was actually to disguise the murder of a suspected blackmailer who claimed knowledge of her crime. She was successful in this, but not before she had to impale the medium Mrs Reynolds on a statue.

Rowena’s intent was to blame all of the deaths in her palazzo on the malevolent spirits that were said to inhabit it. Unfortunately, Hercule Poirot was on the case and his methods of deductive reasoning pointed straight to her.

A Haunting in Venice ending: Who is the blackmailer?

While the family doctor Leslie Ferrier (Jamie Dornan) was killed by Rowena Drake for his suspected blackmail, it was actually Ferrier’s young son Leopold (Jude Hill) who was extorting her. This little tidbit is only known by Hercule Poirot who chooses to keep the secret between himself and Leopold.

Poirot exhibits a soft spot for Leopold whose curiosity and intellect remind the detective of himself. When confronted with Poirot’s discovery during the ending of A Haunting in Venice, Leopold justifies his actions.

He explains that his father’s post-traumatic stress precluded him from practicing and an unrequited love for Rowena blinded him to the suspicious circumstances of her daughter’s death. Leopold read his father’s examiners notes upon her death and concluded that she had been poisoned and that Rowena had covered up the death.

He was leveraging this against her to keep their rent up and avoid poverty. So while blackmail is a crime, she’s a nasty murderer and kind of had it coming. These are the more concretely resolved threads of A Haunting in Venice’s ending, but there’s also one more.

Is there a supernatural presence in a Haunting in Venice?

The most ambiguous element of A Haunting in Venice is the existence of the supernatural. Specifically ghosts and the afterlife. Throughout his investigation, Poirot frequently wrestles with their potential presence.

While the mysterious medium Mrs Reynolds is quickly outed as a fraud by Poirot, following her murder, he is constantly plagued by visions and voices of the dead. This turns out to be the result of consuming the same hallucinogenic honey that Rowena Drake used to induce her daughter’s madness.

At this point, it seems like everything can be explained away, but there is one final instance that throws everything back into question. In his final confrontation with Rowena Drake on the balcony of her palazzo, Poirot sees a vision of her daughter grab Rowena and pull her off the ledge.

While Poirot was still under the influence of the hallucinogenic, Rowena was not very close to the ledge and didn’t trip on anything before the fall to her death. After this encounter, Poirot forgoes his retirement, suggesting he believed it to be a genuine spiritual experience.

He ends the movie helping another client, which will no doubt lead us to another Agatha Christie based film in the future.

A Haunting in Venice releases in cinemas on September 14.

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