All Kenneth Branagh Hercule Poirot Movies, Ranked

Kenneth Branagh is a British actor and director who plays Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie’s famous fictional Belgian detective) in recent film adaptations. Let’s rank them.

3. Death on the Nile

Though Death on the Nile is one of Agatha Christie’s most popular Poirot titles, it doesn’t win best Branagh adaptation this time. That’s not to say that the movie was bad – it’s most definitely more than worth a watch. But there are areas in which it fell short that the other movies just do better. 

For one, some parts were a little heavy-handed, and not every scene in the movie felt as though it carried the same suspense that the other Branagh adaptations do. The very beginning and end of the film was where the movie and plot truly shone, and many of the characters themselves were likable and easy to invest in. 

The movie followed the plot of the book relatively strictly, with a few well-placed addendums – which certainly aren’t a problem – but a few parts of the movie seemed to drag just slightly, Gal Gadot’s role as Linnet was heavily disliked by much of the audience, and the film received lower ratings than its counterparts. 

2. A Haunting in Venice

Fans of Agatha Christie will already know that there is no Hercule Poirot book called A Haunting in Venice. The book that this 2023 movie was based on is actually titled Halloween Party, and – to be frank – it’s a slightly less exciting mystery than the one the movie presents. 

Many details were changed from Halloween Party to A Haunting in Venice – so many, in fact, that you could watch or read either of them without spoiling a single detail about the other. The setting and a few of the characters are the primary elements that remain the same, but A Haunting in Venice aims to put a much darker, more spiritual twist on Halloween Party (and it also focuses more on the main manor rather than exploring the entire city).

A Haunting in Venice is a spectacular movie. It has well-timed jumpscares that aren’t overly pushy, and the spiritual element of the film is also highly unique – this is where the film truly shines, as it juxtaposes Poirot’s detective work and logical mind against something that supposedly can’t be anything but haunted. In fact, the mystery of A Haunting in Venice itself changed fundamentally from the book, and it was completely right to do so. Everything including the murder itself was reworked to better suit the big screen; it has a stronger cinematic setting, more emotionally captivating characters, and better plot twists. For a movie with a two-hour runtime, A Haunting in Venice feels satisfying from beginning to end.

The one place that A Haunting in Venice falls short is its awkward combination of comedy with horror – and a few fundamental details that were changed too much from the books. Tina Fey’s character, while a welcome relief in Halloween Party, feels as though she’s reading directly from a script in A Haunting in Venice. Even her motivations for contacting Poirot in the first place have been rewritten for a poor last-minute plot twist – her original character is designed to be a quirky, self-aware self-insert of Agatha Christie herself, and A Haunting in Venice falls completely short here in every aspect (and fails to leave room for the character’s many returns throughout later books).

1. Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express has an unfair advantage over Branagh’s other movies, and that’s because its title is that of one of the most loved and respected Agatha Christie books of all time. Not only was the hype for this movie built to a perfect peak around its release as the first Branagh adaptation of an Agatha Christie movie, but its star-studded cast was perfectly well thought-out, with naturals like Daisy Ridley, Leslie Odom Junior, and Meryl Streep embodying the every quirk and motivation of their respective characters.

It’s difficult to play out a movie that has so many tiny details to cover on screen, because solving this mystery for yourself means picking up on every little facet of the mystery until things start to click together. This is something that Christie truly excels at, but Murder on the Orient Express is one of the most difficult books to adapt – because everyone needs to play a character playing a character of their own. This has to come through well, but not too well – and the Murder on the Orient Express movie achieves this brilliantly.

Every detail down to the beautiful, plush setting of the train to the dramatics of the soundtrack creates an excellent world that captures the viewer right from the moment Poirot steps foot on the train. It’s truly a wonderful experience to watch a movie that you know will be perfect from beginning to end – and with such venerated books as Agatha Christie’s Poirot series, you want someone who understands them (and their characters) from top to bottom. Murder on the Orient Express does so beautifully, and that’s why it’s a cult classic through and through. 

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Branagh is rumored to be releasing yet another Agatha Christie movie that might just top every other one on this list – because it’s a movie based on arguably her best book of all time, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Don’t bother looking up any details about this one beforehand if you haven’t read it – you want to avoid spoilers at all costs. We certainly won’t be satisfied until it (and maybe And Then There Were None) hits the silver screen.