After two relatively faithful adaptations of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile,” director-star Kenneth Branagh goes wildly off-book with “A Haunting in Venice,” which arrives in theaters Friday. Once again playing Christie’s most famous character, the Belgian ex-police inspector turned private detective Hercule Poirot, Branagh shoots largely on location, specifically in a moldering palazzo said to be haunted by orphans left to die during a cholera outbreak. Coaxed out of retirement by his friend, the crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), Poirot sets out to debunk a famed medium (Michelle Yeoh) and winds up having something of an existential crisis along the way.
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