Henry Stewart

The character drama becomes afterthought as it’s superseded by action.

This a parable about adulthood boasts deeply cynical takes on home, community, and childrearing.

The film was almost canceled for being too partisan, so it’s ironic to discover that it’s practically apolitical.

Would that Jacob Estes had kept the particulars of his murder mystery as intricate as the sci-fi of his main characters’ communion.

The filmmakers fail to realize that the darkest horror here doesn’t lie in the triumph of true evil, but in seeing how far a regular family will go to protect itself before doing the right and necessary thing, however hard or horrible it might be.

The film's victims are simply pawns in a super-gory bacchanal, which is aesthetically striking but emotionally dull.

Throughout, the film raises metaphysical issues of physical and psychological autonomy only to gloss over them.

Throughout, the film raises metaphysical issues of physical and psychological autonomy only to gloss over them, probably because addressing them could too quickly shut down the romance.

The film advances that old Hollywood trope: Blacks can't get justice unless whites are willing to get it for them.

Once the film gets to the Orient Express, it's as if Kenneth Branagh is always itching to get off of it, even having Hercule Poirot at one point look over a list of names while standing atop the train for no discernible reason, except perhaps to enjoy the way the sun peeks out between two distant mountain peaks.

The film's central theme, about where attention-starved narcissism leads when taken to extremes, isn't quite sufficient to sustain an entire feature.