How To Watch Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot Movies In Order

British actor and filmmaker Sir Kenneth Branagh has been a Hollywood staple for years, between his adaptations of Shakespeare plays like 1993’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and 1996’s “Hamlet” and blockbuster projects like “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” as well as the first “Thor” movie in 2021. He also won his first Academy Award in 2021 thanks to the autobiographical film “Belfast,” which was based on his own childhood in the Northern Irish city during the Troubles. Branagh is clearly a curiously-minded and ambitious filmmaker and performer who’s always looking for a new challenge, which might explain why, in 2017, he started adapting Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories for the big screen.

Branagh kicked off this new project with “Murder on the Orient Express” that year and followed It up with two other Poirot stories, “Death on the Nile” and “A Haunting in Venice,” which came out in 2022 and 2023, respectively. So, what’s the correct viewing order for Branagh’s Poirot movies? Well, this may seem obvious, but I’m here to confirm one simple fact: the best way to watch Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot films is purely by their release date, so start with the earliest one first.

If you’re binging all of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies, go ahead and start the proceedings with the 2017 film “Murder on the Orient Express.” This is, arguably, one of the most famous Agatha Christie works with the famous fictional detective at the center, so it does make sense that Branagh led with this adaptation. Based on the legendary mystery author’s 1934 book, the film opens with Branagh’s Poirot at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. After solving a mystery there, he boards the Orient Express on its Simplon route, which should return him to London. On the train, Poirot meets a businessman named Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp) who claims that he’s endured threats to his life. Poirot declines to investigate the matter, but then Ratchett turns up dead.

After Poirot does some digging on Ratchett and realizes that he was using an alias and is actually John Cassetti, a man who previously kidnapped and murdered an infant girl named Daisy Armstrong. Cassetti was also indirectly responsible for the deaths of Daisy’s father John and Susanne, the family’s nanny, who both died by suicide. Some suspects begin to present themselves, including the family’s other nursemaid, Pilar Estravados (Penélope Cruz), Susanne’s former lover, Cyrus Bethman Hardman (Willem Dafoe), Daisy’s godmother, Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Dame Judi Dench), and a handful of others. I won’t spoil the ending of “Murder on the Orient Express” here if you haven’t read or watched this famous story before, but Branagh does an excellent job directing it, and the movie became a commercial success — which gave Branagh the green light to keep making Poirot films.

At the very end of “Murder on the Orient Express,” Kenneth Branagh sets up the sequel as Hercule Poirot leaves the train; after his journey ends, he encounters a British Army messenger who gives him a note saying there’s been … a death on the Nile. After a brief flashback that recounts Poirot’s service in World War I — which also features Poirot’s lover Katherine (Susannah Fielding) who perished in the war — we catch up with Poirot in 1937 in London, where “Death on the Nile” begins properly. While he’s in the British capital, Poirot attends a performance by the jazz singer Salome Otterbourne (Sophie Okonedo). While he’s there, he sees the socialite Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey) with her fiancé Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and her longtime friend Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot).

Strangely, six weeks later, Poirot is traveling in Egypt when he encounters Jacqueline, Simon, and Linnet again, except something’s very different: Linnet and Simon are now engaged to be married. (Jacqueline is stalking them, somewhat understandably.) After Simon, Linnet, Poirot, and their wedding guests board the S.S. Karnak to celebrate the nuptials, and after they briefly disembark to see some ruins, Jacqueline boards the ship. When Linnet turns up dead, it seems like Jacqueline is probably the obvious culprit, but in Poirot stories, nothing is as straightforward it seems. “Death on the Nile” wasn’t quite as financially successful as its predecessor, but it still performed decently at the box office, paving the way for a third sequel.

A year after “Death on the Nile,” Branagh released a third Hercule Poirot film, adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel “Hallowe’en Party” and titled “A Haunting in Venice.” Set years after the events of the previous installment, we now find Poirot trying to peacefully retire in Venice, having lost faith in both a higher power and his line of work over the years. All the while he’s accompanied by his bodyguard, former Italian police officer Vitale Portfoglio (Riccardo Scamarcio). 

One evening, Poirot’s friend and popular crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) convinces the detective to accompany her to a seance at a Venetian palazzo owned by Rowena Drake (“Yellowstone” star Keilly Reilly), performed by noted medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), largely because Ariadne wants to prove once and for all that Joyce is a fraud. (Also, the palazzo is a former orphanage and is rumored to be extremely haunted, so it’s a particularly appropriate Halloween destination.) When Joyce seems to summon the spirit of Rowena’s deceased daughter Alicia and claims the girl was murdered, Poirot is on the case.

A few more bodies fall before “A Haunting in Venice” is over, and the mystery reaches a satisfying conclusion … and considering that it had better returns at the box office than “Death of the Nile,” a fourth Poirot film will probably arrive eventually. For now, all three of Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.