6 Hercule Poirot Movie Mysteries Ranked By How Clever The Killer's Plan Actually Is

Published Sep 19, 2026, 7:49 AM EDT

Senior Music Editor at Screen Rant, Sarah's love of sound and story drive the beat. A globetrotting brand whisperer and award-winning journalist, she’s built cross-cultural narratives around the world—but music has always been her true north. She launched DJ Mag North America, successfully introducing the iconic UK brand to the U.S. market. Previously, she carved a space for EDM inside the pages of VIBE, blending electronic and hip-hop culture long before it was trendy.
 

Hercule Poirot usually gets his murderer in the end. The more interesting question is how close they came to getting away with it.

Agatha Christie built some of her best mysteries around murder plans that look impossible until Poirot starts pulling at one loose thread. A convincing alibi matters, but so does restraint. The smartest killer should avoid creating unnecessary evidence, drawing attention to the wrong detail, or murdering half the cast because the original scheme started falling apart.

That gives these movie mysteries a slightly different ranking than one based on which film is best. Complexity alone does not guarantee a brilliant plan. A scheme involving several moving parts can be ingenious when every detail serves a purpose, but it can also create more opportunities for Poirot to notice something wrong.

With Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot potentially still having a future on the big screen, there is no shortage of movie cases to revisit. These six are ranked by how carefully the crime was planned, how effectively the killer redirected suspicion, and how close the scheme came to surviving Poirot's little gray cells.

Major spoilers follow for every movie discussed.

6 A Haunting In Venice

• 

  Hercule Poirot

• 

  Kyle Allen

  Maxime Gerard

Rowena Drake has some clever tools at her disposal in A Haunting in Venice. She uses poisonous honey to keep her daughter Alicia sick, later exploits the supposedly haunted palazzo to disguise what really happened, and manipulates the building itself when she needs to silence people who could expose her.

The problem is that much of Rowena's murder plan is improvised damage control. She kills Joyce Reynolds because she mistakenly believes the medium is blackmailing her, then targets Dr. Ferrier for essentially the same reason. The movie already makes substantial changes from Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, but Rowena's weakness remains simple: a truly brilliant killer should probably know who the blackmailer is before adding more bodies to the investigation.

5 Appointment With Death

• 

  Lauren Bacall

  Lady Westholme

• Peter Ustinov

  Hercule Poirot

• 

  Nadine Boynton

• John Gielgud

  Colonel Carbury

Lady Westholme takes advantage of Emily Boynton's health to make murder look natural. She steals digitalis and a syringe from Dr. King's medical bag, injects Emily with a lethal dose, and leaves behind evidence that conveniently points suspicion toward someone with access to the medication.

It is a strong plan until an eyewitness appears. Westholme then has to kill the boy who saw too much, creating another murder for Poirot to investigate and making the original death look far less accidental. Stealing the murder weapon from another suspect is smart misdirection, but needing a second killing to protect the first drops Westholme down the list.

4 The Alphabet Murders

• Tony Randall

• Anita Ekberg

• Robert Morley

• Maurice Denham

The 1965 The Alphabet Murders plays far more broadly than most Poirot movies, but the scheme hiding underneath the comedy is surprisingly elaborate. Amanda Beatrice Cross and Franklin Clarke arrange seemingly random alphabetical murders so that the death they actually care about disappears inside a much larger pattern.

They go considerably further than that. Amanda fakes her own suicide by using diving skills learned from an earlier victim and later disguises herself as Lady Diane while Franklin prepares to escape with her. The weakness is excess. Creating an entire serial-killer pattern is an impressive way to conceal motive, but it also guarantees police attention and eventually puts Poirot directly in the middle of the game.

3 Death On The Nile

• Peter Ustinov

• Jane Birkin

Jacqueline de Bellefort and Simon Doyle understand one of the basic problems with murdering a wealthy spouse: everyone will immediately suspect the husband. Their solution is to make Simon appear physically incapable of committing the crime while Jackie appears to have publicly attacked him.

Jackie fires a blank, Simon uses paint to fake the gunshot wound, and witnesses leave to get help. Simon then murders Linnet, returns, and shoots himself for real. Kenneth Branagh's movie makes several changes from Christie's Death on the Nile novel, but the central alibi remains wonderfully elaborate. The plan only really collapses once Louise and Bouc see too much and Jackie has to start cleaning up after it.

2 Evil Under The Sun

• Peter Ustinov

• Jane Birkin

• Colin Blakely

• Nicholas Clay

Patrick and Christine Redfern practically turn murder into stage magic. Christine alters Linda's watch to establish a false timeline, pretends to fear heights, applies fake suntan to change her appearance, and impersonates Arlena's dead body so a witness will unknowingly confirm the wrong time of death.

Once the witness leaves for help, Patrick can murder the very-much-alive Arlena and still appear to have been beside her corpse earlier. Even better, Poirot discovers that the pair had successfully used a variation of the trick before. The plan requires extraordinary timing, but nearly every moving part serves the same purpose: making witnesses believe something happened before it actually did. That is Christie machinery at its finest.

1 Murder On The Orient Express

• 

  Albert Finney

• Lauren Bacall

Most murderers would consider having 12 accomplices a spectacular liability. Murder on the Orient Express somehow turns that weakness into the plan's greatest strength.

Every conspirator connected to the Armstrong family participates in Ratchett's death, meaning there is no single murderer for Poirot to isolate. They manufacture contradictory evidence, support one another's stories, and fill the train with potential suspects who appear to have separate identities and motives. The story has been filmed repeatedly, and the different Murder on the Orient Express adaptations put their own spin on Poirot's solution.

The scheme is wildly complicated, but it accomplishes something none of the others quite manage: Poirot solves the crime and still allows the official version of events to remain uncertain. The killers do not out think him, but their plan creates a case where discovering the truth and delivering justice become two different things. For a Poirot murderer, getting that far is about as close to winning as anyone gets.