On Friday, January 11, 2022, “Death On The Nile” was released in theaters around the world, with actors such as Tom Bateman, Annette Benning, Letitia Wright, and Sophie Okonedo. Since its debut, its Box Office stats state that the “Death On The Nile” has gained $12.8 million. It has gained a 66% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.7 out of 10 on IMDB.

Based on the novel by Agatha Christie, “Death On The Nile” is a sequel to another movie, adapted from the same book by Agatha Christie, “Murder on the Orient Express.” It follows the story of the world-famous Belgian detective in 1937, Hercule Poirot. After his suspenseful and mysterious case on the Orient Express, Hercule’s next case begins next to the Nile River, where two newlyweds will hold a party on their fabulous cruise ship. There is, however, one problem.

Everyone who’s being invited on the ship seems to have one gripe over the couple. Whether it’s the money they have or more personal feelings at bay. Things soon begin to escalate as Hercule begins to realize that someone on the ship is capable of more dangerous things than the others. Death is on the table for this mystery. No one is safe, and it is up to Hercule to keep the cruise ship, and its passengers, safe.

This review will contain spoilers for the movie, so please read with caution as the review begins. For anyone who has not seen the film but still wants to know what my thoughts are, I think that this film was overall average. It has lots of fun suspense to it, and the finale is exciting and slightly anticlimactic. The scenery is amazing, however, as it truly gives off such an Egyptian vibe.

Here is the spoiler in the review. “Death On The Nile” truly thrives in its scenery, having wonderful camera shots of Egyptian pyramids, statues, and the cruise ship that our protagonists reside in. The costume design is also great, as each character gives off a sense of the 1930s, in the best way possible. These two aspects make the immersion into the movie itself easy, and elating.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the story does not make getting invested in this movie that easy. The beginning half of this film is a nightmare. While it successfully gets the viewer introduced to the characters, conflicts, and location for the ladder half of the film, it does it in an extremely slow way. It makes the film unenjoyable. Of course, a bit of slow development should be needed to build excitement, but not in the way “Death On The Nile” does it. It builds up its suspense way too slowly, causing frustration rather than anticipation.

While the build-up to the mystery is quite painful, once the story actually begins to get suspenseful, and of course, as the first murder is committed, the story begins to become enjoyable. The suspense in this movie is quite fun, as you could never truly know what was about to happen unless, of course, you read the book that the movie was inspired by. The excellent acting also brings a teaspoon of enjoyment into this film, as each actor brings their talents out to make these odd characters work.

The murder mystery itself never gets too action-packed and does its best to stay grounded. There’s barely any action in this movie, which does work colors for some scenes. More drama-like subjects were focused on in this film. Of course, this helps make many of the characters more fleshed out and interesting. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the characters don’t really get a lot of attention. Some only get one scene that is important to the plot. The problem with the characters is that there are exactly four of them that get most of the screen time, and everyone else is just simply a background character. Unfortunately, this makes the ending of the film way more anti-climactic.

The reveal of the murderers at the end of the film seemed anti-climactic in a way. It seemed like a more, easy way to end the film off, and not an ending with an actually shocking reveal. Of course, the reveal was surprising, and the aspect of their being two murderers was great. But the problem is, the two murderers were part of the group of four characters that were mainly focused on for the beginning of this film. It made the reveal seem quite anticlimactic, and it made this film end off with a slightly off-taste.

Overall, this film is mediocre at best when it comes to plot and characters. The pacing sometimes dragged, and a lot of the characters were barely important in this film. Although these cons do drag the film down, the film does succeed with some amazing scenery of Egypt, and some nice clothing design. The ending twist, while surprising, felt a bit anti-climactic due to the two murderers being focused on throughout most of the film. While “Death On The Nile” had great potential, unfortunately, some burning flaws must bring it down to have a rating of 6/10.