Breaking with his usual code of outright honesty and equality, Poirot lies to the police, letting them believe that a murderer stole onto the train in the middle of the night, killed Cassetti, and fled before anyone could catch them. Poirot questions the nature of justice in this case but eventually decides that each and every one of these people have paid for their crime already - they’ve lived with the pain of Daisy’s death. They take revenge for the death of a family. The film flashes back to the group taking turns stabbing Cassetti with a shared knife. The group consists of Daisy’s various caretakers and others personally affected by either her death or the death of her parents. He connects each and every one of them back to the Armstrong family and unveils Caroline Hubbard’s (Michaelle Pfeiffer) true identity as Daisy’s grandmother, Linda Arden.

In the film, Branagh’s Poirot slowly unravels the mystery before him, treading across the snow toward the suspects, all of whom are lined up at a table before him. Johnny Depp as Cassetti in 'Murder on the Orient Express.' They worked together to murder Cassetti and enact revenge. That’s the twist: Every suspect is responsible. Daisy’s murder destroyed her family, killed her mother, drove her father to suicide, and resulted in Cassetti’s death at the hands of the Armstrong family’s remaining friends and relatives. Soon enough, though, the audience learns that Ratchett’s real name is Cassetti, and that, a few years before, he murdered a 3-year-old heiress named Daisy Armstrong.

The suspects are 13 larger-than-life passengers, most of whom seem to have no connection to the murdered man, Edward Ratchett (Johnny Depp). Murder on the Orient Express tells the tale of renowned detective Hercule Poirot, a Christie staple, as his relaxing three-day journey aboard the Orient Express devolves into a chaotic murder investigation. This post contains major spoilers for Murder of the Orient Express.* It’s the big twist at the end of the novel, the one that Christie fans will see coming and the one that will shock audiences who go blindly into Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation. Anyone who’s read Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express knows what the “what the fuck” moment is at the end of the new movie of the same name.

Poirot murder on the orient express