PLOT: A New Orleans hospice worker signs on to care for a sick man, only to be swept into a vortex of Hoodoo magic, possible ghosts and definite trouble out in the bayous.
Summer movies such as The Skeleton Key are frustrating because they embody great promise and then don't quite pay off, even though this one is still worth seeing.
Fuelling the promise, the cast is stellar.
Kate Hudson (Oscar nominee for Almost Famous), Peter Sarsgaard (who burst onto the scene in Boys Don't Cry) and Joy Bryant (from Antwone Fisher) provide the vibrant youth, all singular talents beyond their attractive faces.
Oscar-nominated veterans Gena Rowlands, a reigning queen of American cinema, and John Hurt, the English chameleon, provide the wise counsel of experience in challenging roles.
The setting is exotic and foreboding: The dark Voodoo and Hoodoo side of New Orleans and a remote antebellum plantation house an hour out of the city in the heart of the bayou country.
Spanish moss, swamps, wild storms: How Gothic!
The spooky premise is also appealing: An estate lawyer (Sarsgaard with an accent he borrowed from real-life Southern relatives) hires a New Orleans hospice worker (Hudson, who is only vaguely Southern) to care for an elderly man (Hurt) who resides with his wife (Rowlands) in a decrepit plantation house that mirrors their decaying lives.
Because of an unknown shock, Hurt (in a remarkable performance because he is robbed of speech) is an invalid with fear bursting from his eyes. Rowlands (who towers over the movie) is fussy and difficult and makes things hellish for the hospice workers who have come before. Hudson, however, is too stubborn to give up, despite warnings from her best friend (Bryant) in New Orleans about the eerie situation.
As things progress, Hudson begins to believe that the place is haunted and that past transgressions involving the brutal legacy of slavery and race-related lynchings are intruding into the lives of those who reside in the house today.
As written by Ehren Kruger (The Ring, The Ring 2) and directed by Iain Softley (The Wings Of The Dove, K-PAX), The Skeleton Key is an old-fashioned and often very effective horror movie which depends on the development of character to make the story creepy and finally scary.
You do not have to believe in the folk magic of Hoodoo (which is separate from the religion of Voodoo) to accept that people in the movie believe in it. And, by believing, they can freak themselves out -- and us with them.
But the movie falls apart in the final act. I cannot tell you why because that would be a rude spoiler. I just think that this climax, and its supposedly shocking denouement, are handled clumsily. I lost my willing suspension of disbelief.
Still, there is so much of interest going on that The Skeleton Key remains of interest. Softley also does not resort to flashy digital special effects every five seconds, concentrating instead on people and story. Effects with no purpose are a crushing bore so it is a relief to see filmmakers try to create mood, thrills and scares without them. The Skeleton Key still frustrates but better this movie than total trash.
(This film is rated PG)
More Movie Reviews
