Release Date: 13 October 2005

Synopsis :

Set largely in the dark atmospheric backwoods just outside of New Orleans, The Skeleton Key stars Hudson as Caroline, a live-in nurse hired to care for an elderly woman's (Rowlands) ailing husband (Hurt) in their home...a foreboding and decrepit mansion in the Louisiana delta. Intrigued by the enigmatic couple, their mysterious and secretive ways and their rambling house, Caroline beings to explore the old mansion. Armed with a skeleton key that unlocks every door, she discovers a hidden attic room that holds a deadly and terrifying secret. Peter Sarsgaard portrays Luke, the local attorney working on the couple's estate, and Joy Bryant plays Jill, Caroline's best friend.

Movie Review:

In a change of pace from the current creepy dark-haired specters subgenre so popular today, "The Skeleton Key" harkens back to the old-fashioned supernaturally-laced thriller that relies on excellent direction and good acting more than it does on its fright elements. It's a nice change of approach for a film of this sort with more focus on mood and storytelling and less reliance on jump out scares and dull horror cliches.

Hudson stars as a hospice caretaker for an elderly couple (Gena Rowlands and John Hurt) in the backwoods of Louisiana. Upon her arrival at the expensive estate where they live, she is given a "Skeleton key" that opens seemingly every room in the house. It’s not long before she discovers this to be far from the truth as the key fails to open a door in the attic and the couple not exactly forthcoming when asked about it. As she begins to investigate, strange happenings begin to occur, many of them involving the world of Voodoo. Said occurrences are at first relatively benign but they soon threaten the well being of the estate's inhabitants.

Kate Hudson turns in a good performance as Caroline Ellis. She makes for a believable, resourceful, likable heroine, even when she is constantly walking slowly into rooms she shouldn't be and going to investigate strange noises. John Hurt delivers another quietly excellent performance as Ben Devereaux, the invalid Caroline is looking after. Caroline knows he's afraid of something but can't quite put her finger on it but she suspects Ben's wife Violet (Gena Rowlands) knows much more than she's letting on. Gena does an excellent job playing the shadowy Violet Devereaux. Her performance is essential to making The Skeleton Key's twist ending work, which it does rather well for me but may not be the most liken by many. The consistently all rounder Peter Sarsgaard plays Luke, an attorney overseeing the Devereaux's interests.

Written by Ehren Kruger (The Ring Two), The Skeleton Key is a prime example of mood over substance. Gaining mileage out of being filmed on location in New Orleans and gorgeously shot with a whole lot of foreboding Deep South texture by cinematographer Dan Mindel (Stuck on You), the picture is suitably atmospheric and aesthetically layered. Small details—a creaking rocking chair on the mansion's front porch, a shaking locked door leading to the abandoned voodoo hideaway—display director Iain Softley's know-how of the thriller genre, while other elements, like the almost nonstop thunderstorms that underscore the most heightened of scenes and the predictable false jump scares, fulfill the requirements of the genre even as they are nearly as cliched as one can get. Nevertheless, the film looks great and sounds great (some haunting old southern folk music plays a part in the goings-on).
When one thinks of the south, the intriguing aspect that comes to mind are a sense of mystery, romance, and deep rooted culture thick enough to inhale. The Skeleton Key takes full advantage of all of these elements and offers enough eerie surrounding ambiance to keep the viewer intrigued, even as the film both doesn't delve deep enough into its subject. A second-rate suspenser dressed in sleek top-of-the-line clothing, the film is rarely genuinely frightening, and the characters as written lack the complexity needed to make what they are going through more substance. The Skeleton Key has its merits, most of them of the visual and aural variety, but thrill-seekers looking for a reason to keep their lights on at bedtime, and the rest of audiences in search of something to think about afterwards, are bound to walk out feeling a little gypped with further emphasis of the wrap-up which was a little sudden and clumsy.

Movie Rating:

(The Skeleton Key serves up a delightful dish of bayou horror — chicken feet and all)

Review by Lokman B S