There is one perfect moment in SKELETON KEY,
which is remarkable more for the fact that it’s the
only good moment in the entire film than for its
own innate effectiveness. In it, a character picks
up a cigarette, lights it with the torpid evil
inherent in supernatural films set in the swamps
of Louisiana, and casually, creepily reveals the
film’s twist. One can imagine that this is the image
that sold the film to the people who then greenlighted
it. Alas, director Iain Softley (K-PAX and the very,
very good WINGS OF THE DOVE) and writer
Ehren Kruger (The Ring) failed to build the sort
of dread and horror in the film around that one
scene that would have made this an experience
worth having.
(Kate Hudson), a transplant from New Jersey
who deals with a guilty conscience by providing
hospice care. The facility in New Orleans where
she works is no longer doing the trick as far as
salving that conscience, and so she opts for a
live-in position with an aging couple in a
ramshackle mansion out in the back woods. Or
rather, the back swamps, which is where this
particular mansion is, set amid cypresses and
Spanish moss. The husband, Ben (John Hurt),
has had a stroke that has rendered him paralyzed
and speechless and the family’s attorney (Peter
Sargaard) explains to Carline that he’s had
trouble finding a caretaker who will stay to make
Ben’s last days comfortable and ease the burden
on his soon-to-be widow, Violet (Gena Rowlands). Still, the money’s good and the work light, what with the job to make his last days comfortable, a job that leaves her lots of free time between baths and the twice daily “remedies” provided by Violet, who spends her time puttering in the overgrown garden and trimming Ben’s hair. The place has bad vibes, to put it mildly, not
helped by the discovery, thanks to the eponymous
skeleton key thoughtfully provided by Violet, of a
hidden room in the attic stuffed with a wealth of
the usual ritual objects that populate gothic horror
tales set in Louisiana. None of them are particularly
reassuring, but for some reason Caroline decides
to take an old 78 record dated 1920 from there on
which is recorded a ritual that might be hoodoo,
or might be voodoo. It’s a distinction the story
makes, but then does little with. It does very little with anything else, either.
Caroline, played with wide-eyed grit by Hudson,
has no discernable character aside from guilt and
the necessary dumbness required of all protagonists
in horror movies. One minute deferential, one
minute confrontational, she, like the movie, is a
mess of inconsistancies and creaky plot devices
that fail to fold smoothly into the plot line. Aside
from problems such as muddled theology and a
through plot that wasn’t thought out enough,
leaving too many dangling bits and pieces that
don’t work back to the premise at hand, and
sending Caroline off for a gazillion quick jaunts
through the swamps into The Big Easy for some
exposition with her ex-roommate, there are also
seemingly bottomless jars of brick dust used as
magic protection, and a spooky gas station
housing the de rigeur old woman with wild hair
and milky eyes whose only job is to tell Caroline,
and hence the audience, what the recorded spell
is for. As for the young couple and the baby that
Caroline also encounters behind the gas pumps,
there is no explanation, rhyme, or reason beyond
a cheap scare when the suddenly appear that
really isn’t. Rowlands, at least, has that alpha
female quality that lets her take charge of the
screen, even when the dialogue is obvious and
insipid. The way she purrs when she calls Caroline
”child’, as in, “Where you been, child?” captures
the way a certain breed of southern woman can
use politeness and courtesy as vicious weapons of
insult and condescension. As for Hurt, his only job
is to lie there like death warmed over, looking
grizzled and disoriented, the which he does with
great commitment. Sargaard collects his paycheck
and hits his marks. SKELETON KEY is a turgid flick that drifts as it
goes through the motions of being a horror film.
There are creaky doors and peeling paint and
torrential rainstorms, but no building sense of
dread, no hair-raising terrrors, and nothing to
make the squeamish squirm in their seats beyond
the dismemberment of a plucked chicken before it
becomes gumbo.
Your Thoughts?