>>REVIEW
THE SKELETON KEY
STARRING Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands and John Hurt
DIRECTED BY Iain Softley
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The beleaguered cry of many discerning moviegoers, is that there’s never anything original in theatres. However, despite the complaints about derivative storylines and Hollywood’s tendency to rely too heavily on formulas it believes have "proven" themselves (i.e. remakes and sequels), the truth is that the stories aren’t what need to change, but how they are presented.
The Skeleton Key, a horror flick set in the swampy hinterlands of Louisiana, offers a familiar story in a familiar template – an outsider goes to work in a spooky mansion and the film works its way up to a "surprising" trick ending. A decidedly not-new angle on an equally recognizable storyline, the movie skates by on a welcome performance by star Kate Hudson and a supporting turn from the always-watchable Gena Rowlands. That viewers might enjoy the final twist enough to make them forget the rather dull hour and 45 minutes that led up to it may be a testament to how well audiences have been trained. We enjoy the unexpected ending, despite its expected presence.
Hudson plays Caroline, a young nurse with abandonment issues who gets a hospice job looking after a stroke victim (John Hurt) in a dilapidated mansion outside New Orleans. That the woman of the haunted house, Violet Devereaux (Rowlands), keeps an ever-watchful eye over her husband’s care is only one of the oddities that Caroline encounters. All the mirrors in the house have been removed and there’s a skeleton key that unlocks every room save a suspicious hideaway in the dusty attic. The old mansion is supposedly inhabited by vengeful spirits who simply need to be respected.
As Caroline plays detective in the Devereaux home, snooping around behind locked doors and trying to decipher what she believes are cries for help from her mute patient, she becomes embroiled in a historical ghost saga involving lynched servants and hoodoo (a cousin, of sorts, to voodoo).
While The Skeleton Key keeps an almost respectable distance from the kind of garden variety shenanigans that typify most horror movies (namely needless violence and gore) it still trades on the usual jolts – people bursting into the frame unexpectedly and doors slamming shut at random.
Although the swampy Louisiana setting provides a nice Southern gothic feel, the film tries for subtlety when it should go for the cheap scare. In spite of its best efforts to be a thinking person’s horror film, The Skeleton Key doesn’t have enough depth in its characters or storyline to achieve this. Proving just how mediocre the film is, the clever trick ending ultimately highlights how few surprises occur throughout the rest of the movie. |
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