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Kate Hudson stars as Caroline, a hospice worker who is hired by a friendly lawyer (Peter Sarsgaard) to work as a caretaker for the recently stroke-paralyzed Ben Devereaux (John Hurt). Ben’s wife, Violet (Gena Rowlands) doesn’t want her around–Caroline isn’t from the South and wouldn’t understand their beliefs and customs–but eventually allows her to stay, provided that she follows certain rules. She can’t have any mirrors hanging on the walls and she shouldn’t be rattling around up in the attic–especially around that mysterious door that seems to have never been opened. Of course, Caroline begins to snoop around and discovers that there may be more to Ben’s condition than meets the eye. In fact, she begins to suspect that there may be mysterious forces at work. After doing some research, she learns that the house was once owned by a rich banking family who lynched a pair of servants for allegedly attempting to perform some ritual involving their children. Of course, those servants were powerful hoodoo masters and it seems as if they may be using Ben to take revenge from beyond the grave.<

It may sound fabulously complex from the previous paragraph but that is simply a testament to my brilliant ability to sum up even the dullest of plots in a manner that makes them sound at least vaguely compelling. The screenplay is a one-note collection of bits cribbed from other, better films without any sort of fresh approach to the material. Instead of a matter-of-fact look at a contemporary character trying to come to terms with the mysterious world of voodoo, we get silly scenes in which our heroine goes from being a total skeptic to whipping up powerful spells in a manner of days. Instead of using the set-up in a clever or inspired way, it throws it out the window in the final reels for a series of scenes in which characters throw each other off of stairways, chase each other with shotguns and undergo the kind of horrified realizations about the true motives of certain characters that even the dimmest bulbs in the audience probably picked up on about 35 minutes earlier.<

As the film drags along, it soon becomes obvious that absolutely nothing is working. The usually excellent actors go through their motions with the kind of embarrassed air that suggests that they know they are in a dog and are trying to finish it up as quickly and painlessly as possible. The scares are pedestrian and mostly traffic in “BOO!” moments where someone moves unexpectedly or pops out from the shadows. Director Iain Softley, whose “K-PAX” was far more terrifying than anything on display here, tries to conjure up an appropriate atmosphere of Souther Gothic dread but while he drapes every scene with shadows and vegetation and trinkets, none of it feels particularly authentic–this is the cinematic equivalent of a House of Blues restaurant located in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. And the ending . . . dear God, the ending. Like most of Krueger’s previous efforts, it involves a gigantic twist that is meant to shake viewers out of their seats. The problem is, like with most of Kruger’s twist endings, is that a good portion of the shocking reveal is anything but shocking to anyone who has even vaguely been paying attention. As for the rest, it is merely inexplicable and raises more questions than it has the time or energy to answer and leaves us with nothing more than the suggestion that the lynching that was seen earlier may have actually been completely justified.

Viewers with long memories may recall Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart,” a nifty voodoo-based thriller in which innocent people found themselves caught in the middle of other people’s dealings with the dark side. That was a great movie that was marred only by a dreadful final reel that just simply didn’t work on any level. If you want to see a good voodoo movie this weekend, you should seek that one out. However, if you have the inexplicable desire to find out what the last reel of “Angel Heart” would be like stretched out to 104 minutes, then by all means go and see “The Skeleton Key.”

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originally posted: 08/12/05 14:37:19
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