SKELETON KEY Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: C+
Directed by: Iain Softley
Written by: Ehren Kruger
Cast: Kate Hudson, Gena Rowlands, Peter Sarsgaard, Joy
Bryant, John Hurt
Screened at: Loews 84th St., NYC, 8/10/05 Like Tim Burton, British director Iain Softley (“K-PAX,” “The Wings of the Dove”) has a way of communicating thick atmosphere. Given Ehren Kruger’s script for a tale taking place in the Louisiana Delta about an hour’s drive from New Orleans, he gets a lot of help from geography. Fixing on a dilapidated wooden mansion surrounded by trees whose leaves face downward as though in mourning, Softley turns Kruger’s script into an lush, atmospheric tale. Unfortunately, “Skeleton Key,” despite John Beard’s excellent production design and Dan Mindel’s lensing–which in one scene provides an in-your-face close-up of the principal performer–the story steadily becomes virtually incomprehensible. In the finale, the obligatory twist scene which appears to open up the movie to a possible sequel, the tale suddenly, without warning and without much development to justify it, goes off the wall. As though the “dark and stormy night” sequences are not cliche enough, this conclusion is loaded with the stereotypical trimmings of a haunted-house ghost story. Surprisingly enough, the tale is best in the down-to-earth opening of the story which covers some moral ground, indicting the American business ethic which treats dying patients in a hospice as just a means to make a buck. At least we can understand what’s transpiring as we hear hospice attendant Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) confess to her best friend, Jill (Joy Bryant), that her guilt about being absent when her father died impels her to care for dying men. Disgusted by the callous way the institution treats its patients, she quits her job and answers an ad. Her services are accepted--to care for a stroke-ridden, mostly paralyzed and mute old man, Ben (John Hurt), whose wife Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands), is a suspicious and traditional old woman who resents employees (like Caroline) brought up outside the South. Given the locked doors for which she is given a skeleton key, she eases her way into a secret attic where she discovers objects that hint at sinister, phantasmal presences. Her eccentric employer, Violet, relates how decades back, during a party that could have been arranged by F. Scott Fitzgerald, two black servants were hanged on the spot by revelers. They were caught teaching two children the art of hoodoo magic, Caroline begins to wonder whether there might be something to this southern superstitution. The movie emphasizes just the right number of magic goings-on, with Caroline, who is testing the hoodoo waters, drawing lines across rooms allegedly to protect herself from ominous enemies who are at first invisible to her. Though she receives regular reassurances by Violet’s lawyer Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), she is increasingly caught up in a southern Gothic quite unknown to her during her coming of age years in Hoboken, New Jersey. Paradoxically enough, while Softley’s patient direction allows us in the audience to piece together the elements of the hoodoo beliefs, the abrupt ending leaves one baffled. Just how does this mumbo jumbo relate to the ability of believers to change places with others? This PG-13 film barely toys with the idea that Caroline and Luke could conceivably pair off: in fact one wonders why, guilt notwithstanding, a young and beautiful woman would want to immerse herself in a rural area with a couple of old people and little chance to have fun outside of attending a dance or two in the city. We do get to see Kate Hudson in her sexy night clothes and in the shower as she makes her presence felt in virtually every scene. Gena Rowlands is reliable as always as the neurotic and cynical woman, while John Hurt navigates the difficult role of as a man who is paralyzed and mute yet clearly expresses his fears when called for. Rated PG-13. 105 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com | 
