movies: The Skeleton Key
Having heard mixed reviews about The Skeleton Key, I decided to check it out the other day while my car was in the shop. While barely scary by any measure, the film maintains some level of interest based on the weird hoodoo magic involved, and based on the fact that I haven't seen much of Kate Hudson before, and she's kind of hot. By the way, that wasn't a typo: hoodoo is different from voodoo, the film will have you know.
Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) is a nurse in a hospice ward in New Orleans who's fed up with her job. It's a business. The dying people she cares for aren't cared for by the institution, at least not as anything more than income on a balance sheet. So she quits, and goes to interview for a $1,000/wk home care job out in the sticks of Louisiana. I'd just go ahead and say "on the bayou," but being a Northeastern Liberal Elitist, I don't know if I'm saying it right (and I'm scared to offend people by trying).
It seems an old man had a stroke, and his wife needs help caring for him. She's Old South, as her glib estate lawyer explains, and doesn't take to Hoboken-born Caroline right away. But Caroline gets the job, and pretty soon proceeds to take a shower in the buff, shot from behind while a creepy ghostie might be watching. Not a problem, though. There are no mirrors anywhere in the house.
Shortly after that, she goes up to the attic to retrieve some seeds for the old lady, Violet (Gena Rowlands). But something's rattling behind a shelf of paint cans -- a door! Caroline gets spooked, but curiosity gets the better of her later on and she picks the lock to the door -- the only one her skeleton key wouldn't open -- and discovers a dusty hoodoo lab. When she asks the old lady about it, she runs into a wall. It takes a while, but eventually Violet breaks down and tells the story of a black couple, servants of the original owners, who practiced hoodoo and were lynched for teaching it to the white kids. They still haunt the house, hence the lack of mirrors.
Meanwhile, the mute and mostly-paralyzed old man is trying to communicate with her. Something stinks in Swampville. Ben (John Hurt), the old man, had his "stroke" in the attic. Caroline, ever the self-assured city girl that she is, decides that if he a) believes in hoodoo and b) believes hoodoo fucked him up, then he will logically c) believe it can cure him as well. So she goes to her neighborhood fat black witch doctor lady in the back of a New Orleans laundromat and buys info and spell components.
Back at the manor, with the old lady safely in another part of the house, Caroline proceeds to start casting the spell on the old man. Lo and behold, she's almost finished, and he starts talking! Well, sort of. Violet is coming, and he's trying to tell Caroline something in that agonizingly slow stroke patient kind of way. Help me, he says. But from what? As Violet bangs on the door, he gives up on speech and points toward the door, then goes into convulsions and knocks the spell stuff onto the floor. Caroline is able to retrieve the suspicious items and keep them from the old lady's view, or so she thinks.
So something doesn't add up. Seems the old lady is in on it. Caroline goes to the friendly and somewhat hunky estate lawyer for advice, and on the way they stop at the shacks of some hoodoo-believers and ask about a spell Caroline found. Something about sacrifice. The requisite creepy old blind lady explains that it's a way to cheat death -- to take the years somebody else has left and add them to another's life. Lawyer boy (Peter Sarsgaard) doesn't really buy it, but it's late. If she can get proof, maybe they can do something -- a restraining order or something -- tomorrow.
So Caroline goes back to the house. One of the critical and extremely simple hoodoo enchantments is to lay a line of brick dust across your door. Once you do so, anyone who intends you harm cannot pass. Caroline lays a line of brick dust across her door, then covers it with a rug and invites the old lady in. Fiddlesticks! The old bag can't cross it, but she does offer Caroline a rather suspicious dinner invitation.
Caroline of course decides that it's time to get Ben and get the fuck out of dodge ASAP, after drugging Violet's sugar cubes (and when that fails, dumping about three draft horses worth of barbiturates directly into her tea).
It's a chink in the plan, to be sure. Caroline manages to hide Ben under a sheet in the garden shed of all places before running back to lawyer boy's place for help. They end up going back to the house, after a fashion, but it's all downhill, even after Caroline throws the old lady over a railing and down a flight of stairs, breaking her legs. The old witch still crawls after her!
At the climax, Caroline the unbeliever hastily conjures a spell of protection, chalk and sulfur, hair and blood.
The question is, protection from what? Hoodoo has no power over you if you don't believe.
6 of 10 stars for a somewhat novel storyline based on creepy folk magic conjurings and set in a head-high proud backwoods Southern atmosphere. The scares are few and mild, and the twist is probably obvious to clever people. I'm not clever. I just accept what I'm watching, and never figure it out more than five seconds in advance. If I were an artist, though, I'd consider using Kate Hudson if I were going to make a picture of a nude woman's back. I mean, that's all you ever see, but it's good.
Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) is a nurse in a hospice ward in New Orleans who's fed up with her job. It's a business. The dying people she cares for aren't cared for by the institution, at least not as anything more than income on a balance sheet. So she quits, and goes to interview for a $1,000/wk home care job out in the sticks of Louisiana. I'd just go ahead and say "on the bayou," but being a Northeastern Liberal Elitist, I don't know if I'm saying it right (and I'm scared to offend people by trying).
It seems an old man had a stroke, and his wife needs help caring for him. She's Old South, as her glib estate lawyer explains, and doesn't take to Hoboken-born Caroline right away. But Caroline gets the job, and pretty soon proceeds to take a shower in the buff, shot from behind while a creepy ghostie might be watching. Not a problem, though. There are no mirrors anywhere in the house.
Shortly after that, she goes up to the attic to retrieve some seeds for the old lady, Violet (Gena Rowlands). But something's rattling behind a shelf of paint cans -- a door! Caroline gets spooked, but curiosity gets the better of her later on and she picks the lock to the door -- the only one her skeleton key wouldn't open -- and discovers a dusty hoodoo lab. When she asks the old lady about it, she runs into a wall. It takes a while, but eventually Violet breaks down and tells the story of a black couple, servants of the original owners, who practiced hoodoo and were lynched for teaching it to the white kids. They still haunt the house, hence the lack of mirrors.
Meanwhile, the mute and mostly-paralyzed old man is trying to communicate with her. Something stinks in Swampville. Ben (John Hurt), the old man, had his "stroke" in the attic. Caroline, ever the self-assured city girl that she is, decides that if he a) believes in hoodoo and b) believes hoodoo fucked him up, then he will logically c) believe it can cure him as well. So she goes to her neighborhood fat black witch doctor lady in the back of a New Orleans laundromat and buys info and spell components.
Back at the manor, with the old lady safely in another part of the house, Caroline proceeds to start casting the spell on the old man. Lo and behold, she's almost finished, and he starts talking! Well, sort of. Violet is coming, and he's trying to tell Caroline something in that agonizingly slow stroke patient kind of way. Help me, he says. But from what? As Violet bangs on the door, he gives up on speech and points toward the door, then goes into convulsions and knocks the spell stuff onto the floor. Caroline is able to retrieve the suspicious items and keep them from the old lady's view, or so she thinks.
So something doesn't add up. Seems the old lady is in on it. Caroline goes to the friendly and somewhat hunky estate lawyer for advice, and on the way they stop at the shacks of some hoodoo-believers and ask about a spell Caroline found. Something about sacrifice. The requisite creepy old blind lady explains that it's a way to cheat death -- to take the years somebody else has left and add them to another's life. Lawyer boy (Peter Sarsgaard) doesn't really buy it, but it's late. If she can get proof, maybe they can do something -- a restraining order or something -- tomorrow.
So Caroline goes back to the house. One of the critical and extremely simple hoodoo enchantments is to lay a line of brick dust across your door. Once you do so, anyone who intends you harm cannot pass. Caroline lays a line of brick dust across her door, then covers it with a rug and invites the old lady in. Fiddlesticks! The old bag can't cross it, but she does offer Caroline a rather suspicious dinner invitation.
Caroline of course decides that it's time to get Ben and get the fuck out of dodge ASAP, after drugging Violet's sugar cubes (and when that fails, dumping about three draft horses worth of barbiturates directly into her tea).
It's a chink in the plan, to be sure. Caroline manages to hide Ben under a sheet in the garden shed of all places before running back to lawyer boy's place for help. They end up going back to the house, after a fashion, but it's all downhill, even after Caroline throws the old lady over a railing and down a flight of stairs, breaking her legs. The old witch still crawls after her!
At the climax, Caroline the unbeliever hastily conjures a spell of protection, chalk and sulfur, hair and blood.
The question is, protection from what? Hoodoo has no power over you if you don't believe.
6 of 10 stars for a somewhat novel storyline based on creepy folk magic conjurings and set in a head-high proud backwoods Southern atmosphere. The scares are few and mild, and the twist is probably obvious to clever people. I'm not clever. I just accept what I'm watching, and never figure it out more than five seconds in advance. If I were an artist, though, I'd consider using Kate Hudson if I were going to make a picture of a nude woman's back. I mean, that's all you ever see, but it's good.