The Skeleton Key

There's something inherently creepy about the swamps of New Orleans. It worked for Lucio Fulci in The Beyond, and to some extent it works in The Skeleton Key, the latest PG-13 supernatural psychological horror effort from the pen of Ehren Kruger, the screenwriter who shot to fame by retooling the script of The Ring for its American remake. The film has its fair share of problems, principally the fact that it conforms to the PG-13 supernatural psychological horror habit of being low both on scares and common sense, but for all its faults, it is a slickly produced little number that is actually more clever than a cursory glance would suggest.

Jaded by the apparent lack of compassion for patients among the staff of the hospice at which she works, nurse Caroline Ellis (Kate Hudson) packs in her job and takes on a gig as an in-house carer for Ben Devereaux (John Hurt), an old man on his last legs who suffered a stroke leaving him paralysed and mute after a bad fall. Ben and his wife Violet (Gena Rowlands) live in an ancient mansion on the swampy outskirts of New Orleans, and Caroline immediately gets the impression that she is not wanted. As she explores the house, with the aid of a skeleton key which grants her access to every room, she becomes aware that something is not quite right, and as strange occurences begin to unfold, she comes to believe that Ben did not in fact suffer a stroke but is in fact being incapacitated by hoodoo magic. Shouldering the responsibility to get to the bottom of the mystery and save Ben, she soon finds herself embroiled in the house's sinister past: a past that could very well claim her as its next victim.


If there is a single overarching flaw in The Skeleton Key it is the screenplay. A common issue with all Kruger's scripts is that they require an extraordinarily high level of suspension of disbelief. In Arlington Road, for example, we were expected to believe that Tim Robbins' character could have planned a terrorist attack based on predicting, to the letter, exactly how Jeff Bridges's character would react. Here, the fact that contacting the police never enters into Caroline's head is never sufficiently justified. The isolation of the Devereaux mansion would have made a good starting point, but this is negated by Caroline's frequent trips into town. Admittedly, this sort of thing is nothing new in horror movies of this type, but despite this I could never bring myself to believe that a member of the health care profession would fail to inform the appropriate authorities of her suspicions of domestic abuse.

Most critically, however, lame exposition abounds, killing the film's pace and leading to several head-slapping moments as entire characters and scenes are introduced simply so that someone can explain a vital piece of information to Caroline. Chief of these purveyors of plot points is Caroline's friend Jill (Joy Bryant), who serves as the voice of reason and only ever enters the plot in order to spout common sense or dredge up some important anecdote about hoodoo that she just so happens to know. It's actually quite embarrassing to watch exposition this blatant, and my belief is that it points to a half-baked script not adequately developed. And yet, in other respects, the script turns out to be quite intelligent. On a second viewing, it becomes clear that Kruger has weaved in several little nods to the true nature of the hoodoo hijynx. One character's line, "You're the only woman for me," takes on a completely different meaning when viewed with full knowledge of what will later transpire.

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In addition, the final twist, a component that has become infuriatingly common in horror movies of late, is actually quite effective and, for me at least, unexpected. It corresponds to the age-old device of entrapment, and in fact constitutes something of a parallel with The Wicker Man. Both films feature an idealistic protagonist arriving in a remote location, whose inhabitants' religious beliefs are disturbing and alien. Both assume the role of protector, seeking to rescue a specific individual from ritual sacrifice at the hands of said community. Only too late do they realise that they are in fact the intended sacrifice, and that the supposed victim has been merely a decoy to lure them in. In The Skeleton Key, the conclusion is made slightly unsatisfactory due to some rather far-fetched notions of magic only working on those who believe in it, plus the fact that one particular character is quite blatantly "in on it" from the moment he appears, but otherwise it is handled well, and little touches like the non-smoker Caroline lighting one of Violet's cigarettes, once they have switched bodies at the end, do a nice job of clueing us in visually without resorting to brow-beating.

The casting of the film is interesting and, more often than not, successful, although the erudite John Hurt is wasted in a role that, for the most part, prevents him from speaking or moving at all. For the role of Caroline, Kate Hudson has definitely been cast against type, casting off the shadow of the trite romantic comedies for which she is known and getting her teeth into a part that requires her to spend a great deal of time not doing much more than look solemn and thoughtful. In a clichéd but enjoyable role, Gena Rowlands chews scenery and looks sinister, while Peter Sarsgaard gets significantly less to do as the deceptively friendly lawyer. On the other side of the camera, Iain Softley's direction is competent but uninspired, failing to fully exploit the natural menace of the swampy setting and more often than not throwing in cheap jolt scares. His employment of blues music and frenetically edited dream sequences are effective, though. (He certainly redeems himself for inflicting Hackers upon us, that's for sure.) Additionally, Dan Mindel's widescreen framing is skilful, and it's a pleasure to see a film shot in anamorphic Panavision in an age when Super35 is becoming increasingly more popular.


DVD Presentation

The Skeleton Key is presented anamorphically in its original 2.39:1 ratio. "Soft" is the word of the day here: the transfer lacks fine detail and has an extremely filtered look, with no film grain to speak of. Like so many recent mainstream releases, it has clearly been subjected to an overzealous digital "clean-up" process, and as a result now looks more like digital video than film. It's not awful, but it's not particularly great either.

I can't really fault the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in any way. It's not the greatest mix I've ever heard, but it's a solid enough affair, with no obvious problems in terms of clarity or distortion. The surrounds are used sparingly, but are put to good effect when they do kick in, and the subwoofer often shows up to augment the lower frequency sounds. French and Spanish 5.1 dubs are also provided. In a generous move, Universal have provided subtitles in English, French and Spanish not only for the film but for the extras as well. The commentaries for the film itself and the deleted scenes are not subtitles, unfortunately, but everything else is catered for.


Extras

The special features are numerous, but don't let the quantity fool you: the vast majority of them don't even run for five minutes, and the actual content itself proves to be fairly uninspired. By far the meatiest (in relative terms) features are a collection of deleted scenes which can be played with or without commentary by Softley, and a feature-length commentary, again featuring Softley. The deleted scenes, presented in grubby non-anamorphic 2.39:1 and running for a shade under 22 minutes, are watchable as far as they go but don't bring anything substantially new to the table. Softley's commentary over these scenes tends to be sporadic and generally doesn't reveal anything that viewers would not be able to work out for themselves. The same is true of the full-length commentary, with an overly dry tone and too much in the way of gaps. To be absolutely honest, I'm not really convinced that this film required a commentary.

Behind the Locked Door: Making The Skeleton Key is your standard PR fluff piece. It runs for only 5 minutes and reveals absolutely nothing beyond how amazing everyone who worked on the film apparently is.

Slightly more substantial is Exploring Voodoo/Hoodoo, which, at 4 minutes, is even shorter, but does give something in the way of a potted history of the concept of hoodoo and how it differs from the more widely-known voodoo.

Recipe and Ritual: Making the Perfect Gumbo is another bizarre throwaway piece, teaching you how to cook a traditional New Orleans dish, but the 3-minute running time should be warning enough to anyone that this is far from a thorough explanation.

Up next is Blues in the Bayou, a 6-minute piece in which music supervisor Sara Lord discusses the use of contemporary music within the film.

In Kate Hudson's Ghost Story, the demure Ms. Hudson shares with us a personal and supposedly true "spooky" tale of haunting. She's so bleeding earnest about it that it's hard not be laugh, although at under 3 minutes it turns out to be as bitty as the rest of the extras.

Plantation Life is yet another featurette with little to do with the film itself, delving instead into the history of the New Orleans location. It gives some insight into the hardships of slavery back in the day, but at less than 4 minutes you'd be better off cracking open a history book if you want to learn more about the South's distasteful past.

At 9 minutes, Casting The Skeleton Key is the longest of the various featurettes, but unfortunately it goes down the same back-patting route as the making-of EPK. Various people on both sides the camera wax nostalgic about what a wonderful experience they had making the film and about how great everyone else was. If you've seen one of these features, you've seen them all.

John Hurt's Story is a 4-minute piece featuring... John Hurt, of all people. Propped up in bed in the make-up for the film, he reads an extract from a book concerning a first-hand account of slavery. Again, I'm not sure that I understand the point of including this.

A House Called Felicity runs for 5 minutes covers the location of the film's shoot, the Felicity Plantation. This turns out to be one of the more interesting and relevant pieces, particularly with regard to the discussion of flooding a nearby field to create the swamp that features heavily in the film's climax.

Finally Gena's Love Spell has Gena Rowlands reading a "love spell" that involves writing names on popsicle sticks and soaking them in honey. Thankfully it runs for just over a minute, as I found myself cringing for poor Ms. Rowlands throughout.


Overall

Like most of its ilk, The Skeleton Key is not particularly taxing on the old grey matter, and watching it is likely to lead to a feeling of déjà vu, but it is an enjoyable enough if ultimately insubstantial little chiller with an effective twist. Its greatest asset, perhaps, is that it showcases Kate Hudson as being a far more versatile performer than her prior roles would suggest. If that sounds right up your street, then this might suffice as a pleasing distraction for an hour and a half. If yet another PG-13 ghost flick has you reaching for the sick bowl, steer clear.

Universal's DVD features a solid audio mix, but the transfer and extras are not particularly impressive.