Hey folks, Quint here with an early review of the Kate Hudson horror flick THE SKELETON KEY. I love the poster for this film and the trailer isn't terrible. From the below review, it sounds like a throw-back to the great era that spawned flicks like BURNT OFFERINGS and THE CHANGELING. The review is fairly spoiler-free, so go forth and be merry!
Got a chance to catch a screening of The Skeleton Key in Sherman Oaks, CA starring Kate Hudson, Peter Saarsgard, Gena Rowlands and John Hurt. Well, let me get right down to it: The Skeleton Key is a haunted house mystery complete with a creepy plantation house an hour outside of New Orleans, plentiful rain and thunder, a locked door to a secret room in the attic and, of course, a skeleton key...and, oh yeah, a young, pretty blond with an inexplicable penchant for trying to open said room with said key in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm by herself....but I digress.
While the above paragraph might not sound like a rousing recommendation, I came away relatively satisfied. While it does fall prey to a good majority of horror film cliches, it still falls more in the category of atmospheric and brooding, something along the lines of Burnt Offerings, The Attic and The Beguiled than say Dark Castle's recent abominations' House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts. And considering the state of contemporary horror films, that should be enough to get a true horror film fan out to at least give it a try. It's also interesting to note that this film is NOT a watered down version of a great Asian horror film from three years ago and DOES takes place amongst arguably the only great atmospheric boiling pot culture that Americans can claim as strictly our own, Louisiana and more specifically New Orleans.
I always thought that New Orleans and LA was an oddly untapped resource for horror films and while it's been the backdrop to some great pictures: The above mentioned The Beguiled, Southern Comfort, Angel Heart among them, It has yet to have it's potential realized in a horror film. I can hear you saying Fulci's The Beyond (let's hope no one is saying Jordan's Interview with a Vampire), but that was no more filmed in New Orleans than Eyes Wide Shut was filmed in New York. So here we are, a haunted house story set in New Orleans and beyond, a screenplay by Ehren Kruger who wrote both Ring films, and seems to be hard at work on the John Carter film and The Talisman and a great leading and supporting cast with direction by Iain Softley who brought us Hackers and K-Pax(err...can't all be winners....).
I imagine most have yet to hear of this film, so I thought I'd open with a paragraph that I hope would intrigue, in which one would say I must know more.....The film takes place in an isolated plantation house an hour outside of New Orleans. Caroline (Hudson) a young caretaker from New Orleans answering an ad for a live in caretaker gets the job after much convincing by the estate lawyer(Peter Saarsgard). Apparently, Violet (Gena Rowlands) wants a good southern woman to take care of her almost comatose husband, Ben (John Hurt), who has suffered from a stroke. But after shaky introductions, Caroline moves in and is awarded a skeleton key from Violet. A key that can open every door in the house except one room in the attic....
Softley is able to maintain tension throughout these early sequences and while I would have appreciated a few less musical cues to tell me when I'm scared, it's effective. And what would a haunted house be without some odd idiosyncracies; in this case, all mirrors have been taken down and put in the attic. For what reason you may ask? Because as Violet said, when you get to be our age, mirrors don't hold much promise. As the mystery slowly unravels, I was with it the whole time, going one way and then the other. The events in the later part of the film are such that I must not describe them because even a hint would give away the effective twist.
Kate Hudson succeeds in convincing me of her role as does Saarsgard and Hurt. This is Gena Rowlands show, though, and she runs with it. Anybody that saw her sweet turn in last year's The Notebook might be surprised by her role here. I'm going to try hard not to compare her to Kathy Bates in Misery, but I'll be damned if she doesn't seem to relish in the gleefully wicked structure of the character. And anyone that thinks I gave something away by announcing her as the villain, trust me, I didn't....The last five minutes of this film is spot-on perfect. Judging by the silent reaction from the mostly teen audience that showed up, Universal might try and tack on a "happy" ending. Do not remove this ending! The ending is what separates this film from a merely competent haunted house film that chose locations wisely to a film with ambition and a desire to hang its balls out there and trust in the audience....and not just the teen demo. By the way, to the talk backers who yelled plant at my last review for using character names...It's called imdb.com in which I believe is a fairly common source to gain film information. Dumbasses.
The Crawling Eye
