The Skeleton Key (2005)
Directed by Iain Softley
A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.
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In that way "The Skeleton Key", which capitalizes on the inherent creepiness of the Louisiana bayou in much the same way "Angel Heart" did, is a perfect addition to the Kruger canon.
Yet the spiritual tradition that invented them Afro-Caribbean voodoo rarely gets the spotlight, serving mostly as a genre backdrop for all-too-familiar stories about good-looking white people in over their heads (e.g., Angel Heart).
There hasn’t been a decent Deep South occult flick since Alan Parker put Mickey Rourke’s rumpled private dick through his satanic paces in 1987’s noirish Angel Heart.
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger's latest illiterate piece of crap (the degree to which his script for the legitimately effective The Ring was doctored is now the stuff of Hollywood legend) addresses these and other pressing plantation-era questions when he deposits snowflake buttercup Caroline (Kate Hudson) into the heart of bayou country, deep in Angel Heart Louisiana, where every phonograph spins a Dixie Cups platter and every cobwebbed attic has a secret hoodoo room.
"The Skeleton Key" doesn't necessarily manipulate this setting better than, say, "Angel Heart."
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger, who adapted the Japanese "Ringu" films into "The Ring" and "The Ring 2," is paying tribute here to the Southern Gothic tradition that inspired such moody thrillers as "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte" and "Angel Heart."
…gibberish lyrics) into their music--from conception to DVD, the whole production is a throwback to Song of the South.
And given that the parlor trick being played here is a complex one, the lengths to which the script must go in order to move the various pieces into place are pretty extensive; and whereas in films like “The Sixth Sense” or “The Others”, where we are given sufficient material to distract us from the fact that the dealer is slipping an ace out of his sleeve and into the deck, here the over-complicated plot mechanisms unfortunately just draw attention to the fact that someone’s putting one over on us.
It's hard not to wonder what "The Skeleton Key" might have been in the hands of a director with a gift for visceral disquietude like Alejandro Amenábar ( "Open Your Eyes," "The Others" ), David Fincher ( "Se7en," "Fight Club" ) or Darren Aronofsky ( "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream" ).
For all its dark, Gothic intentions and supernatural twists, it lacks the emotional and intellectual punch of similarly themed films, most notably Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others."
Think Nicole Kidman in "The Others," Halle Berry in "Gothika," and Naomi Watts in "The Ring."
Like almost every psychological horror flick spawned from Hollywood these days -- from "The Forgotten" to "Hide and Seek" to 2001's exceptional "The Others" -- "The Skeleton Key" creates a mood of general foreboding, sprinkles in a few spine-straightening jolts, then caps it all off with a twist ending that, in this case, viewers may not see coming.
It seems that Ben (John Hurt, in probably the most comfortable role available to an actor since Timothy Bottoms’ limbless, bed-ridden soldier in “Johnny Got His Gun”) has suffered a stroke in the attic and can no longer speak, and his wife Violet (Gena Rowlands) needs help taking care of him.
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Blessed with veins of sublimely spooky Cajun occult running throughout the script by Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, The Ring) -- the thrust of which are that the more Caroline believes, the more danger she's in from the spirits in the house -- The Skeleton Key also boasts a handful of creative twists, some pointing toward a hoax, others hinting at something far darker than just ghosts.
…jumbo, and that would be reason enough, perhaps, to hail Key as the fulfillment of the promise we've been hearing screenwriter Ehren Kruger ( The Ring Two , Reindeer Games ) has embodied for lo these many years, since his Arlington Road made a biggest splash than it deserved to.
Without giving too much away, I’ll make the offhand comment that screenwriter Kruger has essentially turned in a genrefied – and less satisfying – version of his previous “Arlington Road”; but a substandard Ehren Kruger script can still knock most horror scripts on their asses, to put it bluntly.
Blessed with veins of sublimely spooky Cajun occult running throughout the script by Ehren Kruger ( "Arlington Road," "The Ring" ) -- the thrust of which are that the more Caroline believes, the more she's in danger from the spirits in the house -- "The Skeleton Key" also boasts a handful of creative twists, some pointing toward a hoax, others hinting at something far darker than just ghosts.
With his scripts for Arlington Road and Scream 3, young, insanely prolific screenwriter Ehren Kruger established a reputation as a sort of cut-rate cinematic O. Henry, a glib, hard-working screenwriter specializing in superficially clever but ultimately annoying, unconvincing twist endings.
The Skeleton Key was written by Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, Reindeer Games), who loves to throw third-act twists into his screenplays, regardless of whether they actually make narrative sense.
It's hard not to wonder what "The Skeleton Key" might have been in the hands of a director with a gift for visceral disquietude like Alejandro Amenábar ( "Open Your Eyes," "The Others" ), David Fincher ( "Se7en," "Fight Club" ) or Darren Aronofsky ( "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream" ).
Writer Ehren Kruger ("Scream 3", "The Ring", "The Ring 2") has become the Hollywood go-to guy for horror.
Blessed with veins of sublimely spooky Cajun occult running throughout the script by Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, The Ring) -- the thrust of which are that the more Caroline believes, the more danger she's in from the spirits in the house -- The Skeleton Key also boasts a handful of creative twists, some pointing toward a hoax, others hinting at something far darker than just ghosts.
Blessed with veins of sublimely spooky Cajun occult running throughout the script by Ehren Kruger ( "Arlington Road," "The Ring" ) -- the thrust of which are that the more Caroline believes, the more she's in danger from the spirits in the house -- "The Skeleton Key" also boasts a handful of creative twists, some pointing toward a hoax, others hinting at something far darker than just ghosts.
Director Iain Softley ("The Wings of the Dove," "K-Pax") and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (who wrote "The Ring" and the unfortunate "The Ring Two," based on a pair of Japanese films) have fashioned a tremulously lush occult mousetrap for Caroline, unabashedly milking every convention of the genre to deliciously melodramatic effect.
Director Iain Softley (Wings of the Dove) takes his time setting the story up, and the screenplay by Ehren Kruger (The Ring) carefully lays groundwork that will pay off later.
The script is by Ehren Kruger ("Scream 3," "The Ring"), and much of it is conventional.
Like almost every psychological horror flick spawned from Hollywood these days -- from "The Forgotten" to "Hide and Seek" to 2001's exceptional "The Others" -- "The Skeleton Key" creates a mood of general foreboding, sprinkles in a few spine-straightening jolts, then caps it all off with a twist ending that, in this case, viewers may not see coming.
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Rowlands channels Kathy Bates ala “Misery” with her often menacing and creepy performance, while Hurt pulls in the best performance here.
It's hard not to wonder what "The Skeleton Key" might have been in the hands of a director with a gift for visceral disquietude like Alejandro Amenábar ( "Open Your Eyes," "The Others" ), David Fincher ( "Se7en," "Fight Club" ) or Darren Aronofsky ( "Pi," "Requiem for a Dream" ).