The Skeleton Key review
Overturn in a crumbling Louisiana plantation house, Iain Softley’s effectively low-tone psychological thriller draws upon the limited traditions of Hoodoo, black magic and witchcraft. Luring us into that hinterland where the solid footing of reason leaches into the treacherous swamp of superstitious belief, the insidious script by Ehren Kruger (‘The Ring’) seeps into our blind to. Like the film’s young heroine, we are forced to inconceivable the evidence of our senses, our capability faculty to rationalise the perplexing. Are we witnessing mischievous crazy-games, mystical mumbo jumbo or petrifying fact? ‘Almost Famous’ star Kate Hudson reveals her more serious side as Caroline Ellis, a sage hospice nurse employed to nurse b like by reason of the Devereaux mansion’s stroke-paralysed P, Ben (John Hurt). As soon as she arrives, Caroline is thrown off-even out by the creepy atmosphere that pervades the house, and by Ben’s spiny, overprotective little woman, Violet (Gena Rowlands), who drip-feeds hints about apprehensive spirits that must be contained. Not to the Devereauxs’ rational estate legal practitioner, Luke Marshall (Peter Sarsgaard), can expound away Caroline’s discovery of a locked attic room stuffed with mirrors and Hoodoo paraphernalia. Kruger’s book for ‘The Ring’ remake replaced the unsettling subtleties of the Japanese original with multiplex-friendly jumps and scares. ‘The Skeleton Key’, by contrast, unfolds slowly, keeping us guessing as a remedy for almost three-quarters of the flicks. Softley’s confident direction is skilfully calibrated to evoke the upper limit suspense, and the formidable dramatic performances fuse seamlessly with John Beard’s atmospheric production design, Dan Mindel’s almost monochromatic cinematography and Edward Shearmur’s Southern-flavoured hordes. Nothing is forced, least of all a sly ending that bubbles up from under the film’s shimmering surface.Â