 |
| Director
: |
Iain Softley
|
| Starring
: |
Kate Hudson
Peter Sarsgaard
Joy Bryant |
|
| The plot of
The
Skeleton Key |
A
New Orleans-set mystery about a caretaker who
experiences fright after fright in an elderly
couple's home. |
The Skeleton
Key Movie Review
|
Reviewed by
Mark Englehart:
Perhaps I might have enjoyed The Skeleton Key more if
I hadn't figured out its entire plot within the first
ten minutes. This sweaty, gothic thriller, set in the
bayous of Louisiana ("Just an hour away from town"
as its heroine gently tells us), is a pretty smart movie
but also pretty pointless; as a story, it probably reads
fairly nicely and compellingly, but once it's thrown
onto the screen, everything about it becomes way too
obvious, and it suffers from that thriller-debilitating
need to get slooooowly from plot point A to plot point
B while the audience has already jumped to points C,
D and beyond. But when it sticks to telling a straightforward
supernatural mystery, it's kind of fun, and doesn't
feel as stupid as most thrillers of late have been.
It would probably make a nifty pulp novel, not so much
in the vein of Stephen King but in the tradition of
gothic romances, the ones where there's a big, mysterious
house, a suspicious lady of the manor, a ghost with
a mystery to tell, and a plucky heroine determined to
figure it all out - and get the hunky suitor to boot.......more..
Review By Kim
Morgan:
There's a point in Iain Softley's The Skeleton Key—somewhere
between the southern fried Gena Rowlands ranting about
her invalid husband's "remedies" and Kate
Hudson rubbing John Hurt's frozen-in-horror face with
voodoo juice—where it crosses the more observant
viewer's mind that this movie is channeling something
quite wonderful and distinct: old-gal horror. Perfectly
timed with the current DVD release of Hush, Hush, Sweet
Charlotte, Softley's modern day bayou potboiler works
in the tradition of those superb hags-gone-wild Robert
Aldrich pictures of the '60s (chiefly, Hush, Hush and
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?). The Skeleton Key replaces
those formidable female geniuses, Bette, Joan and Olivia
(and Tallulah Bankhead from the non Aldrich picture
Die! Die! My Darling!), with the iconic Rowlands, who
does her predecessors proud......More..
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