At the Movies: ‘The Skeleton Key’
Now Kate Hudson is the latest glamour girl to get freaked out on cue in a supernatural thriller, “The Skeleton Key.”
This time, the perturbed spirits are haunting a creaky Louisiana plantation, but by now all these movies are blending into one big mixed-up gumbo — and a flavorless one at that.
Unlike Connelly’s “Dark Water,” Gellar’s “The Grudge” and Watts’ two “Ring” movies, “The Skeleton Key” is not an Americanized version of a previously released Japanese horror flick. It just feels like one. The film from British director Iain Softley (whose credits run the gamut from the Oscar-nominated “The Wings of the Dove” to the sentimental “K-PAX”) is based on a script by Ehren Kruger (who, come to think of it, also wrote the screenplays for “The Ring” and “The Ring 2”).
OK, so maybe it’s kinda-sorta part of the same vein. For that reason and various others, you will experience the sensation of having been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, although “The Skeleton Key” apparently has aspirations of being more meaningful based on the caliber of its cast.
A pretty woman is in peril — Hudson’s Caroline Ellis, a hospice worker caring for the dying Ben Devereaux, who has suffered a stroke (John Hurt, rendered mute, which is a complete waste).
The location is obviously uninviting — a big ol’ rambling house where doors slam shut on their own and floor boards creak with every step, and even the master skeleton key can’t unlock an ominous, hidden room in the attic.
And, of course, there is a twist at the end that changes everything that came before it. (Even if you’re not an astute observer, you can probably figure it out this Southern gothic ghost story pretty early on.)
Those previously mentioned movies, though, managed to evoke a genuinely creepy mood, a slow, steady sense of foreboding, and a couple of decent scares to make you jump out of your seat.
“The Skeleton Key” is just plain silly, as Hudson and Gena Rowlands (as Violet, Ben’s blunt, wilting belle of a wife) run around the house trying to outsmart each other using “hoodoo” tactics. Unlike voodoo, which is a religion, we learn that hoodoo is more like witchcraft — an amalgamation of spells that work only if you believe in them.
(The answer, it would seem, would be not to believe in them. But then there would be no movie. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing.)
Caroline, being the heroine in a horror flick, starts playing Nancy Drew up in the attic once she thinks Ben is trying to tell her something. A lawyer who works for the family (Peter Sarsgaard, good in everything and squandered here) is courtly but useless.
At one point, Caroline tries to smuggle Ben out but her plan goes awry, and she’s forced to drag his paralyzed body from the front seat of her Volkswagen Bug — at night, in the pouring rain. At its most ridiculous, “The Skeleton Key” has her sprinting about the plantation, spreading brick dust in front of all the doorways for protection.
“You’re not from the South,” Violet warns her early on. “You don’t understand.”
Understanding that “The Skeleton Key” is a waste of time for everyone involved is not a geographical phenomenon.
“The Skeleton Key,” a Universal Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, some partial nudity and thematic material. Running time: 104 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.